Introduction: Knowledge Delusion We delude ourselves about what we know and how we make decisions

If we are to create a better world, we need to make better sense of things and improve the decisions we make, especially when it comes to global issues such as climate change, regional and religious conflict, poverty, and the like.

Over the last 20 years or so, since the advent of the web and social media, over 60% of the world’s population has access to the greater part of human knowledge and can contribute to it. Furthermore, they can engage in online discussions with diverse people across the world of all religious faiths and political persuasions.

We are in an unprecedented period in human history. Reflect on it for a moment. There is a sea change in the world. One to which we have not yet begun to adapt.

Not so long ago, the world was very different.

I can think back to my childhood, growing up in England in the early 50s. In those days, there was no web; my mother and father didn’t even have a TV, just an old valve radio. My parents’ access to information pretty much comprised of the BBC Home Service – a British national radio station, and the Daily Mirror, a working-class tabloid.

They owned few books, and what books they did read were borrowed from the local public library. That was it. That was my parents’ window into the larger world. Of course, they had no way of contributing to the global information ecosystem and no capability to discuss the issues of the day other than in face-to-face conversation with their friends and family.

Social Media

In the early days of social media, optimists, myself included, tended to think that the ability of the web to connect people and to allow us to communicate, learn from each other, and relate to each other would usher in a new era of cross-tribal understanding and peace in the world.

We were wrong. Social media has been a force for good in many respects, but it also has had an unanticipated dark side. It has divided and polarized us and bought out some of the worst aspects of our human nature.

Like any tool, social media can be used for good or bad, and I do not deny that much good has come from social media, but we need to understand the negative aspects better.

The web and social media provide a massive opportunity to bring people together and improve the world. We need to figure out how best to do this.

Importance of our beliefs

How we behave, how we act, how we interact with other people, and maybe most importantly, how we vote is a function of our personal beliefs, especially our sacred or core beliefs.

It is essential, then, to better understand how we form our beliefs and how we change them.

One frequent suggestion is to improve people’s scientific education or train them in critical thinking. It seems pretty obvious. If people were more scientifically literate and thought more critically, they would surely be more likely to form true beliefs and make better decisions.

However, the research shows that this is not always the case. A scientifically literate person is just as likely to double down on their existing beliefs and not reevaluate them in light of scientific evidence.

This is an example of a cognitive bias known as motivated reasoning.

It is surprisingly tricky to get people to change their established beliefs.

Human complexity

The point is that we need to understand human complexity and our cognitive biases far better than we currently do. Otherwise, we are in danger of wasting our time not only doing the wrong things but making things worse.

This chapter

The essence of this chapter is to look at the big picture and, in particular, what research tells us about how we reason, form beliefs, change beliefs, and make decisions.

I start by looking at some key ideas, such as beliefs, belief systems, and values, to establish the language I have adopted. Many psychological and philosophical concepts mean different things to different people, especially experts in various fields.

I then move on to look at some of the research and what it tells us. Much of which goes contrary to popular wisdom.

Finally, I look at what we can do as individuals, regardless of our authority: how we can take more responsibility, exercise leadership, bring people together, and, through our conversations, tackle the problems of polarization.

• Introduction: Knowledge Delusion We delude ourselves about what we know and how we make decisions
• What Are Beliefs? Ideas that are held to be true but not necessarily supported by any evidence
• Reasoning ** The process of thinking about something in order to make a decision
• Belief Systems Our beliefs are not isolated pieces of data that we can take and discard at will
• Attitudes A tendency to think, or feel about someone or something in a certain way
• What Are Mindsets? Ways of thinking, mental inclinations, dispositions, or frames of mind
• Values Values are beliefs we hold that something is good or desirable
• What Are Morals? Principles of right or wrong behaviour
• Knowledge and Information ** Knowledge and information are different substances
• The Argumentative Theory of Human Reason We did not evolve to reason individually but to reason socially
• The Knowledge Delusion We know far less than we think we do
• Knowledge Is Communal Most of our knowledge resides in other people
• Distributed Cognition Not only is knowledge distributed, but cognition is also distributed
• Opinion Polarization We are polarized across political, religious, moral, and racial divides
• Rethinking Our Beliefs It is not easy to change our beliefs
• Trust & Belief Formation Trust plays a critical role in forming our beliefs
• The Allure of Simple Stories We tend to readily accept uncomplicated narratives without verification
• Our Tribal Nature The human brain is hardwired to be tribal
• Tribal Thinking Tribe before truth
• Science Curiosity A desire to seek out and consume scientific information just for the pleasure
• Discrediting People ** Cause them to lose the respect or trust of others
• The Global Information Ecosystem We live in a vast sea of information
• Pollution of the Global Information Ecosystem The contamination of information with false and misleading material
• Uncertainty ** Uncertainty refers to situations involving imperfect or unknown information
• Filter Bubbles, Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers Distort the reality of the world
• What Are Cognitive Biases? Mistakes in reasoning, evaluating or remembering
• Motivated Reasoning ** Leads people to confirm what they already believe, while ignoring contrary data
• The Difference Between Sense-making and Meaning-making The terms have distinct meanings

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