Uncomfortable Ideas
Written By
BO BENNETT, PhD
http://www.uncomfortable-ideas.com
eBookIt.com
365 Boston Post Road, #311
Sudbury, MA 01776
First printing - October 2016
Last Revised February 26, 2017
[email protected] - http://www.ebookit.com
Copyright 2017, eBookIt.com
ISBN: 978-1-4566-2766-9
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Dedication
To all the people I’ve offended before
Who travelled in and out my door
My meaning they mistook
I dedicate this book
To all the people I’ve offended before
... and to Willie Nelson
Preface
“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science.” - Carl Sagan
Imagine for a moment that a Neo-Nazi group is speaking at a local university. They are advertising that they are reaching out to the general public to help them understand that the Nazi party has been unjustly demonized, and they promise to discuss historical facts that will put the party in proper perspective. Do you go? Why or why not? Think about this for a moment. We’ll refer to this question in the next section.
Cognitive Biases
I wrote this book for a general audience, but I don’t shy away from technical terms—especially when they explain so nicely how we deal with, or not deal with, uncomfortable ideas. But I promise you this: when I do mention a technical term, I will do my best to explain it well and provide examples where appropriate.
Let’s start with the term “cognitive bias.” A cognitive bias is like an illusion for the mind. It is a deviation from rationality in judgment. Our brain did not evolve with rationality and reason as a goal; the only goals are reproduction and survival. Rationality is only needed to the extent that it supports one or both of those goals. Here’s the big problem: evolution works over tens of thousands of years, and we have made dramatic changes to our social environment in the last several hundred years. Evolution hasn’t had time to catch up. An example to which most us can relate, unfortunately, is overeating. We have a desire to overeat because food was scarce in our ancestral environment and the cost of starving was far greater then the cost of eating too much. Today, for most of us, there is no shortage of food, and we have a serious problem with obesity. The evolutionary trait that once aided in our survival is now killing us. Like the behavior of overeating, most cognitive biases are also relics of our ancestral environment that once helped us survive, but now, in the age of reason, are problematic. Some just make us look silly, some lead to poor judgments and decision making, some threaten our lives, and some actually are responsible for killing us.
Consider stereotyping, which is a cognitive bias that allows us to quickly and efficiently (but not always accurately) make judgments about people. Tens of thousands of years ago, if our ancestors were approached by individuals who looked different from them, it was a safe bet to assume the strangers were a risk. They didn’t have the luxury of time to get to know all about the strangers. If they hesitated in taking action, they might die. Today, stereotyping has become less effective (although far from useless) since there is less risk associated with taking the time to learn about others, and stereotyping is now more of a liability to us than it is an asset.
Which groups are more likely to avoid uncomfortable ideas? To answer this, we can turn to research in cognitive science that has focused on the question, “who tends to be more biased?” Republicans or Democrats? Christians or atheists? Men or women? The answer is a bit tricky since it depends on the bias being studied,1 the passion the members have for their group,2 and the metacognitive abilities of the members (the ability to think about their thinking process),3 just to name a few of the factors. Perhaps the most important point in understanding biases is that the biases are not correlated with general cognitive ability,4 that is, intelligent people are not immune to biases. Social scientist Keith Stanovich has done extensive research in the area of reasoning5 and proposed that one’s ability to reason effectively, that is to recognize and avoid biases largely responsible for our avoidance of uncomfortable ideas, is a separate intelligence just like emotional intelligence differs from general intelligence. Rational intelligence is an intelligence that is learnable. This book will help you become more intelligent in the area of rationality primarily by helping you to learn and recognize the biases that work against this intelligence. This improves your metacognition—your ability to think about how you reason.
A Few Words About Me
As a social psychologist, my goal is to see issues as objectively as possible while recognizing my own biases. For full disclosure, I am a white, cisgender, heterosexual, married, well-educated, upper-middle class male. I don’t have strong political beliefs, but I am definitely left of center. I am an atheist with a naturalistic worldview, but I can certainly appreciate religions for the benefits they offer some people and communities. Given my background, I cannot speak to the lived experiences of the members of the transgender and gay communities, non-whites or women, but I can explore related topics scientifically, objectively, and without passion or ideology. If we want to know about climate change, we’re better off getting our information from climatologists than from Eskimos, even though Eskimos experience the effects of climate change. Knowledge and experience are not the same.
I’ve done my best to being fully objective in creating this book. This has allowed me to present some uncomfortable ideas that I don’t necessarily agree with but know that other people do. I am not presenting a balanced assessment of the ideas because virtually all of us have heard the “arguments” against these ideas already. I am presenting arguments for ideas that you likely have not heard before. Just because this book is not balanced, it doesn’t mean it is not fair or that the arguments are not strong and factual. I have cited all claims where data support the claims, and when I come to my own conclusions I have done my best to reasonably justify those conclusions.
The goal of this book is to explore many uncomfortable ideas that are often not expressed, entertained, or accepted for a myriad of reasons. If I did my job right, you will no doubt be offended or at the very least be made uncomfortable by many of these ideas. Based on the ideas I do support, you might call me a bigot, racist, misogynist, snob, elitist, sympathizer, shill, godless heathen, or perhaps just an asshole. With the exception of the “godless heathen” label, I don’t think I am any of those, but I also think my jeans from high school still fit me fine.
Political Correctness
Political correctness is defined as “the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize,