Marian Blogt

A myth is an established belief in something that is scientifically incorrect. I didn’t come up with that definition myself, Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook described and researched this. Fun fact (actually not really funny) is that the article encountered so much resistance from people who believe in myths, that the magazine has withdrawn the article. Not because the research was bad or the results were not correct, but because it was ‘too sensitive’. 1-0 for the myths, so to speak.

Not everyone is sensitive to believing in myths, but they are extremely persistent and contagious. Once you believe them, they are stuck in you head. And there is even scientific evidence that a myth, even if you don’t believe it, affects your worldview once you hear it. As they say: it can not be unheard. What makes such a theory so darned attractive?

That’s because of all those different shortcuts and preferences in our heads I mentioned earlier. We love facts that confirm our worldview. We see patterns everywhere. We attach more importance to 1 fact that we have experienced ourselves (or that a friend’s uncle has experienced) than to facts with large numbers. Large numbers are scary. And so on and so on.

As an example of this is the myth that the climate does not change at all. Why is it so tempting to believe this? Research shows that this myth has an enormous appeal, especially among people with a strong belief in the free market. If you believe that the market is the best organisational mechanism for society, you do not believe that man is responsible for global warming. From a ‘confirmation bias’-view this correlation  is easy to understand: because if you would believe in climate change, you would also have to admit that the free market may have some limitations. Furthermore, global warming is, of course, pre-eminently a theory of large numbers, vistas and macro-effects. A snowball on the other hand is close by, tangible and….. Cold. Quod erat demonstrandum.

All these different mechanisms in our brain make that a wrong theory, that feels right (fits our moral compass), fits our worldview, explains patterns we see and comes with facts we can relate to (of that friend’s uncle), is very attractive to remember (remember, Darwin?). And remembering is the first step to believing. Compare it to songs like the Macarena or Sofia or Gangam style, music that gets so stuck in our heads that we eventually find it beautiful.

Besides being very ‘sticky’ to enter our memory, they are also very ‘sticky’ when we try to remove them again. Research has shown that when trying to correct conspiracy theories there is a life-sized danger that you only strengthen the theory in people’s heads. How is that possible?

That too is mainly due to the confirmation bias. And through selective memory. When we pierce a myth with facts, and do so imprudently, people only remember ‘there was something with that myth’. The myth becomes more common in people’s minds, and thus more accepted.

Fortunately, there is help with de-mythisation. There are three simple rules you have to follow according to the ‘Debunking Handbook‘ of John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky:

1. Focus on the facts, not on the myth.
2. Do not mention the myth itself, or if you have to, warn of misinformation before quoting the myth.
3. Provide an alternative explanation for the myth.

What they say actually comes down to this: mentioning the myth strengthens it. So avoid this. Especially as a title, as a heading or as an introduction. After all: over time, we only remember the titles of things, the facts sink away and the myth remains. Be clear and short: too many facts makes that nothing is remembered. Keep it Simple, Stupid! And use pictures, because we always remember pictures better than words.

Besides the sparse and clear use of facts, they also say that you should always explicitly announce it when quoting untruths (the myth). Make sure you stay away from the ‘somewhere in the middle’ swamp. With that prejudice, people are presented with two opinions (the climate changes as a result of human action, and the climate does not change). Despite the fact that one opinion occurs much more often and is better substantiated, your brain mainly hears ‘there are two opinions’. The automatic reaction of your brain to that is: the truth will be somewhere in the middle.

Finally: give an alternative. People are much better off disbelieving something if they have an alternative that they can store in their brain it its place. Just think how much easier it is to believe that your son hasn’t taken a biscuit out of the biscuit tin if you find out that your husband was hungry last night. That knowledge works much better than the sweet eyes of your child that declares to have ‘really done nothing’.

Back to climate change. How do you tackle that, as a myth piercer? John and Stephan have used their rules on this specific myth. And write the following article:

See how the fact is the title, not the myth. See the beautiful infographic. See the warning, that explicitly announces that untrue information is coming. And finally, see the alternative explanation. All the ingredients for a true myth piercer, stuck together. Believe me, it works!

Oh, and do you know what works (even if it feels a bit crazy)? Before you confront a myth follower with the facts, let him or her tell you first about what is good about them. The better a person feels about himself, the easier he or she changes his or her mind. Bizarre maybe, but really true.

When you try to get pregnant, you see prams everywhere. When you try to lose weight, you see cakes everywhere. You see what you pay attention to.

I learned this when I tried to learn how to ride a motorcycle. My instructor sighed disappointedly after yet another time I fell over because I hit a curb or pawn: you drive to where you are looking.

Our head is built in such a way that we best see and remember the facts and events around us if they are in line with the world view we already have. We have a desire for consistency: once we have formed an opinion, our brains no longer want to have the continuous feeling that they have to do the work again. And so our brain prefers to pay attention only to those things that strengthen our opinion. As Charles Darwin wrote in his biography: “I have followed a golden rule for many years, namely that as soon as I came across a fact, a new observation or a thought that contradicted my theories, I had to write them down as soon as possible: for experience has taught me that I forgot those kinds of facts or thoughts much faster than facts or thoughts that supported my theory.”

This trick of your brain that Darwin saw and described is called the confirmation bias. This confirmation bias has been described for hundreds of years, but also more and more scientifically researched. Recently, researchers at the University of Amsterdam have also scientifically established that confirmation bias occurs, even in simple decisions where you as a human being have no status, identity or self-esteem. In the research they asked people which way they thought a certain dot pattern moved in (do you remember what I said about seeing patterns in everything?). They asked this twice in different studies and what turned out to be the case? The people who found in the first test that the dots moved mainly to the right, saw this image confirmed in the next test. And the people who found that the dots moved mainly to the left in the first test? You guessed it: they too thought that the second study confirmed their earlier opinion.

Scientists have been studying the confimation bias for some time now. In the 1951 research into an American football match that had turned out to be incredibly rough, this trick of your brain was also mentioned. The game was rough with many fouls and even wounded, and led to accusations between the football clubs for weeks to come. The researchers asked the supporters from both sides questions about the match. Again, the confirmation bias was crystal clear: both groups of supporters saw a totally different match. In the words of the researchers: “the ‘same’ sensory influence from the football field, transmitted via the visual mechanisms to the brain, clearly gave a totally different experience to different people”.

According to Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist who researches the belief in conspiracy theories, the confirmation bias plays an incredibly important role in polarizing people’s opinions. He calls it ‘cherry picking’: people choose that one scientific fact or that one empirical experience that confirms their thesis. Think of: “Smoking is not bad for you, that’s a fabrication by the government. My great uncle has smoked one packet a day all his life and it turned 98!” Or think of: “The climate doesn’t heat up at all! How do I know that? Look at this snowball!”.

The confirmation bias: our best friend in times of uncertainty. Our warm blanket of consistency. The director in our head who tells us where to look, what to see. Nice and clear and quiet.

But the confirmation bias is also our most dangerous opponent. Because so often it stands between us and other people. Because it prevents us from getting to know and appreciate other points of view. Because it pushes us up the barricades and shouts insults on the internet.

So let’s all be a bit more like Darwin: remember those moments when your worldview staggers. Write it down, photograph it, share it on instagram. Let’s celebrate it together, when our balloons burst! (also makes for very nice memes).

I know, I still owe you a blog about a very important heuristic: The confirmation bias. The heuristics that make us see and remember facts that fit our world view better than facts that contradict our world view.

But first I just want to catch up. September is over, the first real month of active research for me. August was the month of reflection, of accepting that my subject is really worth an investigation. Feeling that it can be really absurdly difficult to change my mind.

In September I started to find out why this is so. My search led me further and further away from my home base as a sociologist, and further and further into the wonderful world of stories, brains and primates. I’ve learned a lot (and I haven’t finished yet, most books and courses are halfway through) about how your brain works. About how my brain works. About why I froze completely when I listened to someone telling me that antidepressants don’t work. About why I think I have seen enough patterns, know enough fact to prove that they do work. The journey I made into the fields of neurology and psychology was very instructive and confrontational. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner and book writer, even made me really unhappy at one point when he announced that he thought that improving how you think, how your head works, is actually an impossible task.

If that’s true then we’re stuck with this brain, with these heuristics. If that is the case, it isn’t it a matter of brain training to make it easier for people to change their mind. A conclusion that is still a bit too premature for me (what confirmation bias?), but I will tentatively let it ‘roam around’ in my head for a while.

A second excursion in September was into primatology. Because I heard so many times (especially when I tried to find out how people think): that it comes from our hunter-gatherer brain. What was that, a hunter-gatherer brain? And why did our past millions of years ago actually influence our current behavior?

What this excursion taught me is the power of sharing food. And the power of stories. And above all: the power of groups, of socially connected living together. The founders of sociology were our ancestors, who already needed each other to survive. And who had to learn and grow intergenerationally to guarantee their existence. Why eating together and telling stories together was so central to this, I would like to come back to another time. But for now it provides me with a very nice thread of research for October or November.

Finally, in September I immersed myself in political philosophy. That’s actually because of my first research into how our brain works. How we think. That research showed me the tentative conclusion that we are better at changing our mind if we don’t know we are doing it. If we use our heuristics. That quickly brings us to subjects like nudges, big data, facebook and cambridge analytics. A ‘detour’ that caused me to do two important things in September: I quit Facebook, and I started following the Justice course at Harvard. Political philosophy, the basis of moral equality, is a complicated but fascinating subject. I’m far from finished with this either, but that’s not bad: morality of the group brings me back to stories and sociology via another way. To what our society needs to facilitate as much as possible that we can still change our opinion in the 21st century.

September was a busy and beautiful month. October promises to be that too, but perhaps for other reasons. For example, I teach a lot in October, I have to complete a number of jobs and answer some urgent questions. ‘Real’ life pulls its strings on me this month. Keeping up with and making time for the research will be a real challenge. But that’s okay: I had to tackle that issue sooner or later, so bring it on! Because I know after just one month that this research is incredibly fun, interesting and also useful. I probably know this because of all the heuristics and my hunter-gatherer’s train probably, but still ☺

Oh, and that title of this catch-up blog? That is due to last night, when the BBC aired the first episode of the new Doctor Who series. With – for the first time in 50 years – a female doctor. A fact that has caused quite some controversy in recent months. In response, the new doctor spoke the following encouraging words in the episode yesterday: “We are all capable of the most incredible change. We can evolve while still staying true to who we are. We can honor who we’ve been and choose who we want to be next.”

I promised I would tell you a little more about my favourite fallacy: The Gamblers Fallacy. This fallacy reasoning, this shortcut in our heads, is based in the fact that we are so bad at dealing with coincidence (read: Welcome to the Matrix for more about this subject).

The gamblers fallacy is easy to explain: imagine you’re at the casino’s roulette wheel. The last 4 times the ball has landed on a red number. What do you do when you bet? You gamble on black, right? Because ‘it’s due’!

Another good example also comes from inside the casino. You see people standing there for hours and hours with the same slotmachine. Because, as they say: this one is due a jackpot! What they mean is that the gambling machine hasn’t had a big payout for a very long time, so it’s ‘time’ for the jackpot to fall.

As you all know from my previous blogs, coincidence is really coincidence, even if we don’t want that. The chance that the ball wil land on a black number is (a bit less than) 50%. The chance that the jackpot will fall is as big as the slotmachine has been set at (and trust me, that chance is not that high). These odds only change if you adjust the machines. Not if you use them more often.

The tricky thing about this fallacy is that it is about chance, but also about statistics (the science of collecting and comparing numbers). And our head is not built for numbers (read more about that in Hans Rosling’s factfulness). We’re bad at crunching numbers, we pull them out of proportion and make them into something with an emotional or at least normative value (much! little! dangerous!). While statistics collects and calculates, we feel and draw conclusions.

Take the teacher who compliments a student with a particularly high grade for an exam, just to see that this student is doing worse next time. While the student he gave a telling off for an incredibly bad grade does better next time. The teacher draws the – emotionally very logical – conclusion that students are more affected by punishments than by rewards. While the effect of statistics on these second series of grades has probably had a greater effect on the grades, than his rewards and punishments.

The effect of statistics on these two students works as follows: there is an average score for all students at an examination. A student with a deviating high grade has a higher chance of scoring more average next time (in the picture below 68% of the students score average) than he has of scoring such a deviating high grade (16% of the students score deviantly high). The student with a deviating low grade, also has a higher chance of scoring more average (68% chance) next time, than that his chance of another deviating low grade. The law of averages is much less intuitive, but for the teacher probably a stronger prediction of future results, than his reward or punishment policy.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to say that studying does not help improve your grade. That is the difficulty with statistics: the conclusions are always about larger groups and averages. And on average, the chance is higher that you get a grade somewhere in the middle of the curve.

Isn’t it strange? It feels like we’re all suddenly living in a lab. Of course, we all understand that when we throw a coin in the air a lot of times, about half of the throws will be heads, and half will be tails. But that we are coins ourselves, subject to the same laws of chance, the big averages and the probability calculations, that feels strange and unnatural. And yet that is the consequence of accepting that so much in our lives does not happen for a reason, but in coincidence.

So the next time you think: it must go well/bad now, because the previous couple of times….. Then stop yourself and smile in a mirror. And take a coin from your wallet to throw it up. Just to make it visible that what will happen that day depends to a large extent on chance. Of course that’s scary, but secretly it’s also quite liberating: after all, it’s there is that much coincidence around you, not everything is entirely up to you anymore. Kinda nice, right?

For lots more on statistics, and how to use it in the decisions you make, visit the website of poker champion and science fan Liv Boeree. Or, if you just want to spend 6 more minutes, please see her TED talk on ‘three lessons on decision making from a poker-champ’. 

People are pattern-searching engines. Take those M&M’s from the previous blog. Whether you like it or not, you’re looking for a pattern. Someone said to me: ‘There must be a pattern in it, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t have put the picture on your blog’. The belief that there are patterns in almost everything is embedded deep in our system. Whole websites exist for people to share their pictures of clouds, buildings, dustbins and so on, all with faces on them. 

This raises two questions:  Why are we so ardently looking for patterns? And more importantly: why is that (sometimes) a bad thing?

The first question: why are we looking for patterns?

A common theory goes like this: in the past, when we lived on the plains and hunted mammoths, nature around us was very ‘coincidental’. Nothing stood nice and straight and angular. Danger was not neatly framed and bordered with signs. We had to find danger. Did we saw stripes somewhere in the grass? Chances are that it was just a coincidental pattern, but still: if it was a tiger (or whatever kind of striped predator lived back then), the price for ignoring the pattern was very high. And the price for erroneously running away from the striped grass was manageable. It must have been a simple cost-benefit analysis in our brains, which over time has perfected our pattern-finding system. And with success: we still exist as a species. We still see patterns (and faces) everywhere and still it is usually not someone or something that wants to eat us. But the cost-benefit analysis is still positive.

Which leads us to question two: why is it sometimes very bad that we see patterns everywhere? What is wrong with the simple entertainment of the optical illusion or seeing faces in a manhole cover? Surely that is innocent entertainment?

In itself, seeing those patterns is harmless. The problem is not in mistaking the the ‘simple’ ambiguity of an optical illusion or whether or not to see a rocket in the sky. The biggest problem of our addiction to patterns arises in situations that are not just ambiguous, but multi-interpretable. Real life, so to speak. Is that colleague smiling at you sincerely? Or is he looking mean at you? Is there a reason why it always starts raining when you want to go outside, or that you get a headache from talking on the phone? We are searching all day long for patterns to make our world understandable.

That search for patterns in ‘real’ life is necessary and helpful. But we take those patterns a bit far. Especially in situations of uncertainty and extreme emotions (fear, happiness), our interpretation machine sometimes runs wild. Evolutionarily speaking, of course, still very logical: especially in situations of danger, the pattern-finding machine had to save your life. But still: in today’s society this sometimes results in a lot of misery. People follow their pattern-searching-machine to the most extreme theories, because simply stated ‘It can’t really all be a coincidence’.

If something happens, especially something very good or something very bad, then we have to find an order, a reason. And faces with that pressure, our pattern-searching machine is our best weapon to order quickly, to understand quickly and above all: to quickly get back on solid ground. The problem? The patterns we find are always based on the worldview we already understand, already know by heart, already accept. I don’t know anyone who sees patterns of unknown objects in clouds, or who recognises new inventions in buildings. With the help of our pattern-finding machine we rebuild the world back to our existing point of reference. We rebuild the world as long as it looks like we know it. Safe, familiar and conservative.

The reason we hold on to our known world and patterns in this way is that the alternative to our head is much worse. If we do not find patterns, we will have to accept a new reference point. A very uncomfortable reference point. Namely that a lot in our lives is nothing more than a coincidence. The peanut butter sandwich that falls on the smeared half? The walkman you forgot to give back after borrowing, from the person who eventually became your husband? Your baby that died? The thunderstorm when you didn’t have an umbrella with you or the sudden sunshine when you had left your sunglasses at home? All of them just stupid coincidences.

Seeing and acknowledging coincidence is so difficult because we find it scary, seeing it as something negative. Many religions are based on the idea that coincidence does not exist. And in science everything is done to eliminate coincidence. Recognizing how much coincidence there is in our lives, would completely destroy the entire book and film industry (And then? Oh, coincidentally it went well. The End). Coincidence is elusive, incomprehensible and therefore taboo. We prefer to keep quiet about coincidence completely.

And so, bit by bit, we have learned to disregard coincidence completely. As Robert J. Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford, explains: You are surprised when you get dealt a royal flush at poker. And you’re right: the chance of getting those cards is very small. But at the same time the following is true: the chance of ANY set of five cards you get is very small. You only notice it if the set is very good (or very bad). And if you get a royal flush twice in a row? Then superstition is born and every time you play poker you put on your ‘lucky shirt’. Because that really can’t be a coincidence…..

A brilliant illustration of our aversion to chance, especially at very good or very bad events, you can read in the article ‘The Odds of That’ by Lisa Belkin in The New York Times. She tells us about the terrorist attack of 11 September:

‘In the past year, there has been plenty of conspiracy, of course, but also a lot of things have “just happened. And while our leaders are out there warning us to be vigilant, the statisticians are out there warning that patterns are not always what they seem. We need to be reminded that most of the time patterns that seem stunning to us aren’t even there. For instance, although the numbers 9/11 (9 plus 1 plus 1) equal 11, and American Airlines Flight 11 was the first to hit the twin towers, and there were 92 people on board (9 plus 2), and Sept. 11 is the 254th day of the year (2 plus 5 plus 4), and there are 11 letters each in “Afghanistan,” “New York City” and “the Pentagon” (and while we’re counting, in George W. Bush), and the World Trade towers themselves took the form of the number 11, this seeming numerical message is not actually a pattern that exists but merely a pattern we have found. After all, the second flight to hit the towers was United Airlines Flight 175, and the one that hit the Pentagon was American Airlines Flight 77, and the one that crashed in a Pennsylvania field was United Flight 93, and the Pentagon is shaped, well, like a pentagon.’

In the end, this did not turn out to be a blog about patterns, but about coincidence. And about the bad reputation we’ve given coincidence in our society. Coincidence is elusive, incomprehensible and therefore taboo. And so we condemn ourselves to our patterns-finding machine and to the world as we have always known it. We take the blue pill and live on in the safe, predictable world.

Links:

The Matrix, a science fiction film about coincidence and patterns: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

Lisa Belkin’s ‘The Odds of That’ in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/magazine/the-odds-of-that.html

The art of everyday thinking: https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UQx+Think101x+2T2018/course/

The human brain fascinates me. So I will probably stay with this avenue of research – and with these blog-subjects – for a while. Because the computer in our heads… is not a computer at all! That is to say: the brain is nothing like what we now call a computer. The brain does not calculate neutrally, can remember almost nothing flawlessly, continuously changes the input you put into it and independently makes choices, without telling you, in what will and what will not get processed. Because of this independence, the brain is on the one hand so much smarter and more effective, and on the other much more unpredictable and dangerous, than a computer.

A brief word about computers: People (very smart people) have been looking for artificial intelligence (AI) for a long time. First they looked for it in computing power (a computer is really very fast!). The first big step ever made in the AI was defeating Garry Kasparov (at that time world chess champion) in a game of chess. By Deep Blue. A name from the science fiction book right? You can already see him in your minds eye, a few years after this victory, as dictator of the world (or do pictures like this only play in my head?).

Anyway: in the end it turned out that Deep Blue was not such a smart robot. He was just a very, very fast one. After every move Kasparov made, he was able to calculate quickly enough what the effect would be of all the possible countermoves. This way he could always choose the best move. That is very clever, but in the end it was decided that clever was not the same as smart.

The second big step in the AI was taken by the computer AlphaGo. He defeated Lee Sedol (9th dan) in the game Go. Go is much more complicated than chess, so just computing very fast was not enough anymore. No, in her preparation for the game against Sedol, AlphaGo went looking for experiences. She practiced against other computers, and against people.  She practiced her play of Go quite the same way we learn to ride a bicycle. In this way the computer built up knowledge and experience. Quite similar to how we as humans would do it, if we made time for learning the game GO. This victory was a real victory for AI, and specifically for learning (independent learning, not programming) by computers.

But digress enormously. Because the reason I find this subject so interesting is that our brains look more like AlphaGo than Deep Blue. We see things, learn from them, and remember (in a certain way) those experiences. To start of with, computer experts gave AlphaGo rules about how to handle her learning. And after that, the machine went on her own. And you know: we are also given a set of rules at to start out with (As to how this happens, I am neutral: I’m skipping the Nature/Nurture debate for now). Rules that our brain uses to start learning completely independently. Rules that generally help us get by, but sometimes complicate life enormously

In the coming blogs, I’d like to discuss a few of these rules with you:

• Patterns are better than chaos (think of the dots in the previous blog).
• I can predict the future (a misconception that stems from that love for patterns).
• I can prove that I am right (because all facts indicate that the earth is flat).

So next time ‘Patterns are better than Chaos’. And then you will find out whether or not there is a pattern in this image:

Links from this blog are:

• The film 2001: a space odyssey
• The Science of everyday thinking course at the University of Queensland via edX
• Why clever people say stupid things, from the Correspondent (article in Dutch I’m afraid).
• Steven Fry’s Great leap years, episode 6: the Iotatron that Wasn’t

What do you see in the picture above? Black spots on a white background?

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What if I say that I had almost called this blog the 101 Dalmatians? Does that help?

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If you still have no idea, stop reading and enjoy this moment. Because believe me: once I’ve explained it, you’ll never be able to look at this picture like this again, the way you see it now.

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Well, can I?

This optical illusion is an example of is one of Hans Rosling’s rules of thumb (see Know the devil by his name, for an introduction to these rules of thumb): One perspective: make sure you acquire a toolbox. What Hans Rosling meant by this was; you often only see one point of view. This point of view not only determines what you see (because you never see everything you could see) but also how you interpret, that which you do see.

Take this picture: what you see, depends on the context in which you see it. By the way: for a long time psychologists gave al sorts of meanings to what you saw in this picture, but that is no longer considered credible today. So it is merely amusing: what do you see?

One sees a young woman looking back, over her shoulder. The other sees an old woman, looking forward. One sees a necklace, the other a mouth. One sees an eye, the other an ear.

Ultimately, pictures of women and dogs are very funny, but what significance do they have in my research? Why do I learn about optical illusions and how to fool my head?

For me the core value in these observations is, that it is very difficult to change perspectives. Once you see the Dalmatian, it is difficult to come back to that moment when you were only looking at dots. Once you see the young (or old) woman, it gives you an headache to see the other woman. With time it gets easier: the eye can get trained, and apparently so can the brain. Every one of you who has seen this picture a lot, knows how to get both the old and the young woman in view within milliseconds. Changing perspective apparently is an acquired skill that improves, when both perspectives feel familiar.

What does all this have to do with my ability to change my mind? If I have to believe ‘De Correspondent‘ (sorry, article in Dutch), a lot. In the article they write about research that shows something very striking (and at the same time something very logical): the stronger your opinion on a certain subject, the less you are able to ‘see’ the logical arguments that do not support your opinion. Facts may be important for forming an opinion, but they are often not the ‘driving force’ behind changing opinions. To get back to the optical illusions: no matter how true it is that the Dalmatian and old woman are present in the picture, if you don’t want to see them, you really can’t.

For me this point really hit home this week in the book ‘Strangers in their own land’, which I am still reading. After reading almost 2/3 of the book, I was still in the academic, contemplative position. I was constantly thinking about what I could use from the book for my research project. I did not have a real connection with the people Hochschild wrote about. The residents of the state of Louisiana, who daily deal with the consequences of environmental pollution by companies that break all the rules, while at the same time willingly voting for those politicians who give these companies room to keep on breaking rules and polluting, remained quite academic for me. I was ‘proud’ of Hochschild for taking so much trouble to write about  ‘their’ side of the story. But in my head it remained just that, ‘their’ side of the story.

On page 135 in the book Hochschild begins the deep story of these people. Their story. Their perspective. I hope to record a reading session of this story  for you soon, so you can hear their story for yourselves the intense way Hochschild writes it down. But imagine this: “You have been queuing up for years for the ‘American Dream’. You work hard and wait patiently. And you feel and see yourself hardly moving forward (sometimes even backwards). Again and again you see ‘others’ walking by, inserting themselves in front of you in the queue. Cutting the line? Or finding their rightful place? You don’t know, but you do know that you work hard, get older and older, and seem to be pushed further and further back”.

The deep story of the workers in Louisiana touched me. My perspective shifted: I saw the old woman. And for the first time I could understand how these people were blind to all arguments that I found very compelling, about why they shouldn’t vote for the tea-party. And how all the arguments that were hardly worth noticing in my book, were touching them deep in their  hearts and minds. How it was possible that we could look on the same situation, and see a totally different picture.

So there it is: go out and get yourself a toolkit. Practice daily with your own perspective. As a very wise woman (the queen of hearts in Alice in Wonderland) once said:

Links uit dit verhaal:

The dalmatian illusion is from: edX Science of everyday thinking, do you see what I see?

De Correspondent: Waarom slimme mensen domme dingen zeggen.

Arlie Russel Hochschild: Stranger in their own land.

Hans Rosling: Factfulness

My quest has started. Now that I have discovered that changing opinion is indeed very difficult (see Through the Looking Glass), I’m delving into the reason why this is so. This week: social media, primates and brains.

First, I dive into social media. I read the book ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now‘ by Jaron Lanier. The book paints me a gloomy picture: Social media hs nothing to do with connecting people. It has to do with growth, data and making money.

Lanier gives ten reasons why you should delete your accounts. In fact, all of these reasons are based on the ‘Bummer-machine’ he describes, which runs under the hood of many social media. The Bummer machine can be divided into six elements:

A is for Attention acquisition.
B is for Butting into everyone’s lives.
C is for Cramming content down your throat.
D is for Directing behaviours in the sneakiest way possible.
E stands for Economic gain.
F stands for Fake groups and fake society.

In this machine, part E is the force that drives all other elements. As Lanier describes: economic gain is the goal of the companies behind the social media. And economic gain can be maximized at the least cost through Attention, Butting in, Cramming, Directing and Fake. I won’t go in to all his arguments here (read the book!) but the picture he paints is depressing. Social media aren’t intentionally ‘bad’, but the economic model in which attention and data have become money, leads to very perverse effects.

In an article about Facebook in The New Yorker, this Bummer machine is explained further. A former Facebook employee talks about Facebook’s most important ‘target’, the L6/7 (how many people log into Facebook six out of seven days): “You could say it measured how many people love this service so much they use it six out of seven days. But, if your job is to get that number up, at some point you run out of good, purely positive ways. You start thinking about ‘Well, what are the dark patterns that I can use to get people to log back in?“

Lanier’s solution is simple: be a cat. Don’t walk like a dog in the pack and don’t look for approval, but follow your own path as a headstrong cat-like. And follow that path without using social media. Not because there is no internet – or social media – possible without exploitation, but because at the moment almost all large companies still choose to take exploitation for granted as the shortest way to profit.

I read Lanier’s book, read the article in The New Yorker, and deleted my Facebook account. It felt like a relief. But at the same time it felt like it was ‘too easy’. What now? Did I have to wait for a ‘reliable’ social media to emerge? And who should I believe telling me that this next option would be better? Should I fulfill all my social media needs on Linkedin (a platform that Lanier says works without the Bummer machine)?

I still felt like a dog, only now I followed another pack. I wanted more, I wanted to choose for myself. And so, I decided, I had to delve into the why: why does the Bummer machine work? What’s embedded in my system, that I’m so easily tempted to get negative content pushed through my throat and that I want attention? What happens in my head, in my heart and in my abdomen? And above all: can I do something about it? Can I become a conscious consumer of social media?

To find out, I read a book and went on to follow two university courses. The book was ‘Factfulness’ by Hans Rosling, the courses are ‘Evolution of the Human Sociality: A Quest for the Origin of Our Social Behavior’ from the University of Kyoto, and ‘The science of everyday thinking’ from the University of Queensland, both via edX.

What the courses, but especially the book, have taught me, is that there are indeed certain things that are embedded in our heads. But not irreversibly. The ingrained patterns are more a consequence of unconscious thought processing. they are mostly logical ‘short cuts’ that are smart most of the times, but when used unconsciously can lead to faulty conclusions. In short: we use these short cuts in our heads to avoid having to think about everything, every time. That is very good and necessary. But the short cuts used, become so unconscious that we are no longer aware of them when we use them. And so things can feel ‘true’ and ‘well-considered’, while they are only a guess.

Fortunately, it is a positive and activating book, which not only indicates what goes wrong in our heads, but also how we can arm ourselves against it. The ten ‘rules of thumb’ for conscious consumption are:

1. Gap: look for the majority, not for the gap.
2. Negativity: count on bad news, because good news is less often told;
3. Straight line: lines can bend, be careful with extrapolation;
4. Fear: Calculate the risks;
5. Size: see things in proportion;
6. Generalization: question your categories;
7. Fate: slow change is still change;
8. One perspective: make sure you get a toolbox;
9. Scapegoat: don’t blame anyone;
10. Urgency: take small steps.

I’m not going to elaborate on all of these heuristics in this blog either, because it’s really too much fun to read this book (especially if you’ve become a bit depressed after John Lanier’s book and the article in The New Yorker). I’m guessing that I’ll come back on some of these  in future blogs, because I think the heuristics and mechanisms Hans Rosling explains, really underlie a lot of the dillemma’s about changing your opinion.

For this blog it is enough to share that I have successfully applied the rules of thumb online. Especially on Twitter, where I get a lot of my news. The difference in how I experience reading my feed is really amazing. Knowing that certain messages – negative, anxious, urgent and giving me a scapegoat – enter my head as if they are boldly printed in capital letters, (UNSAFE NUCLEAR PLANT KEPT RUNNING BY GOVERNMENT!) helps me to put them into perspective. Knowing that my head is not good with numbers and is scared of large numbers (4.2 million babies died worldwide in 2017!), helps me to take the time to read on and understand the story behind these kind of figures, before I draw conclusions. The information I received in the book about the state of our world (a small hint, the world is doing better than you think) helps me to stay positive in an environment that is currently flooding me with Kavanaugh, Net Neutrality, Dividend Tax and the Childpardon (last two subjects are really Dutch).

With the help of Hans Rosling I start to feel more of a cat every day: independent and self-confident. So I confidently choose  to use some social media still, despite their Bummer machine. Twitter remains a place where I find news and share my story. Instagram is where my adolescent son lives and where I want to keep living. I did delete my personal content there. I completely removed Facebook, with some heartache, because I used it to keep in touch with friends who live far away. And so I walk through the social digital landscape and make my own choices. Maybe not always the best ones, but at least more and more conscious choices.

Links from this story:

The title is a quote from episode 4 of the TV series: Lost in Austen

edX (where you can follow courses like I did and many other beautiful courses)

Factfulness

‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.

Article New Yorker on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg: Can Mark Zuckerberg fix Facebook before it breaks democracy?

Opinion New York Times on regulating social media: The slippery slope of regulating social media.

Article in the correspondent on how your brain works: Weet dat je te weinig weet (Dutch article).

A month ago I announced that I would start a quest. My personal search for the answer to the question of life, the universe and the rest. Why is it so difficult to listen to each other? In this rapidly digitalising society, is it becoming increasingly difficult for us to change our minds? And if so: where will this end?

A month in a mobile home has taught me a lot. First, the realization that when I say: why do people no longer listen to each other? I actually mean: why are there not more people listening to me? The ‘Frodo effect’ – the effect that you think of yourself as the hero – is real to me. I secretly think that I see everything clearly. That at least I don’t have to change my mind.

This became tangible when I listened in the mobile home to the fantastic podcast ‘Science Vs’. A podcast that contrasts scientific research with… what your uncle says at a party. About subjects like organic vegetables, about weapons, about ghosts. And also an episode about antidepressants.

Until then, I had listened to all the episodes with great pleasure. Nice to hear how nonsensical claims (climate change does not exist, or is at least not caused by humans) were countered by the sarcastic presenter with irrefutable facts. How wonderful! Finally someone who figured out how things really were! I was even a bit surprised to hear that the podcast was quite controversial and that people were very angry about it. Because how could you be angry with science?

And then…. then she told me in her cheerful, sarcastic way that anti-depressants hardly work better than a placebo. And I felt a physical reaction to this message. You should know that I have had two depressive periods, one of which (after the birth of my son) was quite serious. The pills I got then were my salvation, in my head and heart they are the only thing that stood between myself and disaster.

And just as cheerful as in her previous podcasts, the presenter told me that my head probably fooled my body to a considerable extent. And I went completely -100% – rigid with resistance. For 10 minutes I was busy thinking up arguments why what she said was nonsense. Why my case was different. Why antidepressants had worked for me! My head was so busy that I hardly listened to the rest of the podcast. In which, by the way, it was said that some scientists do not agree with this conclusion, and do think that antidepressants do help significantly. In which the very complex picture was sketched of the scientific existence of antidepressants. I did not hear it: I only heard the rejection of my worldview, of my truth.

I sat there  in my co-driver’s seat in the motorhome, and suddenly I thought: it’s just very difficult to change my mind! I want to be right too much. I feel attacked too quickly. I feel stupid if I am wrong.

This makes the question even more important: how can we change our mind? And the fact that we live in this digital 21st century? Does it help or hinder it? All those new information flows we have, all those new filter bubbles in which we live? What does that mean for our ability to be wrong, to make mistakes?

This last month I have been reading and listening:

– Steven Fry’s Great Leap years

– Science Vs

– Strangers in their own land

Next month I will try to read:

– Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

– The Happiness project

– Factfulness