Think Before Believing

Our brains oversimplify and apply “shotgun” beliefs to the wildly complex world around us. This evolved during a time in which humanity had milliseconds to reach a life or death decision; there was not enough time to ponder whether it was a tiger or an armadillo lurking in the nearby shrubs. With death just around the bend, time was the limiting resource then.

Moreover, the simplification process has been brooding much, much longer now. Biology has strictly opted for survival over comprehension/global understanding for billions of years, beginning with our first single-celled ancestor. The physical world has too many rules and moving parts. Evolution’s first interaction with the physical world involved simple barriers to the changing environment, such as cell wall. Later on, complex, voluntary behaviors become inscribed as instincts. For example, salmon know exactly which location, upstream in a specific raging river, to return to for birthing their young. But just how many behaviors and protocols can one brain hold and efficiently compute? Humans are arguably the best adapted species for such mental work, however, the limitations of computing and information storage can be seen in the human brain. Although our memory is impressive, most of us cannot remember what we had for lunch exactly 1 week ago. Evolution had no reason to retain that much cumbersome data and if it did, it does not have the capacity to organize and compute it all. The limiting resource here is the capacity for storage and access to all of the rules and facts of the natural world.

Oh but now … NOW, we have reached an unprecedented situation. No more tigers forcing a sloppy, time-crunched decision. No more limitations to the access of knowledge and facts. Our cellphones provide an extension, which provides our brains with storage beyond anything in evolution’s history. Artificial light has extended the working day, so now we really have time. So, where does this leave us?

The only thing we still don’t have is a sense of responsibility towards seeking the truth, mostly due to the hard wiring in our brains over millions of thinking with heuristics. Instead, it is honorable to adopt an attitude of “everything is false, until proven otherwise.” In this way, we wipe the slate clean of whatever was spoon fed to us, and of all the biases our brain has accumulated. It is part of being a responsible adult that wants to contribute the advancement of the human race.

Be honest with yourself by examining all the evidence in front of you. Take the time to reach your own genuine conclusion. None of us want to consciously live underneath the shadow of a lie by believing in things that are not true. Beware, the belief that “there are things that we cannot measure or phenomena beyond human reach,” is in itself a bias/spoon fed belief, that should be scrutinized and should therefor have corresponding evidence to support it. As stated by Jimmy Lett, “logical possibility is not the same as established reality. If the absence of dis-confirming evidence were sufficient proof of a claim, then we could “prove” anything that we could imagine." Let your imagination run free while using the new tools available to reach logical conclusions about the world you live in.

Reference:

A Field Guide to Critical Thinking by Jimmy Lett is a great way to learn the skills needed to see our world clearly:
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/field_guide_to_critical_thinking