Making Sense Of The World Is Hard

First published on June 17, 2020

Making sense of the world has never been harder than it is today. We have more information available to us than ever before, and it feels sometimes like this should make life easier for us. But it doesn't. We don't know what to trust. We don't know how to process it. And we didn't evolve for a time like this.

In his seminal book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel prize-winning behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman tells the story of the two types of thinking that humans do. System One, our fast-thinking, instinctual system, is the hero of the story. That's how we type, how we speak, how we walk along, how we live. To call it a thinking system is almost incorrect. We don't really notice what we think of as thinking when we are operating from System One. (Just try thinking actively about each word you type or say, or each step you take, to see how vital it is that System One exists and how instinctual it is.) But like any good hero, System One has its flaws. The key lesson I took from Kahneman's book was that we need to know when System One is likely to get tripped up, so that we have the power to choose to engage System Two, our slow-thinking, more conscious, rational system, at the times when we need this. The problem is, mostly System One has taken us way down the road before we have the skill or chance to slow down and engage System Two to think more clearly. You might say, System One is twice around the world before System Two is found. That's what happens when you suddenly become aware, ten minutes into an argument with your partner, that you are having a fight. Woah, wait a second, I don't want to be fighting right now. System Two can, sometimes, take us out of those situations.

One of the key competencies for dealing with information in the modern world is to know what having our buttons pushed feels like. If you read a phrase, a sentence, or hear it uttered by someone, and find yourself feeling a kind of alergic reaction to what they are saying, a physical contraction inside you, it's a good chance that your instinctual self is kicking in, protecting itself. Because, of course, if you learn something which changes your view on the world, the self that believed things in the old way will die and be gone forever. And it doesn't want that.

One of Kahneman's answers, which appeals to the former football analyst and maths graduate in me, is data. The patterns of big samples of data can show us just how rational we aren't, or show us things that are true which our instinctual self wouldn't believe otherwise. In one worrying example, the data shows that a prisoner's chances of getting parole in the USA are affected significantly by whether they are seen by the parole judge just after the judge has eaten or just before.

This is all particularly difficult in the whirlwind of what is happening in the world right now, from coronavirus to the Black Lives Matter protests. These things are enormous in our societies and incredibly emotive. They affect all of us and they affect people we care about. And it seems almost certain that changes, big, enormous changes, will happen in our lives and in our laws as a result of this.

This is why our compass for truth is so important. We need to know what truth feels like.

And this is why we need to be very aware when something is being said that causes us to contract. That is an opportunity to learn and grow.

We need to look for the people who tell the truth no matter if it is uncomfortable to us and their audience. We need to hear (ideally literally hear, not read) the voices of people who we trust, because their perspectives are more likely to be heard by System One, even if we don't agree with those perspectives. We need to make sure that the people we trust have varied perspectives so we aren't slipping into a confirmation bias filter bubble.

We are a long, long way from the reality of what we are talking or thinking about, most of the time, so we need to look for people who are closer to that reality and hear (really hear) what they have to say. We need to look for the people making arguments that don't support our instinctive, System One worldview, particularly on incredibly emotive issues that we care about deeply. That way we can get a better grasp on the truth and make a clearer and more skilful decision about what action to take, as individuals and societies. We don't have to take that new view, but seeing it and really hearing it gives us the power to choose.