[Neurons] 2019 Neurons #12 THINGS ARE NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK

Mon Mar 18 15:59:22 EDT 2019

From: L. Michael Hall

2019 Neurons #12

March 18, 2019

THINGS ARE NOT AS BAD

AS YOU THINK

After several people recommended that I read a fairly new book on cognitive
biases, I read Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World- and Why
Things are Better Than You Think (2018) by Hans Rosling.  It is a good read.
It is about how thinking goes wrong and specifically how so much of our
thinking about the world is wrong.  That's because of the availability bias.
We know what we know due to what the media offers us via the news, journals,
TV shows, movies, etc.

It's also because of several biases that drive the media generally- our bias
for the negative, the fearful, the bad, the dramatic, the sensational, etc.
and given the media, most people think that the world is in really bad
shape.  Yet it is not.

"Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving.  Not on every single
measure every single year, but as a rule.  Though the world faces huge
challenges, we have made tremendous progress.  This is the fact-based
worldview." (p. 13)

Now to demonstrate that Rosling quotes the numbers- the numbers that
originate by the United Nations and other international organizations.  The
problem Rosling says is that "our brains often jump to swift conclusions
without much thinking."  He says that we have "dramatic instincts" by which
we give meaning to things and which accounts for our attraction to dramatic
stories.  From there he identifies various mechanisms (he calls them
"instincts") that trick our brains to draw false conclusions.  I have here
labeled them as biases (to not confuse how the word instinct is typically
used).

"But we need to control our drama intake.  Uncontrolled, our appetite for
the dramatic goes too far, prevents us from seeing the world as it is..."
(p. 15)

The first one that he addresses is the "gap instinct" which is driven by
binary thinking which you probably know as either-or thinking,
black-or-white thinking.  It seems that we humans love to dichotomize: good
versus bad; heroes versus villains, rich versus poor.  That's why we tend to
divide the world in two on a great many issues.  And whereas- 

"... the world used to be divided into two but isn't any longer.  Today,
most people are in the middle.  There's no gap between the West and the
rest, between developed and developing, between rich and poor." (p. 27)

He asks, "of the world population, what percentage lives in low-income
countries?"  The majority suggests the answer was 50 center or more, the
average guess was 59%.  The real figure is 9 percent (p. 30).  That led him
to divide the world population of 2017 into four levels. 

"Today the vast majority of people are spread out in the middle across
levels 2 and 3, with the same range of standards of living as people had in
Western Europe and North America in the 1950s."

He next identifies the "negativity" bias- our tendency to notice the bad
more than the good. Extreme poverty rate (defined as living on Level I, on
less than $2 a day) has moved from 85% (most of humanity) in 1800 to 9% in
2017 (page. 52).   And in the "last 20 years extreme poverty dropped faster
than ever in world history."  This negativity bias feeds the media.  Media
needs the drama that negative stories create to sell newspapers and news
broadcasts.

Next is the fear bias.  "When we are afraid, we do not see clearly. ...
Critical thinking is always difficult, but it's almost impossible when we
are scared.  There's no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear."
(p. 103).  The image of a dangerous world has never been broadcasted more
effectively than it is now.  Journalists have done an incredible job in
reporting every disaster as if it were the worst ever.  As a result, the
world seems terribly dangerous and getting worse!  Yet paradoxically, "the
world has never been less violent and more safe." (p. 107).  Today there are
far, far less annual deaths from disasters than ever before.  It was 453 per
million in 1920, today it is 10 (p. 110).

"In 2016 a total of 40 million commercial passenger flights landed safely
... Only ten ended in fatal accidents." (112)

"Today, conflicts and fatalities from conflicts are at a record low.  I have
lived through the most peaceful decades in human history.  Watching the
news, with its never-ending flow of horrifying images, it is almost
impossible to believe that." (113).

The size bias refers to the "instinctive urge to look at a lonely number and
misjudge its importance."  Rosling illustrates this with the number 4.2
million- the number of babies who died last year.  Alone that is terrible.
But if you compare the number with itself at different times, it looks very
different.  In 2015 it was 4.4 and in 1950 it was 14.4 million (131).

The generalization bias.  "Everyone automatically categorizes and
generalizes all the time. Unconsciously." (146).  While it is necessary and
useful to generalize, it can also be very distortive of one's perspective.
"Wrong generalizations are mind-blockers for all kinds of understanding."
The challenge is to be aware when you are generalizing, and to be conscious
of the categories that you create and use.  Then as a critical thinker, to
question the categories. 

The destiny bias.  This is "the idea that innate characteristics determine
the destinies of people, countries, religions, or cultures. ... things are
the way they are ... and will never change." (p. 167).  It may have once
made sense when people lived in circumstances that didn't change much.  But
not today.  Seeing things as not changing operates today as a blinder that
prevents seeing the need to update our knowledge.  Yet how often we say
things like: "He won't change."  "The politics of Africa won't change."
"That organization won't change."

The single perspective bias.  Simple ideas are attractive and we all love
the moment that a single idea seems "the key" to everything.  It leads to
wanting problems to have a single cause which then blind us to multiple
causation and systemic causation.

The blame bias - the urge to "find a clear, simple reason for why something
bad happened." (206).  Find the guilty party!  The problem with finding "the
bad guy," is that when you do, you usually stop thinking.  You assume that
you are done with thinking, and you can move on.  Yet almost everything is
more complicated than that!  Stop looking for villains and keep looking for
causes and contributing factors.

"If you really want to change the world, you have to understand how it
actually works and forget about punching anyone in the face." (p. 221)

"Reflecting reality is not something the media can be expected to do.  You
should not expect the media to provide you with a fact-based worldview ..."
(212).

Systemic factors encourage them to produce skewed and over-dramatic news.

The urgency bias is the urge to do something now, today, or it will be too
late.  "This moment will never come back.  Act now."  Yet when you feel the
urgency to act now, you will think less critically, if at all.  If you feel
that you have to learn something now, slow down.  Stop cramming. That's not
the best way to learn something.  Urgency creates stress and stress
amplifies our biases which then blocks us from critical thinking.  Stress
leads to poorer decisions and can numb you to a real emergency.

Reading Factfulness would be a good antidote for all of those cognitive
biases which those in media and in politics seem so susceptible to and which
they perpetuate upon us.  For the most part, news and politics are two areas
that play upon our natural biases the most.  As such, they create more
unsanity and distorted thinking, not less.  And that makes them dangerous to
our mental and emotional health.  

The next news report that you hear- take a moment to consciously listen for
drama, sensationalism, vividness, blame, personalizing, urgency, fear, etc.
then believe about 10 percent of what you hear.  It will do your brain good.

Neuro-Semantics News

.        Check out the new books --- Executive Thinking and NLP Secrets:
Untold Stories on the website.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

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