EDITOR’S COLUMN – October 10th, 2024

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” ―Arthur Conan Doyle

I used to think presenting factual information was the way people changed their minds. Now we have all the information we could ever need at our fingertips and it seems we’re more ignorant than ever. Why is that?

From the time we start accumulating information about the world around us, our brains start creating shortcuts (heuristics, there’s my vocabulary word for the week) to help us make decisions efficiently. Because our personal experience is limited, we include information from trusted sources in those heuristics. We adopt information from our parents or caregivers or siblings and add that to our shortcuts. As we grow, we add the experiences of teachers and friends, and our own learning. 

What’s notable about this process is that facts play less of a role than credibility and personal experience. Let’s say your dad hated vegetables and refused to eat them. As a kid, you trust your dad (hopefully) and even if it’s never spoken, you pick up on his dislike of vegetables and avoid them because you trust your dad.

You’ve probably heard the story about the little girl who is learning how to cook the Christmas ham. She watches her mom cut the end off the ham before putting it in the oven. “Why do you cut the end off?” She asks. The mom thinks for a minute. “I don’t know. Ask grandma.” Grandma’s answer is a surprise. “I don’t know why your mother cuts the end off the ham. I did it because my pan was too short.” 

The same can be true of entire groups of people, places, brands, activities, and more. What we see others do gets wired into our consciousness, and undoing it is challenging. Much of what we believe and do daily is based on those shortcuts. Hang out with a three-year-old in the “but why?” stage of development and you suddenly realize that you don’t know why you do things the way you do them, “it’s just how you’ve always done it.”

There are different routes for developing these heuristics… in one route we objectively discern the information presented and assess the facts. This is like the research and development process. It’s slow, it demands our attention and critical thinking before we form a conclusion. This is sitting down with a book or a newspaper article and reading it with care, considering both the information presented and where it came from, and then digging in deeper to see if that information lines up with other reputable information. 

The other route is peripheral. It’s formed not by facts, but by feelings and perceptions. We use this route a lot, especially when we’re distracted and busy. This is where we get reflexive reactions to people and ideas, and it’s pretty much the entire basis of social media. No time is required for critical thinking, just scroll and react, on repeat. This is how we end up falling for goofy AI images and outlandish theories or making dumb comments based solely on reading a headline. Our brain just takes a shortcut. 

Shortcuts are great if you know why you’re taking them and where they are taking you. But shortcuts can get us stuck, too, like all those people we laugh at who trust GPS for a “shortcut” when the highway is closed and end up trapped on some one-lane unpaved mountain road in the middle of nowhere. 

How many of us are high-centered on some idea, unable to make any progress, because we took a peripheral shortcut to get wherever we are and now our ego and identity are stuck there?  In order to change course, we have to swallow our pride and admit we might have been wrong. Most of us don’t change course. We just keep cutting the end off the ham to preserve our ego.