Wire to Rethink

I met many people in different contexts as part of my professional life. I was always curious about why people stood and kept their ideas religiously though there were many clues for changing their position.

After reading literature and curiously analyzing people’s behaviors, I understood that part of the problem is cognitive laziness. We often favor the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of acquiring new ones. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It forces us to admit that the world around us may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we profoundly believe can threaten our identities, making it feel like we’re losing a part of ourselves.

The overwhelming distress of doubt makes us prefer our comfort zone. We listen to views that make us feel good instead of ideas that make us think hard.

Some of you might remember Glenn Beck, a journalist who tossed a frog into the boiling pot on a live tv show some years ago. He was using this analogy in explaining his position. Unfortunately, the frog got poorly burned. The frog is better off in the slow-boiling pot: it will leap out when the water gets hot. It’s not the frogs but, it’s us. Once we hear the story and accept it as a fact, we rarely take the risk of questioning it.

In his book, Think Again, Adam Grant wrote that ?“As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our views.”

Instead of defending our position, we could choose to act like a scientist. Being a scientist is not just a profession but a frame of mind. When searching for the truth, we move into scientist mode: we run experiments to test our assumptions and distill the knowledge.

It is a tragedy that we are flawed with various biases. One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see. These biases mostly block us from applying our intelligence. They can twist our intelligence into a weapon against the truth. We find reasons to preach intensely, prosecute overpoweringly, and make politics deliberately.

Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded. It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.

It was a good story for everyone that Steve Jobs, the legend of Apple, created a renaissance for a bankrupt company. His decision and clarity of vision gave birth to the iPhone. Right? No, the fact is that he was dead-set against the category. The team had recognized that mobile phones were starting to feature the ability to play music, but Jobs was worried about cannibalizing Apple’s thriving iPod business. He might think differently, but his team had the ability to rethink and convince him to invest in iPhone.

Attachment keeps us from spotting when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. It needs detaching to enjoy being wrong. There are two particular kinds of attachment among all. One is detaching your present from your past, and the other is your opinions from your identity.

“Our opinions can become so sacred that we grow hostile to the mere thought of being wrong, and the totalitarian ego leaps in to silence counter-arguments and close the door on learning. Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in life—they might be excellence and generosity, freedom and fairness, or security and integrity.” Grant, Adam. Think Again

Using these three methods could help offset the prison of opinions. The first of them is to question deliberately instead of simply consuming it. The other one is not to accept ideas based on rank and popularity, and finally, the last one is to understand that most of the time, information received is not coming from the visible source.

The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to revisit our daily routines. ?We have to develop the humility to reconsider our past commitments, doubt our present decisions and have an insatiable curiosity to reimagine our plans. What we discover along the way can free us from the shackles of our familiar surroundings and our former selves. Rethinking, for sure, will liberate us for a more fulfilling life.

I want to complete the post with a quote from Soren Kierkegaard.

“Even though every individual possesses the truth, when he gets together in a crowd, untruth will be present at once, for the crowd is untruth.”