I’ve been exploring the subtleties of human cognition for nearly two years now.\u00a0 The most amazing and persistent lesson I’ve learned is that our ability to understand the world is limited by the way our brains work.\u00a0 All of us are constrained by fundamentally flawed cognitive processes, and the advanced studies of human cognition, perception, and neuro-anatomy all reveal this to be true.\u00a0 Although this lesson feels incredibly fresh to me, it is not new news to mankind.\u00a0\u00a0 Long ago, serious thinkers understood this to be true without the aid of sensitive measurement devices (e.g., fMRI) or statistical analysis.<\/p>\n
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It pains me a bit to have been scooped by Sir Francis Bacon, who knew this well in the early 17th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 After all, It took me two years of intensive, self-driven investigation, 18 years after getting a PhD in psychology, to come to grips with this.\u00a0 I have to ask “Why isn’t this common knowledge?<\/em>”\u00a0 and “Why wasn’t this central to my training as a psychologist?”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bacon, an English lawyer, statesman, and thinker, who devoted his intellect to advancing the human condition, astutely identified the innate fallibility of the human brain in his book entitled New Organon <\/em>published in 1620.\u00a0 He referred to these cognitive flaws as The Four Idols<\/strong>.\u00a0 The word idol<\/em> he derived from the Greek word eidolon<\/em> which when translated to English means a phantom <\/em>or an apparition<\/em>, that he argued, blunts or blurs logic and stands in the way of truly understanding external reality.\u00a0 What we know today, adds greater understanding of the mechanisms of these errors, but they stand intact.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The terms Bacon used to describe these flaws probably made more sense in his day, but they are opaque today.\u00a0 My preference is to use a more current vernacular to explain his thoughts and then back-fill with Bacon’s descriptors.\u00a0 My intention is not to provide an abstract of his thesis, but rather to drive home the notion that long ago the brain’s flaws had been identified and acknowledged as perhaps the biggest barrier to the forward progress of mankind.\u00a0 Much has changed since Bacon’s day, but these idols<\/em> remain as true and steadfast today as they were 400 years ago.\u00a0 It is important to note that Bacon’s thesis was foundational in the development of the scientific process that has ultimately reshaped the human experience.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I have previously written about some of the flaws that Bacon himself detailed long ago.\u00a0 Bacon’s first idol can be summed up as the universal transcendent human tendencies toward Pareidolia<\/a>, Confirmation Bias<\/a>, and Spinoza’s Conjecture<\/a>.\u00a0 In other words, humans instinctively: (a) make patterns out of chaos; (b) accept things as being true because they fit within their preconceived notions of the world; (c) reject things that don’t fit within their current understanding; and (d) tend to avoid the effort to skeptically scrutinize any and all information.\u00a0\u00a0 These tendencies, Bacon described as the Idols of the Tribe<\/em>.\u00a0 To him the tribe was us as a species.\u00a0 He noted that these tendencies are in fact, universal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The second set of attributes seem more tribal to me because although the first set is universal, the second set vary by what we today more commonly refer to as tribes.\u00a0 Cultural biases and ideological tendencies shared within subsets of people make up this second idol – the Idols of the Cave<\/em>.\u00a0 People with shared experiences tend to have specific perspectives and blind spots.\u00a0 Those within such tribal moral communities<\/a> share these similarities and differentiate their worldviews from outsiders.\u00a0 People within these subgroups tend to close their minds off to openness and diverse input.\u00a0 As such, most people innately remain loyal to the sentiments and teachings of the in-group and resist questioning tradition.\u00a0 Cohabitants within their respective “caves” are more cohesive as a result – but more likely to be in conflict with out-groups.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The third idol is more a matter of faulty, misguided, or sloppy semantics.\u00a0 Examples of this include the overuse of, or misapplication of, vague terms or jargon.\u00a0 Even the perpetual “spin” we now hear is an example of this.\u00a0 In such situations, language is misused (i.e., quotes used out of context) or talking points told and retold as a means to drive a specific ideological agenda regardless of whether there is any overlap with the facts.\u00a0 It is important to note that this does not necessarily have to be an act of malice, it can be unintentional.\u00a0 Because language can be vague and specific words, depending on context, can have vastly different meanings, we are inherently vulnerable to the vagaries of language itself.\u00a0 These are the Idols of the Market Place <\/em>where people consort, engage in discourse, and learn the news of the day.\u00a0 Today we would probably refer to this as the Idols of the 24 Hour News Channel<\/em> or the Idols of the Blogosphere<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The final idol reflects the destructive power of ideology.\u00a0 At the core of ideology are several human inclinations that feed and sustain many of the perpetual conflicts that consume our blood and treasure and in other ways gravely harm our brothers and sisters.\u00a0 Deeper still, at the root of erroneous human inclinations, is this tendency that makes us vulnerable to the draw of ideologies that sustain beliefs without good reason.\u00a0 Such is the Idol of the Theater<\/em>, where theologians, politicians, and philosophers play out their agendas to their vulnerable and inherently gullible disciples.\u00a0 Beliefs ultimately filter what we accept as true and false.\u00a0 This is how the brain works.\u00a0 This proclivity is so automatic and so intrinsic that in order to overcome it, we have to overtly fight it.\u00a0 What is most troubling is that most people don’t even know that this is occurring within them.\u00a0 It is this intuitive, gut-level thinking that acts as a filter and kicks out, or ignores incongruity.\u00a0 And our beliefs become so core to us<\/a>, that when they are challenged, it is as if we ourselves have been threatened.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It takes knowledge of these idols and subsequently overt efforts, to overcome them, so that we don’t become ignorant victims of our own neurology: or worse, victims of the cynical and malicious people who do understand these things to be true.\u00a0 We are inherently vulnerable – be aware – be wary – and strive to strike down your brain’s false idols.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been exploring the subtleties of human cognition for nearly two years now.\u00a0 The most amazing and persistent lesson I’ve learned is that our ability to understand the world is limited by the way our brains work.\u00a0 All of us are constrained by fundamentally flawed cognitive processes, and the advanced studies of human cognition, perception, … <\/p>\n