CONSENSUS / LIZARD vs FRONTAL LOBE
The Inspiration
Today I am writing about examples of not being able to change your mind long after it is obvious that the train has left the station. I am interested and hopeful we will one day understand what is physiologically happening in that spongy blob above our necks that prevents us from adjusting long after we must have adequate signals to know otherwise!
The Setup
Have you ever had a party at your home and contended with “the last to leave” problem? Our minds are built for pattern recognition. When everyone else leaves, what is causing someone to just not get it? We also have a useful ability to solidly entrench our long-term memory. While we are only still learning about how memory works, we know there is a big difference between something we witness, something we retain in our short-term memory, and finally those things that are more permanently embedded in our long-term memory. There are simply some mysteries that are just not understood about how people make decisions, become committed to beliefs, and occasionally adjust their beliefs (or not) when better evidence emerges. Later in this post, I will make a reference to a movie. No spoilers here but it is flabbergasting to me how even the most unlikely story can become something that people will protect and not move off of despite the volume of evidence.
The Details
Doesn’t it feel like people PURPOSEFULLY ignore common sense? My favorite example of this is when people can simultaneously embrace and deny the VERY SAME THING! I think this is a fair synopsis:
The world of Europe understood in the late 1500s that the calendar had slipped significantly from its roots in the Julian calendar of ancient Rome
Specifically, the Church had seen the celebration of Easter slip 10 days over the centuries!
The Islamic calendar is still heavily influenced by the moon cycles.
The Christian church has moved to a sun-based calendar but still retains the tradition of a floating Easter. Per the Church, Easter generally falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox.
Having an accurate calendar DEPENDED upon a more rational understanding of the sun and the earth and even the moon. EVERYONE who wished for a more accurate calendar understood this (foremost the Church itself). The movement away from an understanding that the sun, not the earth was at the center of the solar system was merely a consequence. Consulting the best astronomers and mathematicians was necessary.
This more accurate understanding would depend upon the contributions and insights of many through the years including Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo. Each of them made contributions to the understanding of the motion of bodies including the relationship between the sun and earth.
We are left with a schizophrenic set of facts. Accurate calendars, navigation, and all sorts of important phenomena depended upon this understanding. The Church, by 1609 threatened torture upon Galileo to force him to recant his scientific breakthroughs. They had managed to fix the calendar thanks to astronomers and mathematicians about 25 years previously!
I accept that two parties can DISAGREE about a given matter. What is so difficult to grasp is how one EMBRACES a set of facts that allows an accurate calendar while REJECTING the same set of facts that leads to an inconvenient truth with the Sun at the center of the solar system.
Forgiveness and correcting mistakes is always worthwhile. The durability and unwillingness to adjust in a timely way is another matter altogether. The Church clung to its position for 359 years and reversed itself and apologized for the treatment of Galileo in 1992! My point in this post is that in a world that used to drag along and make few breakthroughs over 400 years, perhaps such an observation has little consequence (except for Galileo). In a world that changes as rapidly as today, such stonewalling and madness must be rejected and shouted from the rooftops.
I’ve chosen this example because it points to our current age with uncertainty. Everyday components we all count on for our existence are (1) happily purchased and utilized while simultaneously, (2) the VERY SAME UNDERLYING SCIENCE is rejected and repeated by many when the elements undermine beliefs. In my opinion, this is foolishness and it is always the responsibility of leaders to lead and set this intentional misunderstanding aside.
The understanding of the sun in relation to the earth is the BASIS of an accurate calendar, leap years, and all the rest. Regardless of opinions and apologists, the Roman Catholic church FINALLY got around to saying “my bad” in 1992. On EVERY LEVEL, this is a 359-year embarrassment and shows what lies ahead when the human mind becomes set in what it FEELS it must believe. I am glad that the Church “corrected its error”. Nevertheless, we had stood fast since two hundred years before the steam engine!
Can we get a little quicker at resolving what is nonsense and alternate facts? I am so thankful for “this modern world” that I was born into. Life gets busy for all of us. Layer in some spontaneity, unexpected stuff you have to do, and the next thing you know it is hard to develop your interests and even transform them into passions. I consider the development of a searchable internet has opened the frontier to learn new things and resolve nonsense and stupidity quicker. For many, the cassette tape, and later the VCR was the first time we could time-shift and carry media with us portable to enjoy at our leisure. For, me the modern searchable internet and Podcasts are their spiritual successors. Here’s a timeline to grant some perspective to the discussion while I get to the point.
About 150,000 years ago language emerged
We emerged out of Africa about 30,000 years ago as the remaining human population had dwindled and neared extinction
About 500 years ago we got the printing press
About 200 years ago we figured out how to make recordings of sound
About 100 years ago we figured out how to make recordings of data
Now I can listen or watch almost anything I want when I want for free from anywhere on earth with mobile service
These innovations allow us to explore our uncertainties rather than embrace them without understanding. One of my favorite PodCasts broadcasts on Sunday evenings and I rarely hear it live. I can listen to it anytime I want, and that is usually on the treadmill. What a wonderful world. It is called Hidden Brain. Here is an episode about how our brain deals with new facts. It is a sobering tale and worth a listen if you travel on the treadmill like me. We have the ability to learn about anything we want. Stay away from social media and you will be amazed at what you can learn. As I have stated in the past, I believe that the reason social media is such a threat is that it dances in our primitive brains and satisfies those primitive impulses. Why willingly allow (or submit) to the manipulation on your social media roundtrips? There has never been an easier time to learn about things and free yourself from manipulation.
Here is a current age set of alternate facts that might be interesting to consider for us as we simultaneously believe in something that we don’t believe in. The strange world of quantum physics presents a set of FACTS that can be troubling. It has also made possible such things as MRIs, computers, transistors and GPS. I think we all really appreciate those things in our lives. Unfortunately, it also presents such difficult dilemmas as objects can be in two places at once. I would never propose that it is easy to accept or understand this. It is healthy to embrace however that this appears to be true and CONTRIBUTES to how our GPS and MRI machines work. Sometimes, the “good” comes with the “bad”. We accept the GPS and MRI “on faith” and accept that reason brought us to these amazing life-changing devices. Here’s tonight’s tune with lyrics.
Eureka, this is a five-minute reading time post. You cannot improve what you do not measure!
19+
That was a lot of information and thought provocation in 1500 words. Nice.