The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have split the atom, mapped the universe, sequenced our genome and walked on the moon.
But, we are also amazingly mean, egotistical, petty and self obsessed.
The big issue of being in committed hierarchies -socially, culturally and in organisations – is the conflated sense of mistaking position with knowledge and an inflated sense of the little knowledge we actually do possess, as individuals.
Knowledge is the product — in the words of philosopher Philip Kitcher — “of a cognitive division of labour.” We all depend on intelligence and knowledge available to us courtesy civilisation but we assume that we -as individuals- know more than we really do.
Wonder why the mean and stupid thrive, and why there are so many moronic proclamations ? The answer is : dogma.
How do you recognise people with an inflated sense of dogmatic knowledge?
1. They believe they know everything and what they know is right
2. They are irrefutable
3. If proven wrong, they question the evidence not their lack of knowledge.
Consider what’s become known as the “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them.
In their book, “The Enigma of Reason”, the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber use the term “myside bias.”
Humans, they point out, aren’t random believers . Presented with someone else’s argument, we are experts at spotting the weaknesses. But when it comes to our own positions we’re quite blind.
I highly recommend “The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone”, by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach and “The Enigma of Reason”, by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber