The Science of Self Delusion | Mother Jones
By Daniel Miessler on May 23rd, 2011: Tagged as Reason | Science
Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it. That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.
via motherjones.com
I don’t get tired of reading about how biased we all are. It turns a solid, objective opinion into a unicorn rather than an assumed asset.
