Lately I’ve been thinking about “mind killing politics”. I have come to the conclusion that this phenomenon is pretty much present to some degree in any kind of human communication where being wrong means you or your side lose status.
It is incorrect to assume that this bias can only occurs when the topic involves government, religion, liberalism/conservatism or any other “political” topics. Communicating with someone who has a different opinion than you is sufficient for the “mind killing politics” bias to start creeping in.
The pressure to commit “mind killing politics” type biases is proportional to how much status one or one’s side has to lose for being wrong in any given disagreement. This doesn’t mean the bias can’t be mixed or combined with other biases.
I’ve also noticed six factors that can increase or decrease the pressure to be biased.
1)If you are talking to your friends or people close to you that you trust then the pressure to be right will be reduced because they are less likely to subtract status from you for being wrong. Talking to strangers will increase it.
2)Having an audience will increase the pressure to be right. That’s because the loss of status for being wrong is multiplied by the number of people that see you lose(each weighted for how important it is for them to consider you as having a high status).
3)If someone is considered an ‘expert’, the pressure to be right will be enormous. Thats because experts have special status for being knowledgeable about a topic and getting answers about it right. Every mistake is seen as reducing that expertise and proportionatly reducing the status of the expert. Being wrong to someone considered a non expert is even more painful then being wrong to an expert.
4)It is very hard psychologically to disagree with authority figures or the group consensus. Therefore “mind killing politics” biases will be replaced by other biases when there is disagreement with authority figure or the group consensus but will be amplified against those considered outside the social group.
5)People will easily spot “mind killing politics” biases in the enemy side but will deny, not notice or rationalize the same biases in themselves.
6)And finally, “mind killing politics” biases can lead to agitation(ei. triggering of the fight or flight response) which will amplify biased thinking.
Here is another example me, my dad and my brother came up with when we were discussing probability.
Suppose there are 4 card, an ace and 3 kings. They are shuffled and placed face side down. I didn’t look at the cards, my dad looked at the first card, my brother looked at the first and second cards. What is the probability of the ace being one of the last 2 cards. For me: 1⁄2 For my dad: If he saw the ace it is 0, otherwise 2⁄3. For my brother: If he saw the ace it is 0, otherwise 1.
How can there be different probabilities of the same event? It is because probability is something in the mind calculated because of imperfect knowledge. It is not a property of reality. Reality will take only a single path. We just don’t know what that path is. It is pointless to ask for “the real likelihood” of an event. The likelihood depends on how much information you have. If you had all the information, the likelihood of the event would be 100% or 0%.