Y Safle

There are all kinds of mistakes we can make in our thinking, and not one of us has reasonable claim of a consistent set of beliefs and knowledge.

But whilst that claim may seem uncontentious, it masks a part of our human nature that all to often prevents us from approaching an argument rationally and finding the truth of a matter. At some deep unconcious leve (or perhaps not so very deep!) we all want to believe we are right.

That is to say, our behaviour often seeks confirmation of the rightness of the beliefs we already hold. We have a whole set of confirmation behaviours designed to provide us with evidence that confirms beliefs that we may even have subconcously accepted even before we had any rational evidence to do so.

Thus socialists read socialist newspapers, conservatives read conservative newspapers. We interact with the media in such a way that we allow them to confirm what we have already decided is true. These are the things we have pre judged - our prejudices.

Blogs are just a new medium, so we see the same in the blogosphere. We look at Juan Cole’s excellent “Informed Comment” blog and see links to scores of liberal blogs. Juan Cole is an intelligent commentator - but is this confirmation behaviour if he only links to what he agrees with? And “Blogs for Bush” does the same thing - linking only to conservative blogs.

When people debate an issue, it has been demonstrated that observers of opposing opinions will both leave the debate strengthened in their divergent opinions. We are not good at divining the truth of a matter because wehave a natural tendency to soak up information that we agree with and pass over the information we are less happy with.

And this is a mistake.

As long as we allow ourselves to fool ourselves with confirmation behaviours, we will not really understand issues. We should deliberately read people that we disagree with. And then don’t stop there. Think - why do we disagree? What are the strengths of their argument? If we assume the other person is a rational and intelligent thinker, why do they come to such a divergent viewpoint.

Because until we understand the viewpoint of those with whom we disagree, we cannot really say we understand our own point of view.

What else can we do?

Do not accept confirming evidence uncritically. I have said on this blog that I don’t think it likely that Iran is involved in arming Hezbollah. But I am likely to be proved wrong (if not on this issue, then another).

I could look at a statement from George Bush, who said that arms from Iran are being shipped via Syria as confirmation of my viewpoint (because the statement is silly - to ship via Syria, the arms must be shipped through Turkey or Iraq first! The US has Iran boxed in). But if I was discussing with another commentator they might suggest that Iran ships direct to Hezbollah by some other means.

And be honest about your motives for believing something to be true. None of us tend to engage ourselves with things we dislike, and we don’t like difference. What are our real motives for holding a belief?