Tag: confirmation bias

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It’s a Big World, After All

“Space is big,” Douglas Adams once wrote in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Don’t look now, but he may have understated the case.

Remember the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble that sent back amazingly clear star field images last year? Well, it’s back for another round. Astronomers studying those images have found six tremendous galaxies dating back about 13.1 billion years … which means the early universe was about 100 times bigger than we thought.

“We’ve been informally calling these objects ‘universe breakers’ — and they have been living up to their name so far,” astronomer Joel Leja told CBS.

Another put it even more simply to the press: “We just discovered the impossible.”

Now, depending on your perspective, this might not seem like such a (pardon the phrase) big deal. After all, it’s not something that’s going to instantly clean the atmosphere, bring peace on Earth and lead the Broncos back to the Super Bowl. Lots of stars? So what?

But from another angle, it’s huge. Not only does this add to our knowledge, it forces us to revisit it. We had an idea of how quickly galaxies come together. Now it looks like we were being too modest. And if so, old ideas need to give way in the face of new information.

That’s a basic tool of science. It’s also something we’re not terribly good at in our day-to-day lives.

Previously in this column, I’ve mentioned what I call the Paul Simon Rule, derived from a verse in his song “The Boxer”:

Still a man hears what he wants to hear,

And disregards the rest.  

Put simply, we’re a stubborn bunch. Sometimes that’s been our saving grace as a species as we outlast war, disaster and the rise and fall of Jerry Springer. But it also means that we tend to hold onto ideas long past their sell-by date.

Why? Because staying with what we “know” is comfortable. Certainly more comfortable than having to rearrange our mental furniture and maybe even acknowledge we were wrong.

Take a look at the last Super Bowl. A thrilling, down-to-the-wire game exploded into controversy because of a holding penalty that basically killed the Eagles’ chance for a comeback. And even after the player in question admitted he had been holding, it didn’t really change anything. Fans had already staked out their positions on whether it was justified or a joke, and nobody was budging.

At our core, we are storytelling creatures. We’re happiest when things fit a pattern. And if the story fits what we already believe, well, then we’re golden. Studies have suggested that our reasoning originally developed to win arguments rather than to find facts, especially since we’re so often better at seeing flaws in someone else’s logic than our own.

So when something comes along that forces us to rethink, it’s a big deal indeed. Even more so when we succeed. It’s a moment of humility that moves us forward, allows us to learn, opens up new worlds that we might not have considered before.

In its own way, those moments rebuild a universe at record speed. Maybe even faster than those ancient stars.

Let them happen.

You might just find that they give you space to grow.

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Triple Your T-Rex, Triple Your Fun

It sounds like a question you’d ask a 6-year-old: What’s cooler than having one kind of tyrannosaur?

“Three kinds of tyrannosaur!”

No, this isn’t the latest Michael Crichton movie, but an honest-to-goodness paleontological debate. According to the New York Times, there’s now heated discussion going on over whether our records of the much-loved Tyrannosaurus Rex actually show three different species. Taking on the royal tradition, a new paper suggests calling them T. Rex (“king”), T. Regina (“queen”) and T. Imperator (“emperor).

It’s not that simple, of course.  Classification never is. To the critics, the differences are just individual variation – sort of like if you tried to suggest that LeBron James and Peter Dinklage were different species.

So what’s the big deal? A name’s a name, right?

But names do matter.

We know it in conversation. There’s no faster way to embarrass yourself than to call a person by the wrong name.

We see it in the news, whether it’s laughter over the polar vessel  that got popularly dubbed “Boaty McBoatFace” or disbelief about labeling a war a “special operation.”

It’s part of any field that someone cares about, from the serious to the silly. What do we call the high-school football team? Is Pluto really a planet? Is that superhero in the red costume called Shazam or Captain Marvel?

At any level, names are wrapped up in identity, memory and how we see the world. And when a piece of that changes – when something that you’ve “always known” might no longer be true – it can be a little unsettling.

And that reaches to a different level of the dinosaur story: the importance of examining what we think we know.

T-Rex might stay just as it is. It might become three species, or 20. For most of us, life will still go on as usual, aside from the occasional museum trip.

But the important thing is that it’s being looked at, studied, discussed. Something thought to be true for over a hundred years is getting a second look.

That’s the part we can learn from. And it’s something we don’t do well as a species.

In public, we like to praise the consistent, the unbending, the firm. Any sign of change or uncertainty quickly gets mocked as weak or wishy-washy. Psychological studies suggest that we typically use our reason to win arguments rather than seek the truth, clinging fast to what we believe and seeing challenges to our assumptions as an insult.

That sort of confirmation bias is hard to break out of. It’s easy to hear only what you want to hear and dismiss everything else. It’s a comfortable world to live in … and a dangerous one, like driving a highway with your eyes closed because you know what the road ahead looks like.

It’s only when we question what we think that we can really understand each other. When you’re “always right,” no one else matters. If you let in the possibility that you might be wrong, then it becomes important to see new perspectives and consider other views. To let each other in, working together instead of at odds.

That opens up the world, and the heart with it.

Take the chance. Ask the question. Learn what’s valuable and leave the fossilized beliefs behind with the T-Rex.

However many there happen to be.

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That is The Question

Every so often, the human race finds itself dealing with the Big Questions. “What is the greatest good?” “Paper or plastic?” “Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?”

Now, it looks like we get to add another one to the list: “Yanny or Laurel?”

Umm – can we get back to the chewing gum?

If you’ve missed the latest minor craze on social media, welcome back to Earth and I hope you’ll take me with you when you leave again. Yanny or Laurel is a brief sound clip that dares to ask “How long will you listen to a bad recording that didn’t hit No. 1 on Billboard?” You push Play to hear a garbled word, decide if the speaker is saying “Laurel” or “Yanny” and then share your findings online to begin a calm, reasoned discussion of the matter.

OK, just kidding. You pop online to join the cheering section for your word of choice, often with an enthusiasm for the “obvious” choice that could get you on nine out of 10 American game shows. (Come back to “Jeopardy!” when you’ve calmed down a bit.)

The thing is, it’s actually not that hard to find the answer. Besides the fact that “Yanny” isn’t even a word (unless you’re misspelling Greek New Age musicians), it only takes a little hunting on the Web to read an account from the teens who started all this. It began when they played an online vocabulary page for the word “laurel,” realized each of them were hearing different tones, and sent it out to the world.

But that would be too easy. Like the “blue dress/gold dress” Facebook photo before this, Yanny or Laurel isn’t about learning the right answer. It’s about knowing what you heard and insisting on its rightness to the world.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

A lot of politics – heck, a lot of what passes for online discussion these days – seems to be a longer game of Yanny or Laurel. It doesn’t matter if facts can be found and myths can be busted in less time than it takes to ruin the Colorado Rockies’ pennant chances. What matters is picking your team, shouting your slogan, and remaining impervious to any attempts at reason or compromise.

Sure, it’s annoying – but only when those guys do it. It’s easy to fall into the same trap. Studies suggest that the wiring of our brains makes us want to fit in rather than break with the crowd – it’s easier and more satisfying to simply join the crowd of people who believe the same things we want to believe, than it is to examine those beliefs and see if they hold up.

It’s not inevitable. But like running marathons instead of watching six hours of YouTube, changing the habit takes work that’s usually uncomfortable and sometimes acutely painful. It takes curiosity and a willingness to ask the next question. Even with something that seems obvious. Especially then.

More than once, I’ve quoted the distinguished philosophers Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel: “Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” When we can beat that reflex, any question can become interesting. Even “Yanny or Laurel?” can start a long discussion on why some people hear certain tones, or whether we all experience the same reality.

It’s worthwhile. But it takes effort.

You can’t just rest on your Laurels.