Delusions of objectivity, by Tim Harford

[Luís Henrique]

For your considerations:

http://timharford.com/2016/04/delusions-of-objectivity/

To what extent do such delusions taint our perceptions of the world? Do they also taint the perceptions of scientists? How can we possibly avoid such delusion (or should we)? Are such delusions related to the nature of the specific "slice" or "deparment" of the world under consideration (are we more likely to be deluded on politics than on physics, for instance, and why?

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

According to the likes of Althusser, we live inescapably in ideology, so delusion and cognitive bias is the name of the game. Knowledge is socially constructed and bound up with power, so the question is which objectively uncertain positions win out in the struggles over power. I think it is already well known that the delusions of fascists are best dealt with using baseball bats rather than an appeal to reasoned argument.

Luis, I know the above is wholly inadequate but it's late here and that's the best I got. :)

[GiantMonkeyMan]

This is such a powerful illusion that whenever we meet someone whose views conflict with our own, we instinctively believe we've met someone who is deluded, rather than realising that perhaps we’re the ones who could learn something.
This is only tangentially related to some of your questions, however, I remember going on a small protest outside the building ATOS operated out of in my city (they're the private company the government paid to test welfare claimants with disabilities; the stress and arbitrariness of the tests leading in some cases to suicides and deeper health problems for those requiring the benefits) and one old man showed up in a wheelchair to join the protest. It was small and kind of crap, as these things go, but nonetheless something happened there and this article somewhat brought up that memory. This old guy was moaning about the government and then ended up saying something along the lines of '... and that's why I'm voting UKIP' and another protester immediately said to him 'well that makes you a racist then, doesn't it!' and obviously this really annoyed the old guy in the wheelchair.

Now, seriously, fuck UKIP and I don't think it's 'cognitive bias' to recognise that reactionary petite-bourgeois parties offer me as, a minimum wage worker, and him, as an unemployed person with a disability, absolutely nothing. But there's an question that arises of 'how do we interact with people who hold views that we oppose' or 'how do we try and persuade people who have bought into the cogs of the system to their own detriment' or 'how do we navigate these biases that we develop in order to have a beneficial engagement with other people without our views'. This guy might have been a socialist if he'd heard about an alternative but the only people who had a mass audience and were talking about the problems in the British political establishment at the time were UKIP so he gravitated towards them. That kneejerk 'you're a racist' completely alienated the old man and soured the whole protest - instead of trying to engage with the old man, discovering what his views were and tailoring his response to try and have the most impact, the other protester effectively shut off any decent conversation.

So I would say that cognitive bias and the way we react to people who are not already revolutionary socialists can have a very real impact on the way that we build relationships with broader communities and amongst our fellow workers.