“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — this is what British economist John Maynard Keynes used to say when criticised for changing his opinion on what policies to pursue, following the interwar period and the Great Depression years. Keynes, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, strongly believed that economic analysis and government actions should be directed by reason rather than by our own ideologies, election manifestos or group interests.
The same principle was followed by US democrat senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (collaborator for the Kennedy, Ford and Nixon administrations; academic and Ambassador to India and the United Nations), when he often changed his opinions in domestic and foreign affairs stating that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
Humans learn far better through imitation rather than logic, and repeating what we already know, without even analysing whether it be true or not; it gives us the feeling of cosy safeness because we become part of the flock: and all that we want is to be just like the others. Even chimpanzees use more logic than us: check this experiment led by two psychologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, about the different way chimps and children learn.
There is extensive literature on the ‘confirmation bias,’ or the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. Paying close attention to facts and letting them guide our opinion seems to be a perfect base — evidence of good democratic health. However, people believe that they know considerably more than they actually do, as stated in this New Yorker article on why facts don’t change our minds. Fascinating. This is not new, but the explosion of social media and better access to Internet has strengthened this phenomenon, and this may be the reason why we keep voting for corrupt politicians.
In this Financial Times article, John Kay concludes that “the capacity to act while recognising the limits of one’s knowledge is an essential, but rare, characteristic of the effective political or business leader.” The confirmation bias phenomenon is as common in academia as it is in politicians and common or garden people.
Unfortunately, according to David McRaney (author of ‘You are not so smart’) we have a tendency to believe things even more when our beliefs are challenged. Exactly: you can’t win that argument on the Internet!
