{"id":530,"date":"2012-10-02T06:46:44","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T13:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/musingsfromtheskepticalleft\/?p=530"},"modified":"2012-11-30T02:53:02","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T10:53:02","slug":"youre-fooling-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/2012\/10\/02\/youre-fooling-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"You&#8217;re Fooling Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.<br \/>\n&#8212; Richard P. Feynman<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vYUpq2dTnnY\">Bryan Ferry &#8211; These Foolish Things<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Before we endeavor to adopt a rational, evidence-based world view, the most important thing to realize is our own fallibility; our own susceptibility to various\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_cognitive_biases\">biases<\/a>. \u00a0Unless we&#8217;re able to do this, our perception of the world will forever remain skewed. In fact, even if we&#8217;re able to do this better than most, we&#8217;ll still be biased in some ways about some things. This is why it&#8217;s so important to remain open to dissenting views and to give them a fair hearing, even if a particular point of view seems offensive. In fact, especially if a particular point of view seems offensive. Because our biases are at our strongest when our feelings and emotions are engaged.<\/p>\n<p>Human beings are not computers (and yet we create them!) How amazing is that? But because we&#8217;re not machines, our mental processes are colored by emotions, a rainbow palette that gives each one of us personality, individuality, and charm. For this, we sometimes sacrifice the ability to be rational. But in my opinion, the trade-off is more than worthwhile, as long as we remember that even when we&#8217;re certain about something, we can still be wrong. \u00a0And a touch of humility goes a long way toward building bridges between distant shores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. &#8212; Richard P. Feynman Bryan Ferry &#8211; These Foolish Things Before we endeavor to adopt a rational, evidence-based world view, the most important thing to realize is our own fallibility; our own susceptibility to various\u00a0biases. \u00a0Unless we&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,13,20,1],"tags":[192,42,201,193,198,199,200,197,196,195,194],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-freethought-blogs","category-music","category-skepticism","category-uncategorized","tag-beauty","tag-bias","tag-bridges","tag-bryan-ferry","tag-emotion","tag-fallibility","tag-humanity","tag-logic","tag-rationality","tag-richard-feynman","tag-these-foolish-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/skepticallyleft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}