How to not be ignorant about the world – and in the process become a better Steemian

Helping you have a civil conversation with other members of the Steemit community.

Those of you who have read some of my previous blog posts will know that I have a healthy interest in psychology. Previously I have predominantly addressed the way this affects your financial decisions, but my interest extends beyond this, into how people’s psychology can affect their day-to-day interactions with others.

I’ve been meaning to do a piece on how to be more aware of your unconscious biases when having discussions with other people. I think if you have a firmly held opinion, then you have to be confident that your opinion is correct. You can’t possibly have this confidence if you don’t understand the subconscious shenanigans that your mind is playing on you without you even knowing it. So, understanding the biases that affect you, and learning ways to overcome them is an area that really interest me. It should be of interest to you too, if you want to be confident that the things you believe in strongly are actually true.

I’ve shared below a TED talk that talks about some of the challenges involved in doing this. It’s quite an entertaining video (one of my favourite TED talks) but it is 19 minutes long, which may be a little bit too long for some readers of this post. If you are just interested in the entertainment value, the the first 5 to 10 minutes is quite humorous and well worth a look. If you’re interested in understanding this issue in some more detail then the remainder of the video is also for you.

The video discusses a number of issues that relate to subconscious bias. The two that most specifically interest me in relation to this discussion are framing and representative bias.

To summarise a whole lot of academic jargon into a short paragraph or two, essentially it is saying that we are all victims of our own perspective. Representativeness relates to how often we encounter something and framing is how we frame information when we receive it. It is very difficult to understand things that we have not experienced, or in some cases even imagined were a possibility.

To give an example of framing, someone who watches Fox news will have a very different view of the world than someone who watches Al Jazeera or the BBC. Even though the facts being reported are the same, the framing of the story is likely to be very different.

An example of representativeness might be the assumption that.

I had a tough childhood and I turned out ok, so therefore everyone who had a tough childhood should be able to deal with it.

The fact that you were able to succeed despite a poor beginning has very little to do with the chances of someone else being so lucky. Yet you over emphasise the importance of your own experiences when forming your judgements. There’s a bit of something called self-attribution bias in here as well, but that’s for another article.

What has all this got to do with Steemit? Well on Steemit we spend a lot of time sharing our opinions and discussing them with other people. I believe you have to approach this task with an open mind.

Remember, opinions are like arseholes! Everybody has one. Just because an opinion is yours, doesn’t make it right. It just makes it one of many. Further to this, if you strongly believe in your opinion, then you should be comfortable to have it challenged. If your opinion is rational and based in fact, then you should be able to have a conversation with someone without feeling threatened. More importantly you should be able to defend that opinion. In fact, if you approach it correctly you may even change their mind.

Similarly, if you disagree with someone, you need to consider a couple of things.

Firstly, why might they hold this opinion. Have they had experiences that I haven’t had. What causes them to hold this belief?

Secondly, be open to the idea that you may be wrong. Unless you’re convinced that you know everything, then there’s a fair chance that your going to be wrong about a lot of things.

So my tip would be, the next time you see something you disagree with, don’t start your comment with;

“You’re wrong,” or “this is stupid”

Trying instead;

“Why do you think that?” Or ”I can see where you’re coming from, but I disagree because...”

You might be surprised by the results you get.

In the end it all comes down to courtesy and respect. Be nice, and have good conversations. In the process you may change a few minds, and even learn a few things as well.