If you missed last week’s thread which explains these 13 mid-week conversations about the biases we all have, you can check it out here. This week we look at one that can be hard to confront in ourselves.
Complexity Bias - The human brain prefers a simple lie to a complex truth.
Democrats are Godless heathen…Trumpers are stupid and uneducated…Immigrants are just looking for a handout…are a few of the obvious ones, but these biases lurk everywhere, often when we want to throw an accusation or defend a point of view. Let’s discuss and more importantly, let’s catch ourselves in the act and change our ways.
*”Whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.” We receive things not as they are but as we are.
Also, and I'm apparently just talking to myself here, I just cannot get over the words, "prefers a simple lie." Our mutual life and community depends on us rejecting simple lies in order to understand complex truths. Me believing a simple lie, "COVID is fake and/or overblown and thus I won't wear a mask" can literally be the difference between life and death for someone. Bearing one another's burdens requires more.
I meant to kick off this discussion, but work got in the way. I feel like this is a bias that has significantly diminished in my life, but was probably one of the most prominent during my evangelical days. Taking the Bible literally meant I could take the words of other people as gospel (see what I did there?) without questioning how they came to their conclusions or whether they were even correct. Reading it for myself was complex and involved a lot more thinking, distilling and effort, but it taught me to see and probably conditioned me to always be suspicious of simple answers.
Also, and I'm apparently just talking to myself here, I just cannot get over the words, "prefers a simple lie." Our mutual life and community depends on us rejecting simple lies in order to understand complex truths. Me believing a simple lie, "COVID is fake and/or overblown and thus I won't wear a mask" can literally be the difference between life and death for someone. Bearing one another's burdens requires more.
I meant to kick off this discussion, but work got in the way. I feel like this is a bias that has significantly diminished in my life, but was probably one of the most prominent during my evangelical days. Taking the Bible literally meant I could take the words of other people as gospel (see what I did there?) without questioning how they came to their conclusions or whether they were even correct. Reading it for myself was complex and involved a lot more thinking, distilling and effort, but it taught me to see and probably conditioned me to always be suspicious of simple answers.