Justin Webb, chief secretary to Treasury, poked fun at Simon Clarke on Today, asking why so much of the country is on fumes, and why HGV drivers are more difficult than dark matter. Clarke said that the problem was exacerbated by Covid restrictions and workforce demographics. Agreed. Webb also helped, even though Brexit was making matters worse. This is a fact.
Clarke, however, was not having it. It's not true. This is not true.
Perhaps the best way to describe these encounters is unedifying. I, like most people, found myself asking: Does he really think this or is this just political politicking?
Although I cannot answer the question, we can charitably assume Clarke is a victim of one of many cognitive biases that hinder our ability to see things objectively. This is called belief persistence by psychologists. Emotional investment in an argument, or belief, is a powerful drug. Our minds are not predisposed towards abandoning this commitment, especially when they are challenged. This is a cognitive bias known as opinion polarization. When presented with evidence that contradicts your opinion, you will choose to double down on your original belief and hold it with more conviction. These mental traps are what permeate public discourse in these strange and polarized times. Although there is strong evidence that vaccines work, and that Covid can be prevented from being transmitted, many people feel that the psychological consequences of opposing views are too high for them to leave their current hole.
Fuel shortages have nothing to do Brexit. Photograph: Maureen McLean/Rex/Shutterstock
Pre-loaded psychological issues and physical limitations limit our ability to see objective realities. They push us towards a world that is only partially accurate. Although objective reality is the place we live, we only experience it in the dark recesses our skulls. We create a useful reality in that dark space. It is a controlled hallucination. Although our senses can do the job of building the picture, they are limited in their ability to see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Bees, birds, and reindeer see ultraviolet but we don't have the vision hardware to see these wavelengths. We can only hear frequencies between 20 and 22,000Hz. This means that we cannot detect the ultra-bass sounds that elephants hear from far away, or the bats' ultrasonic squeaks used to chatter and hunt. The vast majority of the world's living creatures are deaf.
Science was invented to bypass these restrictions, both psychological and physical, so we can see the world as it really is and not just how we perceive it. Recognizing these bugs is the first step to addressing them. It's like an alcoholic admitting they have a problem. It doesn't mean that we can't fall for them.
Dunning-Kruger often skips the merrily and perseverance of belief. This is when non-experts tend to overestimate their knowledge or abilities on a particular topic. According to a 2018 study, people who knew less about autism were more likely to believe that their knowledge was superior than that of doctors. Worryingly, the WHO stated that Covid was accompanied by an infodemic. Dunning-Kruger is a key factor in spreading misinformation. A survey of over 2,000 people was conducted in April to determine the correlation between Covid knowledge and confidence. Results showed that higher levels of confidence were associated with lower levels in knowledge. This was discovered by Charles Darwin in 1871. Ignorance is more likely to lead to confidence than knowledge.
Another persistent fallacy is declinism, which poisons public discourse. Simply put, everything was better in the past and it is getting worse. It was not. It's not. It isn't. Nearly everything in the past was much more unpleasant for most people. Although we have been through a lot in the last few years, it is nothing compared to 1918's flu pandemic. Or the Black Death, when half of all Europeans died from the plague.
The most common psychological error is confirmation bias. This is the human tendency to accept views that confirm our preconceptions, and ignore those that challenge them. It is easy to confirm our biases by reading and watching most media. This article is in the Observer. It is not in the Telegraph or Sun. Simon Clarke may be wrong. The current emptiness at the petrol pumps and supermarket shelves is clearly a result. If you voted for Brexit, it is possible that you think the BBC is up to its old tricks. It takes courage and effort to seek out news sources that support our prejudices. Social media has made traditional news sources redundant. They are now booming, cavernous spaces which not only confirm our beliefs but also amplify them and send us down confirmation-bias rabbit trails.
Who can remember hands, space, and face? Boris Johnson's noble attempt to remind us of the need to wash our hands and wear masks, as well as to maintain social distancing, was a noble use of the rhyme-as–reason effect. Instructions that rhyme are more likely to be remembered and thus perceived as truer. The false statement "An apple a day keeps your doctor away" was surely invented by the apple marketing board. OJ Simpson's murder trial, in which a notoriously ill-fitting glove was an important piece of evidence, the jury was told that if it didn't fit, they must acquit. They did. (Note: Theresa May's utterly meaningless phrase Brexit excludes Brexit from this bias. Rhyming words with themselves does not count.
We can at least see that there are glitches and traps lurking in our brains if we apply scientific methods to study ourselves. To top it all, there is a meta-bias. Bias blind spot is the inability or willingness to recognize biases in others. This one is not mine. You almost certainly do.
