Using Heuristics

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So it's no surprise that everyone, myself included, uses mental shortcuts. Whether it's to shield yourself from being overwhelmed by emotion or to spare your mental energy for other priorities, we conform our minds to generalization, assumptions, or apathy when we are confronted with things we don't understand or are too busy to understand with any depth. But, for many, instead of saying "I don't know" or "I don't think I understand", which would be the more rational route, one could go another direction falling on ego, prejudice, or even dishonesty stating things like "that's stupid" or "who needs to know that anyway" or something discriminatory that I don't want to quote a specific example of here.

It may not necessarily be a bad thing. It's not like we all have an understanding or any thorough knowledge about everything; I may know a fair bit about literature, history, or nerd stuff but I'll fall short of a PHDs understanding of those topics; some such a position may say "I'm just not interested" or "that's boring" or what have you. But if we're talking of something sociologically proven such as systemic problems leading to certain cases of injustice or poverty, speaking about philosophy in the modern-day, or - *in rare cases* - evolutionary theory, many will go down the road of irrationally defending their ignorance of these subjects with discriminatory language or something that perfectly examples Dunning-Kruger phenomenon.

We need heuristics to make sure we don't overwhelm ourselves with an abundance of information we just can't absorb. But when is it taken too far? Where is the line when using mental shortcuts? When we eliminate understanding and/or empahty? When we're practically becoming disabled because we compatibilized our view with one that denies much of reality? I have a hard time drawing my own line since I'm unsure how my heuristics are merely energy-sparring shortcuts or simply biases based on low-energy, flawed, non-rational reasoning. But I see so many out there take themselves and their worldviews so seriously, mostly conservatives and science deniers who disagree with a liberal-minded atheist like myself, who are content to allow the world to become worse - or in the case of climate change literally burn around them - just to remain self-satisfied.

Personally, I think it's ok to say you dislike something because you don't have the energy or it or rationalize that you can't participate in something because it may be risky or dangerous but I draw the line at the outright denial of reality which seems all too prevalent these days.

So the black pill on this - it doesn't take intellectual honesty to make a baby, just sperm, eggs, and a vulva. In a lot of cases its arguable that anything over and above that is just icing on the cake or, less charitably, the toy ejection seat.

The other point - enough people to shape the landscape (maybe not most, 'enough' to make a mess of the public sphere) prioritize weaponizing their social interactions over any concern for truth.

This is where it's good to keep in mind:

1) Do your best to sort out truth for your own sanity - if you can avoid gaslighing yourself under for somehow believing there's something inferior or wrong with you for actually caring what's true (you don't need to go sniff jock straps or get hiked up the flag pole by your boxers, nor does caring what's true mean you're 'effeminate').

2) Realize that most of what you're seeing around you is deer butting antlers for mates or rhinos locking horns. You might want to show up with the latest book, the latest piece of music you found, something you're doing that you find interesting but - you're bringing it to a gun fight and the problem is if you don't know it's a gun fight you can easily get blasted, torn to ribbons, and walk out of the room wondering what happened to you or what you did wrong.


I think one of my favorite memories of something just outright stupid was back between 2006 and 2008 when some of my friends and I would drink and bowl once a week, I was sitting at the bar, the US presidential elections were coming up, I was still Republican in my politics but was veering toward the center and I said something about how I wanted Romney to be the nominee. There were some other kids there and some short guy with a shaved head, glasses, and 18-inch arms piped up "I wouldn't vote for a man who wouldn't put his hand on the bobble!". I think that was one of the moments when my 'Misunderstandings are always my fault' aspie training broke down, I sort of saw the Stephan Molenyeux 'buttery, blubbery underbelly' (ie. Idiocracy in motion), it still wasn't enough for me to snap out of it long term but I realized right then and there that the guy could care less if he was right, could care less if he knew what the heck he was talking about, what he did care about however was waving his tribal heraldry in my face, and the beliefs that constitute a tribal heraldry are a bit like what happens when certain kinds of birds weave their nests out of colorful trinkets, plastic, litter, shiny things, etc., but you could add to this that in this case the heraldry is like their family coat of arms - just about anything that the clan believes is sacred, reason being - because it's what they believe.

So you really have to get used to the idea that people pick off bits of information and use them in almost phenotypic ways rather than doing the strange, dare I say autistic, thing of actually caring what's true for truth's sake. I'm not telling you not to do that, I'm just hoping that anyone who runs into this constantly doesn't spend a day longer than they have to beating themselves over the head wondering what they're getting wrong. They're not playing the truth game, IMHO the idea of playing the truth game doesn't even occur to them (or maybe trying to state it from their perspective - albeit not doing such a hot job of steel-manning - their truth is truth enough!).

I think it's OK to use heuristics - or to fudge decision-making - for the sake of expediency, as long as we're aware that we're not using the most rigorous thinking and observation that we could and therefore are at risk of turning out to be wrong. I suppose it's when the conclusions may lead to dangerous or harmful action that we're better off being more diligent. I guess it mostly boils down to deciding how much time to spend on making a particular decision. I wish I knew how to do that well, but it's not always even possible to know the consequences of an action, so nasty surprises are going to happen from time to time whatever I do.

I've noticed that a lot of people pretend to know what they don't know. Particularly leaders, but also ordinary footsoldiers. Personally I don't like jumping to conclusions, maybe because I had a lot of science taught to me. I like it when I find there's a decision I want to make that isn't a grave one, and I'm free to indulge in just taking an intuitive stab at it.

As mentioned above, truth-seeking isn't necessary for procreation, and muddling through is a kind of time- and energy-saving approach.
But for large uncertainties, muddling through won't do it. That's where people tell themselves some story, a religious story, which can serve as basis for decision making, allowing for happily and decidedly muddling through in situations of unsolvable complexity.
So the story, the myth making is a way to reduce complexity, save time and energy.

When something like climate change comes along and contradicts some myth some conservative is telling himself, it puts at risk not just the mode for decision making in climate related issues, but it threatens the whole mode of decision making, and all decisions made by using the myth as tool are in question.
At that point, it might be easier to just deny reality -
I don't think there's any evolutionary biology that can help here, because I don't think large scale catastrophes like that can pose as a selective mechanism, except maybe for some very basic physical endurance traits. My assumption is that in a large catastrophe, survival comes down to chance, so evolution hasn't selected for mechanisms to avoid large catastrophes, but for time and energy savings like sticking with your story, your decision-making-tool.

It takes a Guru or master to overcome heuristics. The more we rely on them the more fixed/rigjd we become.