What do people choose to act on?
Edwin's do-it newsletter: 1:39 reading time
Hello everyone,
Today we're going to answer the question of what we choose to act on. In other words, how we orient ourselves.
Last week we answered: What drives human behavior? That went more into detail on the biological processes occurring, whereas today is focused on the neurological and psychological competent.
Check it out here: edwindoit.com/5acts
How humans orient themselves:
We do not perceive reality directly. Our senses detect reality and translate it into electric signals for the central nervous system to interpret. We aren’t hardwired to interpret this as matter in the sense of physical reality either. We sense what matters.
To do this we use internalized theories to recognize objects as either tools or obstacles. When you see a cliff, you see a falling-off-place. You don’t see a rockface first, and then infer whether it could be dangerous or not. That interpretation process is too slow and costly of a calculation for our brains to make. Instead, what often happens is that it maps onto two neurological circuits simultaneously. Firstly it elicits a fast reflex response and, when we choose, a slow intellectual interpretation of the input.
When we do bother to cognitively assess this input, we judge the input based on our internalized theories. Like all (of our) knowledge, these theories contain both truths and errors. They are guessed, and proved or disproved by observation, not derived from observation.
Thankfully we are capable of criticizing our own theories and improving upon them. But, we naturally resist this because our beliefs are often nested inside, and dependent on, each other. For instance, if you have a solid worldview, and you criticize one of its cornerstones, your whole worldview could collapse and leave you lost. Therefore, people often resist this criticism in favor of preserving a safe and familiar environment. This is also why propaganda is so effective.
After we’ve perceived something with our senses, through the lens of the theory, we orient ourselves. However, it’s important to note that our cognitive side is only in control when our body is satiated from primoridal needs.
Sources: Jordan B. Peterson's lectures on personality from 2017. Karl Popper and David Deutsch's “observation is theory-laden” epistemology.
How you can apply this knowledge
Don’ts
Don't think empiricism is correct. Empiricism fought back against the notion that knowledge can't be authority-based, as it was in the church, but that it must be derived from the senses. Although far better than trusting a central authority, it replaced it with the authority of sensory experience and whatever fictitious process of ‘derivation’, such as induction, to extract knowledge from experience. We test theories based on observation, we do not derive them from it.
Don't think of humans as hyper-cognitive beings who have mastered their pesky primitive animal brains. We still have, and need, all of those vital hypothalamic circuits that keep our autonomous and somatic nervous system running. And, at almost all times, that's the part of us that's in control.
Dos
Know that we certainly change all beliefs that we criticize. We are incredibly malleable because of our capacity for understanding and every part of our worldview that we bare to question can be adjusted.
That’s a wrap
I'd be very happy to hear what you think of this new series. Feel free to send me a personal message or just reply to this e-mail. If you'd like to see more insights, be sure to follow me on Twitter → https://twitter.com/Edwindoit
See you next week!
, Edwin