Cognitive Dissonance

If you engage in arguments/discourses often, you probably are familiar with the term Cognitive Dissonance, because people tend to throw it around a whole lot. for such linguistic candy, it’s meaning is also beautiful. the wikipedia entry for cognitive dissonance defines it as 'the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values'. but what really does this mean?    

Basically, The theory is that when we hold a certain belief to be true, and an idea which also seems true, but contradictory is given to us. we experience a discomfort, an internal awkwardness causing us to reject the new idea and look for some sort of justification for our current belief, even though this belief might be clearly shown to be wrong in the new idea which we rejected. in some severe cases, we reject not just the idea. but discard the argument completely. 

A typical scenario where one would encounter the use of this term is in a debate between atheists and theists, where the atheist accuses the theist of having cognitive dissonance and refusing any type of evidence pointing contrary to the illusory beliefs which the theist holds. and then the atheist declares himself the rational one. however the theist can also argue that, cognitive dissonance is an all too human characteristic. it applies to the atheist himself. for example, if an atheist were to have a manifestation from the divine, they would probably deny this to themselves, and even possibly claim that they are having illusions and are going mad, just to stay consistent with their own beliefs that the divine is non-existent. so, as a matter of fact, experiencing cognitive dissonance, and rejecting the new belief is not an altogether bad thing, indeed, this dissonance often aids the scientific enquiry.

What is it that makes the human mind want to believe and stay consistent with it’s beliefs? what is it that makes us cling to what we already know? why is it difficult to accept something different in the wake of evidence? why do we resist to atleast contemplate the possibilities in the presence of new ideas? why do we feel this awkward sensation within ourselves? for the scientific mind, when we experience Cognitive Dissonance, we analyze the situation and the conflict is resolved in favor of the option with the stronger case. NOT the one that came first. thus we accept new ideas even when they go against our intuitions(as in quantum mechanics and relativity) or abandon some (like string theory) depending on the strength of their case. obviously much progress can be made this way. 

The philosopher plato also talks about this in the Allegory of the Cave. in this story, some prisoners are chained from birth in a cave with their faces to the wall so that they are unable to see the opening and the world beyond it. They only see the shadows of objects passing by the cave, cast on the wall, and they build their ideologies of reality from this shadows. to them, the shadows are all that exist. one of the prisoner breaks free, goes out and sees that the world is different from what they have experienced. and that the shadows are not the real thing, comes back to share this enlightenment with his mates but the prisoners refuse to leave the cave because they are comfortable with their own idea of reality. the implication of this, is that a lot of people do not like their ideas/beliefs challenged. it makes them very uncomfortable. Plato concludes that the philosopher is one who would accept this new idea, leave the cave to experience the reality outside for himself, the curious mind, who gets rewarded by experiencing a richer form of life.

To understand the world, we need to understand ourselves better and to do so we must get rid of our biases and cognitive dissonance. knowing the problem, like they say, is the first solution. so perhaps the next time you are presented with facts that contradict your belief, instead of trying to justify your belief, or become aggressive you will at least be objective and analyze the situation, choosing the one with the stronger case. we must be fervent and rigorous in our pursuit of knowledge, we should refuse to be trapped by cognitive dissonance because our belief, as real as they may seem, might be based on false dogma, for example. when next you feel that awkward sensation of rejecting a belief, you can identify it and analyze it. get rid of the occlusion that is cognitive dissonance, and open yourself to the exhilarating thrills of epiphanies. perhaps this will bring us one step closer to discovering universal truth and peace.

i’ll end this with a quote from lao tzu. ‘To the mind that is still, the whole Universe surrenders.’

At ease.

why should we reject dogma?

Why do objects fall to the earth when dropped? and why do moving objects stop? is the earth standing on a turtle’s back? do you fall off when you get close to the ‘edge’ of the earth? 

In the previous millennium, these questions have been correctly answered beyond a reasonable doubt. but prior to this, what was the prevalent belief? well, Aristotle had answered the first two questions by saying that objects yearn to be reunited with the earth. and so when an object is taken away from the surface of the earth, it misses the earth, and yearns to return and does so. Aristotle also said that when an object is moving, eventually it will get tired. and it will stop running because it is tired. well we now know that these two answers are incorrect. thanks to newton and the scientific revolution. people will no longer accept something without reasonable proof. 

It is easy to see why people accepted the philosopher’s explanations. they were highly intellectual and thus they had a reputation for being wise, and they started a train of thought that has eventually changed the whole world. and so they are authorities in the field of thought. the greek philosophers believed that everything in the world could be discerned entirely by pure thought. they believed that just by thinking, one could come to comprehend everything in the Universe. Now, this in itself is not bad, but then they totally forbade experimental work. to Aristotle it was not Elite and there was no Utilitarian need for philosophy. so their musings about the physical world were not meant to be verified only to appeal to the thought. but it was amazing how these guys came to conclusions. there is the story of socrates and a slave. where socrates drew a diagram similar to Pythagoras theorem. and then called the slave, who had no knowledge of mathematics, and started asking him questions only and the slave answered these questions and thereby deduced Pythagoras theorem. C^2 = a^2 + b^2. and then socrates concluded that since this man had answered this question of this profound mathematical concept all by himself, then the man must have known this mathematical formula in a previous life. and just like that socrates ‘proved’ re-incarnation! 

These were the kind of thoughts and proofs that fueled the greek minds, and although they were highly intellectual people, remember that we are talking of a time before christ. their knowledge was limited, and a lot of speculations were treated as facts because they seemed reasonable enough. there were also philosophers of other aspects, other than the physical world. for example, philosophers on religion (theologists) who engaged in thinking about the spiritual world. and they came about answers as well. These guys (and other philosophers) had ideas that were propagated and then became the basis of knowledge for centuries. until the scientific revolution. when everything had to be redefined. and we had to know what was fact, from what was just a Philosopher’s over-thinking. within a comparably short time of this scientific revolution. the world has seen tremendous progress, insights upon insights and man kind has redefined what it means to be human. 

Sadly, the same has not applied to religion. because like philosophy which had a caveat that stopped people from doing experimental work to confirm claims, religion also has a caveat that stops people from discovering where it could be wrong; faith. so in religion, whatever an authority has said, faith attempts to stop us from doubting it, let alone checking if its correct. more so, it attempts to stop us from even admitting that it might be wrong. when we know this to be the case. A lot of people when faced with this dilemma dissociate from it altogether and focus on their religion’s holy book’s text, forgetting that these were also written by men, the religious Aristotle and plato of their times. 

Now there are questions that we also would love to learn the answer. does God really exist? what happens when we die? why should we be kind as opposed to wicked? can we really appeal to good forces to better our living situation? the answers to these questions which we have, just like the answers given by Socrates and Aristotle in their day, could be correct, as well as very wrong. (my money is on wrong though). However people have blatantly refused to investigate them. what makes faith worse is that faith is the direct opposite of reason. well, almost. and then faith itself has another string attached. if you flirt with the idea of even leaving it for a minute. you are going to burn in fire for eternity. now this is the reason why a lot of people would not even dare to. but just like falling off when you get to the edge of the earth was the most reasonable thing that came to a philosopher's mind. do you not think that the idea that in death, good people get rewarded and bad people get punished would have being the most reasonable thing that came to the mind of a theologist?

Since the scientific revolution overthrew the philosophy of the physical world. none such has overthrown the philosophy of the spiritual world yet and as such we still accept the thinking of these men as truth, and in some cases their writings have become the standard by which we live our lives.. but i think that just the way the investigation of the physical world has brought us a tremendous amount of progress, an investigation of the spiritual world would bring us profound peace, sense of purpose, serenity and harmony amongst many other things. and for this reason i implore everyone to be critical and refuse to allow the basis of your acceptance be just because of who said it. 

Happy Sunday.

First of all, i am not a writer.

Hi there,

so i finally got around with setting up a blog page. something i have wanted to do since about 2011, but always procrastinated. my friends got tired of hearing me say 'my blog is coming up soon' (quite honestly, i had to set this up today or forfeit a bet that i would not meet a deadline i had given my friends for the blog, so this is just a quick write up). yeah i am like that sometimes. but more about me later, for now let's talk about the blog.

the idea behind this blog is really simple, ideas. the blog is also about the love of knowledge and truth. as we are all familiar, there is no knowledge that is not power and the truth will set you free. so then, this blog is also about power and freedom. the topics of discussion will range from theoretical physics, through mathematics, general sciences, philosophy, and general affairs (basically things that i am interested in). the backbone of every discussion here will be pure reason and facts.

now lets talk about me. as the title of this post says, i am not a writer. i do not have the literary flair so if my style of writing bores you, bear with me and get the point *insert big grin smiley here* . i am not an amazing writer here to wow you with his amazing writing skills, nor am i here to impress you with my gigantic vocabulary. i am not interested in the use of big words, where simpler words would suffice. i am not interested in being insistently right, i love to be corrected.  this would be my first time writing, but my aim is to get points across. i might hardly have the time to proof read, but will do when there is time, so if there are any errors just assume that i did not proof read lol. i am a man of reason and so i detest dogma and all its cohorts. i believe that there are certain truths, which we can grapple for ourselves, if we only choose to think about it. so i always keep an open mind.

finally why a blog? i often have discourses with different friends over different topics and i know that there are people all over who also have such discussions and i thought that a platform for us to discuss at length would be useful.  furthermore, sometimes we end up talking about things that might have been settled in other instances. having resolved an issue before, it becomes bland to engage in it all over again, and so i thought about creating a blog where i could put whole discussions up for reference.

i look forward to my first actual post and your contributions. yes, yes i know you can't wait, me neither.

cheers!