It seems like when we are in a presidential election year, as we are now, there is more discussion and debate over what’s wrong with the country and what should be done about it than at any other time. You might think, then, that with all that discussion going on this would be a time when lots of good, useful ideas about how to solve those problems would be hashed out and agreed upon.
You might think that if you were from another planet and totally unfamiliar with how people on this planet interact with one another. But if you’re from Earth you know that when a politician engages in a discussion he’s not trying to solve a problem or seek the truth, he’s trying to either make you feel good or cast his opponent in a bad light.
But let’s not be too hard on politicians, as fun as that may be. You can hear the same kind of pointless “discussions” going on wherever you go, and I don’t just mean on talk radio. In offices and living rooms around the country you can hear people engage in their own one-sided, seemingly pointless debates where no one ever seems to change their mind or even thoughtfully consider a point of view that disagrees with their own.
So what’s wrong with us? Why do we always have to “win” every argument, when deep down we must realize that we are all fallible creatures who couldn’t possibly know everything?
One possible answer to that question (detailed in the April issue of “The Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science”) is the argumentative theory of reasoning. This theory asserts that humans didn’t evolve their ability to reason to seek the truth or to solve difficult problems but to establish their dominance over others by winning arguments.
The idea is that once we learned to communicate those who had the ability to persuade others to follow their ideas (regardless of how valid or true those ideas were) gained a survival advantage over those who were less persuasive. And hundreds of thousands of years of advantageous breeding of people who were persuasive but not necessarily correct has given us…Barak Obama? I guess I can see their point.
Actually their theory might explain a lot. It has long been known that people tend to exhibit something called confirmation bias. That is what happens when someone is confronted with apparently valid data that contradicts a deeply held belief. No matter how good that contradictory data is our brains will find a way to ignore it, discount it, or discredit the messenger. We don’t want to change our minds about the things that are really important to us.
That would seem like a strange and counter-productive use of our ability to reason if that ability was designed to seek out the truth in all cases. But if it was evolved to come up with arguments that would defeat our opponents and establish dominance in a peer group it would make a whole lot of sense.
If you pay attention to people when they engage in a disagreement, you might be surprised at how seldom logic and superior intelligence seems to determine the apparent “winner” of said disagreement. Instead it is usually persuasiveness, charisma, and appeal to emotion that sways the mob when a war of words is waged.
It’s fun to note this trait in others, but somewhat less fun to realize that it applies to me as well. It makes me wish that we had evolved the ability to forget things that we learn that force us to admit that we are a lot more irrational than we’d like to think that we are.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
We are all profilers
The seemingly endless coverage of the Trayvon Martin case has brought an issue that seems to rear its head every few years to the surface once again. Many people seem convinced that one reason Mr. Martin was seen as a threat and “challenged” by a member of the local Neighborhood Watch was because he was black. Was he profiled by George Zimmerman that fateful day because of his race and the way he was dressed?
I don’t pretend to know (like so many seem to think they do) what exactly motivated Mr. Zimmerman to confront Mr. Martin that day, but the larger question of whether or not it’s ever acceptable to hold certain people under more suspicion than others based on their physical characteristics is an interesting one in any event.
On the one hand you have those who contend that we should all be judged as individuals and that no extra attention from the authorities is ever warranted based on our physical characteristics. Others point out that it’s just common sense to direct more security resources towards, say, a young Arab man than towards an elderly Asian female, because statistically some segments of the population commit more crimes than others do.
On a more personal level, I think that if we are honest with ourselves on the subject we’d have to admit that profiling is something we all do on a day-to-day basis. If you’re walking down a deserted street late at night and you see a stranger approaching, you are going to size him up as a potential threat based on how he looks and how he carries himself. That’s profiling.
After giving the matter a little thought, I came up with a summary of the profiling system I would use for the proverbial stranger on a deserted street scenario. I would ask myself the following questions to assess the potential for trouble.
- Is he male? I generally don’t regard females as potential threats, as I’ve never been threatened by a female. Well, let me clarify that – I’ve never been threatened by a female who I wasn’t in a relationship with, and we’re talking about strangers here.
- Is he between the ages of 12 and 50? Men are most likely to cause mayhem from the time they hit puberty until Father Time makes it difficult for them to flee the scene of a crime.
- Is he dressed like a gangster? The clothes make the man, and that’s especially true when you meet someone for the first time. If you are dressed like a thug, the safe assumption is you just might be a thug.
- Is he acting like an idiot? If you are talking way louder than necessary, cursing, and glaring menacingly at everyone you meet you either hate other people or you don’t care that you are making them uncomfortable. That sends a message that you are not to be trusted.
If the answer to all those questions is “yes” I’d likely cross the street to avoid that person.
Note that nowhere in the list did I mention race. I think I can say with plenty of conviction that if I had to share an elevator with either a well-dressed, polite black person or an obnoxious, swastika-covered white skinhead, race would not be a deciding factor.
Having said all that, however, let me add one more thing. The system I described influences how wary I would be of a stranger. I would not, however, use this system as any kind of justification to harass someone just because of their gender, age, or fashion sense.
Unless someone is trespassing on private property or otherwise behaving in a criminal or overtly threatening manner, they have the right to be left alone to go about their business. All of us should be able to walk down a public street without being followed, stalked or otherwise harassed. A healthy dose of mind-your-own-business would have prevented the Trayvon Martin tragedy from ever happening.
I don’t pretend to know (like so many seem to think they do) what exactly motivated Mr. Zimmerman to confront Mr. Martin that day, but the larger question of whether or not it’s ever acceptable to hold certain people under more suspicion than others based on their physical characteristics is an interesting one in any event.
On the one hand you have those who contend that we should all be judged as individuals and that no extra attention from the authorities is ever warranted based on our physical characteristics. Others point out that it’s just common sense to direct more security resources towards, say, a young Arab man than towards an elderly Asian female, because statistically some segments of the population commit more crimes than others do.
On a more personal level, I think that if we are honest with ourselves on the subject we’d have to admit that profiling is something we all do on a day-to-day basis. If you’re walking down a deserted street late at night and you see a stranger approaching, you are going to size him up as a potential threat based on how he looks and how he carries himself. That’s profiling.
After giving the matter a little thought, I came up with a summary of the profiling system I would use for the proverbial stranger on a deserted street scenario. I would ask myself the following questions to assess the potential for trouble.
- Is he male? I generally don’t regard females as potential threats, as I’ve never been threatened by a female. Well, let me clarify that – I’ve never been threatened by a female who I wasn’t in a relationship with, and we’re talking about strangers here.
- Is he between the ages of 12 and 50? Men are most likely to cause mayhem from the time they hit puberty until Father Time makes it difficult for them to flee the scene of a crime.
- Is he dressed like a gangster? The clothes make the man, and that’s especially true when you meet someone for the first time. If you are dressed like a thug, the safe assumption is you just might be a thug.
- Is he acting like an idiot? If you are talking way louder than necessary, cursing, and glaring menacingly at everyone you meet you either hate other people or you don’t care that you are making them uncomfortable. That sends a message that you are not to be trusted.
If the answer to all those questions is “yes” I’d likely cross the street to avoid that person.
Note that nowhere in the list did I mention race. I think I can say with plenty of conviction that if I had to share an elevator with either a well-dressed, polite black person or an obnoxious, swastika-covered white skinhead, race would not be a deciding factor.
Having said all that, however, let me add one more thing. The system I described influences how wary I would be of a stranger. I would not, however, use this system as any kind of justification to harass someone just because of their gender, age, or fashion sense.
Unless someone is trespassing on private property or otherwise behaving in a criminal or overtly threatening manner, they have the right to be left alone to go about their business. All of us should be able to walk down a public street without being followed, stalked or otherwise harassed. A healthy dose of mind-your-own-business would have prevented the Trayvon Martin tragedy from ever happening.
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