The biology of subjective facts

In politics, finding objective facts is usually hard. In addition to being inundated in an ocean of spin and lies, another barrier is being subjective creatures from a biological point of view. The power of our inherently subjective minds cannot be understated. We are humans. Humans are inherently subjective and our minds evolved to work that way. The laws of the universe require that out minds work that way. It is both biologically and mathematically impossible for humans to operate in politics on the basis of pure conscious reason and objective fact or truth.

Given human biology and the laws of the universe, we have to operate on the basis of mental rules or shortcuts that our minds actually can work with. Those rules simplify and distort reality, including facts, and conscious reason. None of that is a criticism of anyone, any group or the human species. Those are objective fact statements based on human biology and the laws that govern the universe.

Because of those truths, finding objective fact in politics isn't nearly as easy as one might envision. The human mind operates mostly on the basis of unconscious thinking. That thought mode is heavily influenced by (i) biases all of us got from evolution* (nature), and (ii) biases from personal morals we grew into or learned (nurture). In seeing and hearing the world, we first become unconsciously aware of what we see and hear, that input is then filtered through our unconscious biases and then after that unconscious filtering of what we see or hear, we become consciously aware of maybe 0.001% of what our unconscious minds was aware of.

* For example, humans do not think in terms of statistics. That kind of conscious thinking has to be learned. To survive, humans did not need to think in terms of statistics, otherwise we either would not exist, or we would already innately think in terms of statistics. Our innate failure to properly account for numbers explains, for example, why most Americans grossly overestimate the danger of personal harm or attack from terrorists on American soil. That's just one bias we got from evolution, but the distortions of reality that that bias generates can be overcome to some extent by learning and conscious effort. Other evolutionary biases can be harder to somewhat or mostly counteract. I'm not sure if any evolutionary bias can be fully overcome.

Our feeble conscious minds: The little dribble of information we do become consciously aware of has been filtered through our unconscious biases. Those biases distort both the facts or reality we think we see and hear and the common sense we apply to what we think we see and hear. Being more objective (less biased) is tricky. It requires self-awareness and a will to be more objective. Being completely unbiased is impossible. Being less biased is possible.

In other words, our conscious minds are often fooled right from the get go. That makes finding objective facts significantly more complicated than one might think. That's why when liberals and conservatives disagree on something, it is the norm for them to significantly or completely disagree on what the facts are. Their different unconscious biases (morals, political ideology) often lead most (>95% ?) people to see things that fit their biases or fail to see things that contradict their biases. This vignette explains how that works for one political ideologue (a self-aware libertarian) who woke up to understand how his ideology had been distorting both facts and the common sense he applied to the facts he thought he did see:

"Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning [an unconscious bias], in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true. . . . Take gun control. I always accepted the libertarian position of minimum regulation in the sale and use of firearms because I placed guns under the beneficial rubric of minimal restrictions on individuals. Then I read the science on guns and homicides, suicides and accidental shootings . . . . . Although the data to convince me that we need some gun-control measures were there all along, I had ignored them because they didn't fit my creed."

If one accepts the reality of how the human mind usually or always operates in a subjective, reality distorting mode, it is easy to see the basis for profound disagreements over facts between liberals, conservatives and populists in the current presidential election.

If Americans were truly interested in being less biased, their differences of opinion and perceived facts would not disappear. However, they would narrow. The problem is getting past our innate human subjectivity and the massive difficulty in changing one's personal mind set.

B&B orig: 10/13/16