I ended up writing about what I perceive as the propensity of today’s Republican Party to abhor actual work in order to win over their constituents. It has always seemed to me that as a group they will take every shortcut imaginable related to actual policy making, withholding principles and going against any inferred principles constantly, and the great work of which a democracy demands seems to not interest them. The omnipresent voter suppression activities, the gerrymandering; these phenomena are really only for the intellectually lazy. The right wing media is set up to spoon feed millions with canned propaganda and outright lies, hence making life easier (their perception only) for the masses. I expanded the initial topic slightly to include information on ‘intellectual laziness’ and the psychological concept of ‘cognitive miser.’ I managed to learn from this exercise. So this was my theme for my verse today.
I made a word-search of “intellectual laziness” on X, to see what might appear. This is meant to supplement my verse. After several attempts with other words, this one came as close to what I wished to explore as any others.
A search on Truth Social of the term ‘intellectual laziness’ brought much more than I originally thought it might. I start with some who are on the platform from the brave center or left people on this platform who have sounded rebuttals toward certain individuals.
Here from Truth Social and the word search of ‘intellectual laziness’ from what we might expect from the right. One might assume that the word may have lost its meaning in some cases, only becoming a pejorative for insult, in some cases.
I found a good article or essay on ‘intellectual laziness’ from a writer in Finland found on LinkedIn. It seems to fit into the discussion rather nicely. I’ve posted this same general information before, more than once. But I thought it worthwhile to post the piece in its entirety.
How to fend off intellectual laziness
By Mina Kostova
@minakostova
“When you make research, always look for the origin of information,” I’ve learned from my father, “Once information is weighted by subjectivity it loses its relevance”.
How many times we are fooled into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not real when it is? Especially nowadays, with so many different mediums of communication, basically every one of us has the stage to proclaim whatever he or she wants.
Twenty years ago, the challenge was how to generate data. Now we struggle with how to sift out what is useful and what is not. We are overwhelmed with too much information and not only, but the access to it has never been faster. We are more vulnerable to manipulation and speculation than ever before. Once something has been repeated and echoing, it becomes a truth no matter of its origin. It is a form of brainwashing wherein we begin to think that something is real simply because we’ve heard it so many times. Critical mass replaces authenticity.
[I think the above paragraph is quite important in the scheme of things within the democratic countries including the United States. I’ve made a little verse below on this point.]
One of the most robust defences against intellectual laziness is scepticism or critical thinking. Informed scepticism is the ability to ask the right questions and keeps us from being manipulated. It forces us to move outside our habitual thinking style, to doubt our biases, and to approach problems from several different perspectives.
Understanding our biases and assumptions is crucial to critical thinking.
[This is very crucial and requires a level of self awareness not always present. I’ve written about this in the past, with some reaserch cited.]
Finding out where we are falling prey to biases and unconscious twists means understanding cognitive bias, or our tendency to believe that something is true even if it contradicts undisputed data. We can keep believing in our personal truth based on a belief system, social influence, political understanding but our belief itself doesn’t make it objective. It is our confirmation bias or our tendency to seek out information that supports our previously established expectations.
[I do think in my case, my scientific study and practice in engineering brought to me objectivity, in most cases. I do not pretend to always be objective in everything, and tend to take things at face value at times. Then later I realized I should have done the needed research to verify it.]
Unfortunately, this is typical for leaders and managers who often rely too heavily on expertise and then jump to conclusions instead deliberately approach a problem and devote time thinking through possible solutions.
[Sometimes solutions take time. Unfortunately, oftentimes it’s a matter of trial and error building up a level of confidence through experience.]
How, then, do we protect ourselves from something that is hardwired into our brain? First, we need to be ready to admit defeat. We can avoid biases by being aware of our belief systems. We should doubt and explore following our curiosity. This is how innovations are built.
[Curiosity is always something which is invaluable. At least it’s been so in my experience. Curiosity drives my writing.]
When it comes to establishing objective truth, a reliable tool might be the scientific method or part of it. This problem-solving approach helps us to obtain credible evidence in support of a hypothesis and teaches humility. “Nature is the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner. You can argue all you want. But if nature doesn’t agree with you, you’re wrong” says Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who sees and understands human life through the lens of science.
Scientists don’t prove things but test ideas. In business, this should be fast and accurate. There is not much time in the fast paced environment of competition to contemplate and deliberate about a decision. What we can borrow from science and convey into business is the short formula, observation, questioning, testing, learning.
Observation and identification. Collecting data to formulate the right question is half of the problem-solving process.
Questioning and testing. Real thinking is not about acquiring facts and piling up knowledge but creativity. It is about how our brain works, how it is wired to wonder, to question. Questioning our assumptions helps to consider alternatives and to explore new perspectives creating information, not collecting it. Building a hypothesis and testing it should follow the chain of logic and support with evidence of the argument. All the pieces of evidence should conform to a sound conclusion.
[…chain of logic and support with evidence... This is very important. Never not use logic.]
Learning. Every experience or business case is a valuable opportunity to learn or to adopt “the distilled essence of knowledge—after you’ve forgotten all the details” again Neil deGrasse Tyson, to heap a dose of wisdom.
Raising awareness of our biases and assumptions and underlying weaknesses—and developing a solid sense of scepticism—we’ll craft a keen competence of the world around us, and skill for critical thinking will, hopefully, prevent us from being exploited.
Another verse in which I explored the fact that there is so much information available now, as expounded upon above. Some have been able to adjust to it in a competent manner while for many they are flummoxed by it all. At least that is what I’m proposing.
The Information Blizzard
In this age of unlimited information,
Perhaps some have been able to benefit from it,
While for others it has only stifled them,
This thought has occurred to me more than once,
To choose unwisely in this world library,
Could perhaps even bring on a degradation,
This may be a factor upon where we find ourselves,
In terms of traditional democratic politics.
Are certain individuals snowed into radicalization,
Are there maleficent actors poisoning minds,
To what degree has the age of information,
An information blitz, left so many confused,
So many behind?
This I thought today while contemplating intellectual laziness,
It’s a real calamity perhaps,
Flying under the radar of our times.
Is a certain proportion of the population advancing quickly,
While others are left too far behind,
And with so many with misconceptions solidified within them,
Perhaps there is a collective resentment at work due to this difference,
And in this fact a part of the polarization,
I really can’t say, I’m better with raising questions.
So what part of this postulation might actually be true,
And if it is greatly true, what can we do about it?
Perhaps our educational system can iron out the problems with time,
Perhaps it’s already happening in many places,
And the older people who may contribute to the problem might soon be gone,
But the young are equally capable of being mislead most certainly,
All that we can do as individuals is try to stay abreast of it all,
The information blitz is a snow storm, a blizzard to traverse,
One must stay cleared-eyed and upon guard,
That is how I’m approaching it.
I came across a term involved in taking mental shortcuts in making decisions called ‘cognitive miser.’ I found the write up on Wikipedia, and reading through it found it quite interesting and perhaps relevant in the discussion at hand. Seems we tend to be rather lazy in mental activities naturally. I thought it might be interesting to learn of this concept.
In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.
The term cognitive miser was first introduced by Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor in 1984. It is an important concept in social cognition theory and has been influential in other social sciences such as economics and political science.
People are limited in their capacity to process information, so they take shortcuts whenever they can.
The metaphor of the cognitive miser assumes that the human mind is limited in time, knowledge, attention, and cognitive resources. Usually people do not think rationally or cautiously, but use cognitive shortcuts to make inferences and form judgments. These shortcuts include the use of schemas, scripts, stereotypes, and other simplified perceptual strategies instead of careful thinking. For example, people tend to make correspondent reasoning and are likely to believe that behaviors should be correlated to or representative of stable characteristics.
Stereotypes
According to Walter Lippmann's arguments in his classic book Public Opinion, people are not equipped to deal with complexity. Attempting to observe things freshly and in detail is mentally exhausting, especially among busy affairs. The term stereotype is thus introduced: people have to reconstruct the complex situation on a simpler model before they can cope with it, and the simpler model can be regarded as a stereotype. Stereotypes are formed from outside sources which identify with people's interests and can be reinforced since people could be impressed by those facts that fit their philosophy.
Heuristics
Much of the cognitive miser theory is built upon work done on heuristics in judgment and decision-making, most notably Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman results published in a series of influential articles. Heuristics can be defined as the "judgmental shortcuts that generally get us where we need to go—and quickly—but at the cost of occasionally sending us off course." In their work, Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that people rely upon different types of heuristics or mental shortcuts in order to save time and mental energy.
The wave of research on attributional biases done by Kahneman, Tversky and others effectively ended the dominance of Heider's naïve scientist within social psychology. Fiske and Taylor, building upon the prevalence of heuristics in human cognition, offered their theory of the cognitive miser. It is, in many ways, a unifying theory of ad-hoc decision-making which suggests that humans engage in economically prudent thought processes instead of acting like scientists who rationally weigh cost and benefit data, test hypotheses, and update expectations based upon the results of the discrete experiments that are our everyday actions. In other words, humans are more inclined to act as cognitive misers using mental shortcuts to make assessments and decisions regarding issues and ideas about which they know very little, including issues of great salience. Fiske and Taylor argue that it is rational to act as a cognitive miser due to the sheer volume and intensity of information and stimuli humans intake. Given the limited information processing capabilities of individuals, people try to adopt strategies that economise complex problems. Cognitive misers usually act in two ways: by disregarding part of the information to reduce their own cognitive load, or by overusing some kind of information to avoid the burden of finding and processing more information.
Other psychologists also argue that the cognitively miserly tendency of humans is a primary reason why "humans are often less than rational". This view holds that evolution has made the brain's allocation and use of cognitive resources extremely embarrassing. The basic principle is to save mental energy as much as possible, even when it is required to "use your head". Unless the cognitive environment meets certain criteria, we will, by default, try to avoid thinking as much as possible.
Implications
The implications of this theory raise important questions about both cognition and human behavior. In addition to streamlining cognition in complicated, analytical tasks, the cognitive miser approach is also used when dealing with unfamiliar issues and issues of great importance.
Politics
“…low-information voters, acting as cognitive misers, can have broad and potentially deleterious choices for a society.”
Voting behavior in democracies are an arena in which the cognitive miser is at work. Acting as a cognitive miser should lead those with expertise in an area to more efficient information processing and streamlined decision making. However, as Lau and Redlawsk note, acting as cognitive miser who employs heuristics can have very different results for high-information and low-information voters. They write, "...cognitive heuristics are at times employed by almost all voters, and that they are particularly likely to be used when the choice situation facing voters is complex... heuristic use generally increases the probability of a correct vote by political experts but decreases the probability of a correct vote by novices." In democracies, where no vote is weighted more or less because of the expertise behind its casting, low-information voters, acting as cognitive misers, can have broad and potentially deleterious choices for a society.
Samuel Popkin argues that voters make rational choices by using information shortcuts that they receive during campaigns, usually using something akin to a *drunkard's search. Voters use small amounts of personal information to construct a narrative about candidates. Essentially, they ask themselves this: "Based on what I know about the candidate personally, what is the probability that this presidential candidate was a good governor? What is the probability that he will be a good president?" Popkin's analysis is based on one main premise: voters use low information rationality gained in their daily lives, through the media and through personal interactions, to evaluate candidates and facilitate electoral choices.
*The streetlight effect, or the drunkard's search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look.
I decided to perform a word search on X on ‘cognitive miser.’ It is a term known by a fair number of people obviously in how many posts I could find on it.
I must admit that I really didn’t think that what I wrote in my beginning verse may have been defined. However, it would seem to me that some of our problems in the body politic could be contributed to the phenomenon of the cognitive miser. It explains quite a lot to me. Perhaps if I were a political scientist this would be old hat, but to me it was an eureka moment to stumble across this. I wonder why with all my observing and listening to podcasts, etc., this was never heard of before to the best of my memory. In any case perhaps more will now know about it. There is the combination of faulty information from right wing media coupled with this natural laziness of brains which brings forth disastrous voting decisions. This connection I’ve made today. Thanks for reading.
94th Posting, September 18, 2023