Stop. Wait. You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you. I'm going to tell you some things.
You're not going to believe these things I tell you. And that's okay. You have good reason not to. But I need you to keep listening regardless of what you believe. I don't care if you're liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between.
I don't care if you're a cat person, a dog person, or a tarantula person. Morning person or night owl. iPhone, Android, Coke, or Pepsi.
I don't care. All I care about is that you read this to the end. Sound good?
Then let's begin. You may have heard that George Washington had wooden teeth. He lost most of his teeth in his 20s and had a set of dentures made out of wood.
It's a disturbing visual. The founding father, commander-in-chief, and first president of the United States click clacking his way through a ham sandwich. Except it isn't true.
In 2005 at the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, laser scans were performed on Washington's 200-year-old dentures and found them to be made of gold, lead, hippopotamus ivory, horse and donkey teeth. His mouth was a petting zoo of nightmares. this information, I want to ask you something.
How did it feel to learn this new fact about George Washington's teeth? I stated a thing, I provided evidence of that thing, and presumably you now believe the thing I stated. Presumably, your belief in the composition of George Washington's teeth has changed with little or no friction. Presumably the next time you're at a party and George Washington's teeth come up in conversation, you're going to proudly impart this newfound knowledge to your fellow party-goers. Yes?
Terrific, let's continue. What if I told you George Washington had another set of false teeth? What if I told you the other set wasn't made from wood, ivory, or any of the aforementioned materials?
What if I told you it was made from the teeth of slaves? Now let's try this again. How did it feel to learn this fact about George Washington? Any more of that friction I mentioned earlier?
Before we go any further, allow me to reiterate, I am not here to convince you that George Washington was a bad person. I could go through all my cited sources and cherry pick arguments that either deify or demonize George Washington. I could paint a portrait of a monster or I could exonerate a patriot. But as I said before, I don't care. It's not the point.
The point is to give you an emotional barometer of how you feel when presented with new ideas. Because you may have noticed that the first factor about George Washington's teeth was rather easy to accept. I would even wager that when I told you the first fact, you accepted it without question.
But when I told you the second fact, you immediately checked my sources and are now furiously composing an informed yet incendiary retort which you will boldly deliver to me in the form of a sour, blustering Facebook comment. And that's okay. That's all part of it. Let's try a few more. Napoleon Bonaparte was not short.
He was 5'7", which is taller than the average Frenchman of the time. Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet, nor did the word crap come about because of his name. House flies live for about a month, not 24 hours. Humans don't explode. in a vacuum, nor do we boil. We just pass out from lack of oxygen and then we die. Again, as you read these facts, take stock of how you feel. I'm guessing you've softened to the last few fairly easily. Let's try a few more and then we're done. There is zero evidence that Jesus Christ was born on December 25th. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist. Six of the seven justices who voted in favor of Roe v. Wade were Republican appointed. How'd those last three feel? Depending on your beliefs, I'm guessing it may have put some of you about here. At the very least, you can concede that it felt different to hear those statements compared to the ones about Napoleon or houseflies. Yes? But why? Why do we easily soften to some ideas but not to others? Why do we gnash our teeth when presented with evidence counter to our beliefs? Why do we not only ignore this evidence but dig our heels in deeper and believe more strongly in the opposing argument? Why would providing more evidence make someone less likely to believe in an idea? It seems backwards and bat-bum crazy bonkers to me. It turns out bat-bum crazy bonkers is a name in the world of neuroscience. It's called the backfire effect and it's a well-documented psychological behavior. A few years ago at the University of Southern California's Brain Creativity Institute, a study was conducted where participants were placed in a classroom. into an MRI machine. Once inside, they are presented with counterarguments to strongly held political beliefs. A few examples. Laws restricting gun ownership should be made more restrictive. Gay marriage should not be legalized. As participants were read these counterarguments, various parts of their brains were scanned for activity. What the study revealed was that the part of the brain that responds to a physical threat also responds to an intellectual one. This area of the brain is known as the amygdala and is the emotional core of your mind. Unfortunately, it makes us biologically wired to react to threatening information the same way we'd react to being attacked by a predator. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense. If you were a caveman and another caveman threw a boulder at your head, you wouldn't react biologically debating the pros and cons of it. of getting brained. Core beliefs are the beliefs which people cherish the most deeply. They usually develop from childhood and are compounded by life experiences. Core beliefs are inflexible, rigid, and incredibly sensitive to being challenged. When I told you that George Washington's dentures were made from animal bones, it probably didn't ruffle many feathers. But when I suggested they were made from slave teeth, I'm guessing it caused strife with some of you. There are obvious cultural reasons for this. Slavery is a sensitive, hot-button issue. But there are biological reasons as well. The amygdala of your brain is screaming, battle stations! may have held a worldview that George Washington was a patriot and a hero. By presenting negative information about him, it challenged that worldview. Your brain loves consistency. It builds a worldview like we build a house. It has a foundation and a frame and windows and doors and it knows exactly how everything fits together. If a new piece is introduced and it doesn't fit, the whole house falls apart. Your brain protects you by rejecting that piece. It then builds a fence and a moat and refuses to let in any visitors. This is why we have the Backfire Effect. It's a biological way of protecting a worldview. Just remember that your worldview isn't a perfect house that was built to last forever. It's a cheap condo and over time most of it will fall apart. So what do we do about this? Some of you have probably been nodding along in agreement, waiting for me to deliver a series of clever combative ways to offset the Backfire Effect. The disappointing truth is that I don't have much advice for you. I don't have a way to change the behavior of 7.5 billion people carrying their beliefs around like precious gems wrapped in hand grenades. Sure, there are ways of changing people's minds that are more effective than others, but ultimately, they all fall short. This is compounded by the internet, where anything can be cited as a source and every disagreement degrades into a room full of orangutans throwing feces at one another. The best I can do is make you aware of it, so you can identify the backfire effect in your own brain. Which isn't easy. The mind can't separate the emotional cortex from the logical one, and one could argue that this emotional underbelly is what makes us human. But I would argue that it's also what makes us animals. I sometimes pretend the amygdala of my brain is my pinky toe. When a core belief is challenged, I imagine it yelling insane things at me. I let it yell. I let it have its moment. I let the emotional cortex fight its little fight. And then I listen. And then I change. Because this universe of ours is so achingly beautiful and blended together. We're all going the same direction. I'm not here to take control of the wheel or tell you what to believe. I'm just here to tell you that it's okay to stop. To listen. To change.