Lecture: Systems Thinking - Cognitive Dissonance

Introduction

• Cognitive dissonance: Described as a superpower
• Goal: Understand what it is, why it's useful, its evolutionary role, and how to use it
• Plan: Define cognitive dissonance, unpack from various disciplines, analyze implications

Definition of Cognitive Dissonance

• Mental discomfort when aware of conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes
• Results from a collision of ideas that can't be reconciled
• Involves emotional and motivational components
• Natural instinct like hunger or curiosity
• Cultural reactions to cognitive dissonance vary

Evolutionary Perspective

• Evolved before humans, observed in great apes
• Chimps can experience cognitive dissonance (evidence: magic tricks)
• Survival Advantage: Helps update beliefs (e.g., finding or losing food sources)
• Acts as an error detection signal for flawed reality models
• Predates humans, functions in more primitive brain structures

Social Role

• Drives discourse, establishes cultural norms, underpins social progress
• Example: Civil Rights Movement, historical revolutions

Neuroscience of Cognitive Dissonance

• Implies advanced neural capacity for managing multiple beliefs
• Latent beliefs can be activated into consciousness
• Strong emotional reactions indicate involvement of primitive brain structures like the hippocampus

Philosophical Perspective

• Debate on truth and objectivity
• Potential for objective thought despite biological constraints
• Impact of emotions, trauma, context on belief systems
• Frameworks revisited over time provide better measurements of reality
• Situated awareness: Awareness starts and ends with subjective experience
• Ability to conceptualize metaphysical concepts (e.g., simulations)

Computational Perspective

• Ability to create symbolic representations (math, logic)
• Use of formal logic for identifying and resolving cognitive dissonance
• Debate whether human brains mirror Turing machines or Von Neumann architectures
• Intersection of human and AI computations
• Logic and math as evolutionary tools

Societal Impact

• Historical shifts due to cognitive dissonance (e.g., printing press, internet)
• Internet culture accelerates cognitive dissonance reconciliation
• Social platforms enable democratized knowledge sharing

Reactions to Cognitive Dissonance

• Attack vs. Retreat: Engage in debate or avoid the issue
• Internal vs. External reactions: Contemplation vs. public reaction
• Reconciliation vs. Rejection: Working towards resolution or rejecting conflicting ideas
• Reactions often learned culturally, not necessarily natural
• Balance required for societal progress

Current Disposition Towards Truth

• Post-modernism: Truth is relative, a lie
• Nihilism: Meaning is a lie
• New model: Truth as the absence or alleviation of cognitive dissonance
• Equipping with cognitive tools to navigate towards truth

Concept of Potentiality

• Potential to shift from harmony to disharmony
• Internal reflection and external vectors can trigger cognitive dissonance
• Systematic reactions: Attack defensively or retreat, internalize or externalize issues
• Importance of self-soothing and balance for societal and individual growth

Closing

• Crash course in meta-modernism and cognitive dissonance
• Encouragement to go forth and resolve dissonance