hello everybody today's video is systems thinking cognitive dissonance so cognitive dissonance is actually a superpower use it as such by the end of this video you will have a much better understanding of what cognitive dissonance is why it's useful why it evolved and how to use it uh yeah so uh before we get started I wanted to give a little preface to this video so that you understand what to expect and you can uh ingest this information as it comes so first we're going to Define cognitive dissonance then we're going to unpack cognitive dissonance from multiple uh the perspective of multiple disciplines and povs we'll unpack the implications and analyze various aspects of cognitive dissonance from these various povs and then by the end as I mentioned you should have a very new understanding and appreciation of how cognitive dissonance is actually one of our most powerful and fundamental cognitive tools okay so first the definition of cognitive dissonance it's really simple it is the mental discomfort experienced when conscious of conflicting beliefs values or attitudes it is a collision of ideas that you cannot reconcile so it is a mental discomfort is it it is an emotional affect it's an affective result that basically it is something that you can sense subjectively uh it is powered by conflicting beliefs or ideas it is a it is a collision when you are unable to reconcile or alleviate those conflicting beliefs uh it is a motivational drive it is an Impulse it pushes us to resolve inconsistencies or reject the source of dissonance um but it is an instinct or an Impulse not unlike uh hunger or curiosity uh basically it is a natural inborn instinct in all humans uh now how you react to it that is cultural we'll get into that in just a little bit it is an Adaptive function the existence of cognitive dissonance evolved because it is a helpful tool it uh drives us to create better models of reality which is uh speaks directly to survival and we'll get more into that in just a moment when we talk about the evolution of it and then finally cognitive dissonance has a an important social role uh by driving discourse establishing cultural norms and underpinning pretty much all of social progress if you look at every uh War Revolution or you know pretty much every major event in human history over the last yeah 5 000 years um the alleviation of cognitive dissonance has been a key component of that everything from the French Revolution uh up through the American Revolution Civil Rights Movement cognitive dissonance is one of the motivational forces that is basically hey there's some there's there's two facts or beliefs or ideas that I don't like and let's resolve them uh okay so talking about the evolution of cognitive dissonance uh it is an Adaptive trait it is it originated before humans uh and so basically the reason the the evidence that we have is that multiple species not just great apes but especially great apes have the ability to recognize when they have conflicting beliefs about the world and so for instance magic tricks work on chimps um cognitive dissonance the reason that magic tricks are uh so enthralling to us is because the magician leads you to believe one thing and then reveals that you are wrong the the fact that chimps have the ability to keep track of a truth state or a belief about the world and then recognize when that belief was wrong means that they have the capacity for cognitive dissonance and then of course knowing that it's for good fun the the resolution that you're looking for the prestige aspect of magic tricks is oh hey the tension has been resolved and I realized that I was wrong huh you got you you fooled me cool here have a you know nickel or whatever um it's a survival Advantage so what I mean by this is that if you have beliefs about hey there's food down by the river but then you go to the river and then there's no food you need to update that belief to say oh hey the food is no longer at the river or it's not at the river right now um or if you know a friend of yours eats a piece of food that you thought was safe and it kills them you need to update your belief about that and so cognitive dissonance is Rec is the reconciliation of erroneous beliefs or flawed uh models of reality and so essentially cognitive dissonance is the subjective Sensation that our brain gives you when we have error detection so in coding and computer science and all that stuff we we have explicit error codes that say Hey 404 not found in human brains we have emotional affect as a replacement for that because we don't have explicit error codes but we do have we do need a signal we need some kind of neural subjective affective signal that says hey there's a problem here this so it is it is our error detection signal and that's why I want to make this video to de-pathologize cognitive dissonance all it is is error detection uh now in terms of what was needed from an evolutionary perspective uh the ability to handle complex knowledge a AKA uh the capacity for abstract thought and conceptual thought was uh is the predicate of cognitive dissonance in other words we needed to evolve the ability for complex conceptual and abstract thought in order to then facilitate the reconciliation of these abstract beliefs I don't know if that makes sense anyways it also serves a social function which is why I made a uh something here so you can imagine like two uh primitive humans kind of arguing about like where do we go from here like where do we get food everyone's hungry and so part of arguing and debating is actually uh the social function the social manifestation of cognitive dissonance if there is an argument or debate or disagreement it is because the information is incomplete in the and the beliefs are not being reconciled there's a disharmony and so this is why I say that cognitive dissonance is actually a really important underpinning feature of human intellect all right the Neuroscience of cognitive dissonance the fact that we are able to hold and manage multiple beliefs simultaneously uh that has uh that implies a lot about our neural Machinery so basically rather than having a single world view um which I maybe some people are not capable of that you know there's there's developmental Milestones like children you know might have one belief about the world but even small children when you interact with them you can see when cognitive dissonance happens because magic tricks will work on some small children too but anyways that we have the neural capacity to add to hold and manage multiple beliefs and then we also it implies that we have the neural circuitry for this comparing and contrasting of beliefs in order to try and harmonize them or recognize when there is when there is a disharmony when there is dissonance um and then furthermore in the attempt to reconcile we are able to articulate why there is a collision between some beliefs now obviously our ability to articulate the collision between beliefs is not always perfect it's often incomplete but just the fact that we can systematically find more information to work towards that reconciliation says a lot about the neural Machinery that we have evolved another interesting feature is that we're not conscious about uh cognitive dissonance at all times sometimes it goes from completely latent meaning that it is not activated at all like there's you might have multiple facts in your brain that you're just not thinking of but then when someone points it out which is a thing that comedians often do so one of the one of the most successful comedians of all time George Carlin that was literally his primary stick and he would tell you I'm going to point out things that you believe that are not that are not correct that you cannot reconcile and he does so very sarcastically but by bringing conflicting beliefs or ideas or experiences from unconscious to conscious that is that also implies something about the way that our brains work that certain beliefs and things they need to be activated in order to percolate up into your Consciousness but they're all they were always there and then finally the fact that we have such strong emotional reactions to cognitive dissonance implies that it is a very basic or primal thing probably originating in the mammalian brain not even the the the neocortex it could be lower which implies that maybe the hippocampus and other more primitive brain structures uh are are involved in mediating the sensation of cognitive dissonance which means that evolutionarily speaking it's likely a little bit more primitive and uh thus probably predates humans by quite a quite a long ways uh all right so from a philosophical perspective um you know there's all kinds of debates that you can have around you know truth and objectivity and those sorts of things but so I want to kind of couch this in the in the context of everything else and not I'm not going to say like oh I think therefore I am and the rest of the world doesn't exist and objectivity is you know a construct um I believe in an emergence model of reality um so anyways the ability to hold abstract thoughts the and what I mean by abstract thoughts is mental Concepts that are detached from the physical reality of your body um suggests that we have evolved the neural Machinery that allows us to achieve at least some level of objectivity and so basically the idea is is that what some philosophers believe is that because we are animals because we have uh you know just three pound squishy you know computers in our heads um that any thought we have is intrinsically going to be uh colored or or prejudiced by our biological reality but I don't necessarily agree with that because what happens in the mind is at least in some respects abstracted away now I will agree that um everything from uh you know emotions and Trauma and things that you know and things that you don't know um those can all uh directly color your beliefs and stuff but I will say that some level of objectivity is possible in our minds um and this is what I mean by the biological constraints so even if some people are at some points in time capable of truly abstract objective thought um we're still going to be bounded by our limitations um so for instance you know there's plenty of psychology studies out there that change that demonstrate the uh your perception of reality changes depending on like if you're hungry or angry or scared or Whatever anxiety changes the way that you interpret the world and so on and so forth but that one one problem with all psychology studies is that those are Moment In Time snapshots and not looking at the not looking at the treatises that we can construct over time and revisit and revisit over time um so for instance by coming back to Concepts time and time again and sharing those Concepts socially um that uh the fact that it's a framework that you you construct over time means that any any variance from one moment to the next is not necessarily a good measurement of our understanding of object objective reality um situated awareness so situated awareness is basically that any what I'm talking about from any given moment to the next your awareness is is couched exclusively in your subjective experience of the world um and so your experience starts and ends with your subjective experience we our brains imagine that the world is out there uh and that it is permanent and that it is unchanging and that it has its own rules but uh you you are contextually embedded um and let's see so next is metaphysical mentalizing so what I what I mean by this is that you are you are able to imagine um a very exotic perspectives like the fact that we can imagine that like God exists or that you know the universe was created by God or that we live in a simulation um the fact that we're able to imagine that we live in a simulation implies a lot about what uh just how abstract and conceptual our brains are able to operate and so because of this metaphysical mentalizing to me this gives me more uh I interpret this as more evidence that our brains are capable of of such levels of abstraction that are decoupled from our physical reality our physical being that we are able to at least mentalize objective reality if we have the correct evidence and interpretation so basically all I'm saying is I'm not saying that that our brains are intrinsically geared towards objective reality and Truth just that we are we are capable of it given the right information and interpretation and then of course uh from a few slides ago talking about Evolution it would actually be instrumental of us to have a more accurate and efficient model of reality because that speaks to survival so there is a there's both a philosophical and evolutionary and social impetus to get closer to the truth and so rather than say truth because truth has connotations about being objective and absolute I just say more accurate model of reality and so self-correction is basically the systematic approach of uh we have a cognitive dissonance and then we try and reconcile it and so one by one by solving problems by detecting errors and overcoming them we should be getting closer to an accurate model of reality okay so now let's look at cognitive dissonance from the perspective of computation the language of math and logic we have evolved the ability to create symbolic representations um so basically encoding the information that our brains are aware of uh that we can you know represent it as formal logic as mathematical code and now of course with artificial intelligence we can represent it and translate between math and language with natural language processing and large language models such as Claude and chat GPT so formal logic is a mechanistic tool that we have created Created and or discovered in nature for identifying and resolving cognitive dissonance if if a is true then also be you know transitive properties and all those other things uh and so then this underscores the question of universal computation uh the you know the hypothesis is that you know Von Neumann architectures and Turing machines are able to uh you know that there's a basically a kind of a set of universal computational operations that as long as you have access to all those computations you are able to then calculate anything in the universe that any other thing can calculate in the universe the question then remains is is that how the human brain works is the human brain fundamentally a turing machine or a Von Neumann uh architecture-based machine where it is able any any sufficiently sophisticated brain is able to make the calculation that any other sufficiently sophisticated brain is able to make which has really interesting implications for super intelligence because maybe there is a finite set of computations and operations that humans have already achieved and so then once we create more artificial intelligence maybe all they do is they do it faster it might be that there is a that that we're already kind of near the apogee of what intelligence is actually capable of but we are able to imagine that maybe we're not and one of the fundamental questions here is um do do the human brains make use of computational uh operations that are not available to Silicon machines which might mean that there is something that is just going to be forever fundamentally different between human machines or human organs and silicon machines now of course that might say oh well that clearly creates an argument for putting organoids into computers and then cybernetic implants into humans anyways going down a rabbit hole um the the fundamental Point here is that the logic and math that is in our brains is a re is possibly a reflection of the underpinning rules of reality that basically what I'm trying to say is that our brains are neurons uh and evolution discovered logic in nature it discovered those principles and then evolved in order to better use them and so in that respect our ability to formulate math and logic is actually a reflection a projection of uh what evolution discovered in terms of the way that the matter and energy works uh yeah so I hope that makes sense all right so cognitive dissonance from the perspective of society uh so I mentioned earlier about you know many conflicts and intellectual movements throughout history have been largely driven by cognitive dissonance and that is that when someone points out cognitive dissonance um either by writing a book or you know nailing treatises to church doors or talking on the radio or YouTube or Twitter or whatever part of what we do instinctively is work towards Collective resolution this is why we have social justice Warriors this is why we have literally thousands upon thousands of influencers out there making videos on YouTube and Tick Tock and Instagram debating social issues it is because of that distance between uh and the collisions between different beliefs and positions and what they're responding to is cognitive dissonance and attempting to alleviate cognitive dissonance uh many many uh public communicators make an entire living just by talking about cognitive dissonance there are many uh historical mile Milestones throughout the history of society such as the printing press and the invention of the internet which are about democratizing knowledge and the spread of information this whenever we create new uh information tools such as the printing press which you know allowed us to mass produce books and then the internet which allowed for Global Communication and Democratic access to information we always see that this changes the power structures in society uh you could argue that that the internet has already had a very direct impact on uh on the political process around the world very similar to how newspaper and television and radio also did um so basically internet culture is an acceleration of the discovery and alleviation and Reconciliation of cognitive dissonance because of faster information sharing and more um more participation in the conversation uh so yeah so cognitive dissonance we are seeing that in society and you can see it you know writ large with you know things like truth social and uh fake news um so this is all a natural part of the process and a natural reaction to this technological and informational Milestone that we call the internet and then that is the intersection of those technologies that are external to us uh colliding with our internal instinct to identify and reconcile cognitive dissonance okay so now that you have the background of cognitive dissonance there are several ways that people can react to cognitive dissonance I've discovered uh three um three spectrums three gradients uh for reactions so the first is attack versus Retreat when you become aware of cognitive dissonance you can either attack it you say you're wrong I hate you you know blah blah blah you engage in debate or whatever or you can Retreat you can say I'm just not going to touch that I'm gonna you know you do you I'm gonna go this way um and so post-modernism which is all the rage right now basically Advocates that what everyone should do is um either either attack vociferously or Retreat and just say your truth is not my truth and I'm Gonna Go My Own Way so attack versus Retreat then there's internal versus external so an internal reaction is basically saying well I'm gonna you know think about this uh or I'm going to project my uh my displeasure externally so basically it is what you do with that unpleasant emotion do you internalize it and say hey like maybe I'm wrong or you know I'm gonna I'm gonna contemplate what I do what I um believe versus external which is again external is going to be more about sending something out into the world you say something to someone you write an angry tweet or whatever so that's an externalization of cognitive dissonance and then the the two primary strategies are reconciliation or rejection and of course most people are conditioned to reject I don't think that either one of these is particularly natural I'm not going to say that oh well because most people attack and most people externalize and most people reject that that's the natural way of things I think that I think that these behaviors are mostly learned and that they're mostly cultural um and some evidence for this is that there are more thoughtful cultures uh particularly um uh cultures that are more introverted like Sweden and Japan um they're probably more about Retreat internal and Reconciliation um and so like in some of those cultures it is literally the exact opposite from How We Do It in America and because the thing is is in in Japan you don't say someone is shy you say someone is thoughtful and so just a word choice they they choose something that is not pathologized they say they actually valorize someone who is more of a retreater someone who is more internal and someone who is more focused on reconciliation um but basically these are all three primary ways that you can react to cognitive dissonance as an attempt to reconcile and alleviate that unpleasant sensation because again if something hurts you if you don't like the way that something makes you feel that is that feels like a transgression and so then how do you get rid of something that is uncomfortable or unpleasant how do you resolve your suffering if it is as simple and obvious as you burned your hand because you touch something hot you pull your hand away that is an example of retreat now of course there are some people that would explode and whatever burn them they throw it at the wall right that is an attack um yeah so that is uh those are some of the characterizations of reactions to cognitive dissonance I'm not going to judge whether or not any is healthy or not because the thing is is if everyone Retreats from cognitive dissonance then then collectively we never work towards shared understanding and resolution and Reconciliation so we need both we need both attack and Retreat we need to have people that uh that you know and ideally everyone does some of both if you're always attack all the time then you know you're never listening you're never retreating you're never reflecting um likewise if you're only internalizing you're only you know seeking internal resolution and not and not sharing that you're not helping the rest of society and likewise you also need to reject and reconcile just because someone has an opinion on the internet doesn't mean they're worth listening to um and so in some cases yeah everyone's opinion is great you're allowed to have your own opinion that doesn't mean anyone has to take you seriously and your opinion should be rejected but only once it is scrutinized and once uh any points that you do have are reconciled into the greater narrative okay so all this comes down to truth what is the current uh disposition towards Truth uh so post-modernism uh basically said truth doesn't exist truth is a lie truth is relative uh whereas nihilism said that meaning is a lie meaning doesn't exist and so of course my work in post nihilism says okay we never needed meaning the demand for meaning was was a false premise to begin with what we actually need is Mission post-modernism said truth is a lie we never needed truth anyways truth doesn't exist and so what I'm what I'm doing here is I'm going to kind of redefine truth more couched in our Evolution as animals so truth is a sensation truth exists as a as the absence or alleviation of cognitive dissonance if you do not have cognitive dissonance or you're not conscious of it or you have resolved cognitive dissonance you feel enlightened you feel like you have moved closer to the truth but that is couched again in our neural Machinery not something that is absolute and out there um handed down you know from on high it is entirely an evolved trait but the fact that every human on the planet Earth has evolved to have this subjective experience of Truth we were fooled into believing that truth was a universal construct or constant or something external to us but really it's just a universal Human Experience and again as I mentioned earlier the way that we relate to truth in the way that we understand truth is primarily learned through culture and family and and politics and that sort of stuff but all it is um and this is this is true across all cultures is that it is the absence of collision of beliefs now again those beliefs um are are going to be culturally contextual we are we must be equipped with the cognitive tools to navigate uh towards truth so that is that comes down to the informational and mental resources in order to one um you know recognize when there is a dissonance because again if someone just doesn't have enough World Knowledge they're not going to be able to identify and reconcile they're not going to even be able to identify um the cognitive dissonance and then work on reconciling it and then everyone does the best that they can you might just not have the mental resources or willpower to really see something through to the end but for those of us who do we take it as far as we can and then we say okay this is the best I've got um towards working towards uh alleviation of cognitive dissonance and resolution and Reconciliation okay so the final concept that I want to tell you about is potentiality and so this is this comes from uh this comes from philosophy as well but basically potentiality is that uh you always have the potential to shift from uh equilibrium and Harmony to um disharmony or dissonance and so what I mean by that is that uh there are things that you don't know there are always things that you are not aware of and this of again is situational or situated awareness there's what you are internally aware of there's what you're externally aware of there's what's activated in your brain at any given moment and so there are two primary ways that you can that you can shift your potentiality from one of Harmony to disharmony one is through internal reflection um some of us like hsps a lot of neurospicy people we just instinctively ruminate and contemplate and reflect deeply and so we are constantly looking for um internal dissonance through introspection and connecting the dots within our own brains um for you infps out there you say oh God this is what I do for 10 hours every day so some of it comes down to personality some of it is learned so on and so forth now that's the internal way that potentiality can shift the external method is through uh external vectors such as news conversation things that happen in the outside world that kind of force you to connect the dots which again is why we have people that systematically just declare that's fake news declaring something as fake news is a very uh let's say intellectually non-rigorous way of reacting to cognitive dissonance um but that that that rude awakening is a state shift from Harmony to dissonance and it happens all the time um and what the reason that I'm uh talking about this is because a lot of people have practiced certain reactions ah when someone when I when I lead someone into a verbal trap with a bayley mod argument or whatever you know I follow these these these scripted patterns and I say I have you now you know I'm calling out your cognitive dissonance and I am on the attack I'm on the war path or you know people just systematically retreat but my point there is that is that some people have systematically uh cultivated the ability to react to their cognitive dissonance by attacking or um or by externalizing or whatever uh and so this is a this is a systematic way of self-soothing that rude awakening sensation um and it's always there whether or not you like it or whether or not you're aware of it and so some people just have a hair trigger and they are ready to like you know bombs away um I've got I've practiced this script and I've set up my you know my mental fortifications to justify my current belief system now again I'm not going to say that that's always an intrinsically wrong because sometimes you have valid beliefs sometimes you have adaptive belief structures and systems that are there and you need to protect those because if if everyone just gives in all the time then the people who are most aggressive win this is why Empires existed and and took over pacifist kingdoms is because those were with the most aggressive stance tends to win and so that's why I said rather than pathologize that we need both we need attack and Retreat we need internal and external and we need reconciliation and rejection okay so this has been a crash course in uh meta modernism and and cognitive dissonance and transdisciplinary approaches so now you are a transdisciplinary expert on cognitive dissonance go forth and resolve dissonance uh thank you for watching have a good one