In a political debate you feel like the other side just doesn’t get your point of view, and if they could only see things with your clarity, they would understand and fall naturally in line with what you believe. They must not understand, because if they did they wouldn’t think the things they think. By contrast, you believe you totally get their point of view and you reject it. You see it in all its detail and understand it for what it is – stupid. You don’t need to hear them elaborate. So, each side believes they understand the other side better than the other side understands both their opponents and themselves.

The research suggests you and rest of humanity will continue to churn into groups, banding and disbanding, and the beautiful collective species-wide macromonoculture imagined by the most Utopian of dreams might just be impossible unless alien warships lay siege to our cities. In Sherif’s study, he was able to somewhat reintegrate the boys of the Robber’s Cave experiment by telling them the water supply had been sabotaged by vandals. The two groups were able to come together and repair it as one. Later he staged a problem with one of the camp trucks and was able to get the boys to work together to pull it with a rope until it started. They never fully joined into one group, but the hostilities eased enough for both groups to ride the same bus together back home. It seems peace is possible when we face shared problems, but for now we need to be in our tribes. It just feels right.

So, you pick a team, and like the boys at Robber’s Cave, you spend a lot of time a lot of time talking about how dumb and uncouth the other side is. You too can become preoccupied with defining the essence of your enemies. You too need the other side to be inferior, so you define them as such. You start to believe your persona is actually your identity, and the identity of your enemy is actually their persona. You see yourself in a game of self-deluded poker and assume you are impossible to read while everyone else has obvious tells.

The truth is, you are succumbing to the illusion of asymmetric insight, and as part of a flatter, more-connected, always-on world, you will be tasked with seeing through this illusion more and more often as you are presented with more opportunities than ever to confront and define those who you feel are not in your tribe. Your ancestors rarely made any contact with people of opposing views with anything other than the end of a weapon, so your natural instinct is to assume anyone not in your group is wrong just because they are not in your group. Remember, you are not so smart, and what seems like an insight is often an illusion.

Anchoring is a psychological phenomenon that says that whenever you have a number in mind, it will influence your judgment. In one experiment people were asked to spin a wheel of fortune. After it landed on a number they were asked whether the percentage of nations in the UN was larger or smaller than that number. When the wheel of fortune landed on 10, people estimated that 25% of the members of the UN were African. When it landed on 65, they estimated that 45% of the countries in the UN were African. If you asked them why they came up with the number, they said it was their best guess. But clearly the wheel of fortune had an enormous influence. Anchoring is everywhere in the financial markets. When a stock goes to $100 and splits 2 for 1 so that you now have two shares worth $50 each, you naturally expect both shares to go back up to $100. Anchoring informs a lot of our decisions even though we think it doesn't. When professional auditors were asked whether the incidence of fraud is greater or lesser than 10% and then asked what they thought the actual incidence of fraud was, they gave a number that was close to 10%. But when they were asked if it was greater or lower than 1%, they picked a lower number. When asked why they picked that number, they talked about their experience and how many frauds they've encountered. They had no idea their number came from being anchored.

Fascinating.

In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.

Wow. Love it.

All of these bring each other more to mind: here, now, me, us; trend-deviating likely real local events; concrete, context-dependent, unstructured, detailed, goal-irrelevant incidental features; feasible safe acts; secondary local concerns; socially close folks with unstable traits. 

Conversely, all these bring each other more to mind: there, then, them; trend-following unlikely hypothetical global events; abstract, schematic, context-freer, core, coarse, goal-related features; desirable risk-taking acts, central global symbolic concerns, confident predictions, polarized evaluations, socially distant people with stable traits. 

I'm trying to ingest this concept of near/far that Hanson is constantly referring to. I can't help but feel as if, once I understand what he's trying to say, I could explain it much better.