🤔📣 How We Form Beliefs: Thinking Like Scientists, Fans, Lawyers, and Fanatics

Much of the social divisions we experience today arise because we focus too much on where a person stands on a particular spectrum (left-right, conservative-liberal, pro-life-pro-choice) rather than on how they arrived at that position in the first place.

In his excellent new book, Tim Urban suggests that it's more useful to focus on the latter. That is, to look at how humans generate ideas and beliefs.

We can simplify the different ways into four categories, from the most sophisticated to the most primitive. And remember, we all move between these four depending on the situation and the belief being questioned.

Thinking like scientists, fans, lawyers, and fanatics.

Thinking like a Scientist

When we form beliefs like a scientist, we seek the Truth (with a capital "T"). We start at a certain point and follow the evidence we find.

We start at A, and all possibilities are open to reach B. None is more attractive than the others.

The default position of the scientist is "I don't know," and they apply the two steps we learned in school to generate knowledge.

First, formulate a hypothesis. The scientist gathers pieces of information from the widest variety possible, even including those crazy or uncomfortable ideas that feel wrong. Nothing is left out. Then, they evaluate the quality of those pieces of information and discard those from dubious sources. Finally, they take the most relevant pieces and generate a hypothesis (a possible position).

Drawing a parallel between pieces of information and Lego pieces, the scientist looks at all the pieces, keeps the most valuable ones, and builds a small test Lego. That is their hypothesis.

But they don't rest easy. They know that for that hypothesis to become knowledge, it has to go into the "ring" and be tested against opposing ideas. They must test their hypothesis.

Many hypotheses come with biases and simplifications. The scientist "puts gloves" on their ideas and actively seeks dissent to test them.

After several rounds in the ring, if their hypothesis survives, or better yet, strengthens, then the scientist begins to treat that idea as knowledge. Always open to a better idea coming along and knocking it out.

Thinking like a Fan

No sports fan likes their team to win by cheating. Generally, they are in search of the Truth, but their fanaticism pushes them to want their team to win.

Consciously or unconsciously, the fan already has a preference for one of the options.

Like the scientist, the fan formulates a hypothesis and then tests it, but along the way, confirmation bias plays its part.

When we think like fans, during the hypothesis formulation stage, instead of seeking variety, we might do cherry-picking of information that supports our ideas. We are very skeptical of sources from the "other team" and very open to adding ideas from "our team." We build a hypothesis Lego more or less tailored to fit.

The merit of the fan is that they still take their hypothesis to the ring. They want to test their hypothesis. Only this time, they are watching from the outside, wanting their idea to win. There is a small emotional connection to their hypothesis.

Giving massages to their Lego's shoulders and cheering it on to win.

At the end of the day, the fan ends up exactly where they started: in their preferred position B.

It's worth mentioning that fans are not as stubborn as one might think. If you present them with enough evidence that their position is incorrect, they are open to changing their mind. They want to pursue the Truth, but sometimes the emotion of the game gets the better of them.

Thinking like a Lawyer

The lawyer and the fan are similar in that both are conflicted between confirming their ideas or reaching the Truth. But for the fan, this is still a game. They want to win, but if conditions push them, they also want to reach the Truth. In the case of the lawyer, their job is to win.

The lawyer starts directly at B, and it's their job to find evidence to support that position.

When you start from a certain position, everything that follows is decided.

You don't seek to generate a hypothesis from the information collected; instead, the process is reversed. You seek information that supports the hypothesis you have already chosen. This process acts more as a stage that strengthens the initial hypothesis. All the information collected seems to support the belief you want to defend.

The lawyer also takes their hypothesis to the ring. Only they are the kind of person who, regardless of what you argue, is impossible to budge an inch from their stance. More than a ring, it feels like a courtroom. "Maybe I'm wrong" is a phrase that never crosses our minds when we form beliefs like a lawyer.

Unfortunately, when we think this way, we deprive our brains of their primary function: learning new things. Worse yet, we populate our beliefs with ideas that are likely incorrect (boxers who haven't stepped into the ring).

Thinking like a Fanatic

For a fanatic, ideas are not an experiment to be tested. Much less a boxer to be validated by blows in the ring.

No.

Ideas are like a newborn child.

We believe they are the most beautiful thing in the world, even when a newborn looks more like an alien than a human being.

The stages of the scientific process make no sense to the fanatic. A parent doesn't need to go through a hypothesis generation process to think their child is the best in the world. They just know it. With total certainty.

If someone tells you your child is beautiful (confirms your idea), you would completely agree with that person and consider their opinion valuable in all areas. On the contrary, if someone insults your child, you wouldn't even stop to evaluate their opinion to see if it has any merit; you would simply dismiss them as a horrible person with terrible opinions.

When we treat all our ideas this way, we see reality in a distorted way. What the scientist sees as a world full of complexity and nuances, the fanatic sees only in black and white. Where the scientist sees doubts, the fanatic sees certainties.

As I said at the beginning, we all move between the four levels practically every day. It depends on the person we are discussing with or the idea we are questioning.

The most complex part is that much of this operates on the unconscious level. While reading the previous paragraphs, we think, "what a pity for those fanatics, I am clearly a scientist," but the reality is that we are lawyers and fanatics in many beliefs we hold. Often, we assume we are moderate in an idea when, in fact, we are at one of the extremes, shouting at the moderate that they are an extremist.

It's not easy, but the first step is to make the unconscious conscious. And that was the goal of this post.

PS: The central idea of this post and the drawings were borrowed from the book "What’s our problem" by Tim Urban (author of my favorite blog). Go buy it NOW. Excellent book.

PS2: I have nothing against the legal profession. On the contrary, when you have to defend someone in front of a judge, the most sensible (and morally correct) thing is to seek information that validates your position. However, in the field of idea/knowledge generation, it's not a good idea.