This week’s post is more on the experimental side of things. Mainly because I ended up binge-watching the last 2 seasons of Money Heist in 3 days. There’s no specific direction that I want to go with this, but I’m just going to braindump and see if I can pull out some insights.

In this week’s episode of The Sohail & Yasin Podcast, we talked about how our beliefs are formed and what we can do to take advantage of our brain’s natural storytelling process. I highly recommend checking it out, not just because it’s a self-plug, rather I think it’s really informative and I learned a lot from Yasin throughout the discussion.

Flawed Perception

We don’t know what reality is, and that’s a fact. We know from Cognitive Psychology that everything we see is merely our perception of what’s actually present, and there’s no real way of knowing if everyone sees the same thing. There’s a simple but truly mind-bending thought experiment that really opened my eyes to this phenomenon. If you’ve already heard it, sorry.

Think about the color red. You have a mental image of what that color looks like, and if you saw it, you’d be able to recognize it. You won’t confuse the color red with the color blue, and despite the shade of red, you’d still be able to tell it isn’t blue, green, or any other color.

However, when I think of the color red, how do you know we’re thinking of the same thing? Let’s make it more concrete. Say there’s a red box in front of both of us. Both of us see that the box is red, and we identify it as a red box. But how do we know we’re each seeing the same color? What if my whole life, I was seeing what you would say is the color blue, and because everyone else calls it red, I’ve just called it so? What if my eyes are perceiving a completely different color than you, but I know that society calls it red, and so I call it red too?

What about looking into a mirror, or even your iPhone’s selfie camera. Are you actually seeing yourself? How can you know?

The real trip is that there’s no way to prove it. We share common processes in perceiving things correctly, namely the Gestalt Principles, but each of us is born with our own unique eyes, brain, and pathways to identify things. The takeaway here is the acknowledgment that we don’t really have 20/20 when we talk about perception. The self-awareness of that fact allows us to take more time and effort in analyzing our perceptions.

In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates describes people chained to a wall their whole lives, facing a blank wall. Behind them is a fire, and objects are passed in front of the fire so that their shadows are cast on the blank wall that these people are facing. These shadows are then given names, and that is as much as the chained people know. In parallel with the examples we’ve already discussed, Socrates tries to tell us that we can’t derive true knowledge from our perceptions. All our lives, we’re essentially seeing these named shadows, but we’re unable to turn around and see them for what they actually are.

When learning about Cognitive Biases and heuristics, it’s even more apparent how flawed we are in our day to day activities. From the clichéd but common Fundamental Attribution Error to some that are more subtle like the [[Illusory Truth Effect]], it’s easy to see that our perceptions are also very unreliable. We place so much trust in our instincts and knowledge, yet we fall victim to these ingrained biases.

Importance of Moderated Skepticism

It seems pretty pessimistic to view life as a series of illusions, no? It might seem too negative to doubt our ability to perceive the world, but in reality, it’s what gives us the upper hand.

Skepticism, as defined by philosophy, is the belief that certain knowledge is impossible. The idea that one can’t ever be certain in knowing something is true or not. This should already ring bells in your head because that’s essentially what we’ve been talking about. Due to our cognitive biases and our brain’s inability to perceive reality as it is, we inherently develop a sense of skepticism. But it’s important to note that this is only developed if we KNOW our perceptions are flawed. By learning more about our brain’s functioning, we develop an awareness of falling victim to our mind’s eye.

When we make decisions, we rely on our developed mental models to guide us. What we know from experience, our knowledge of the situation, and our intuition about a scenario is what funnels into choosing one route or another. But if we start to add a little skepticism in our lives, if we start to realize how biased our brains actually are to certain stimuli, we’ll stop ourselves from being too confident in a certain path. It leads to questioning, more analysis, and potentially a better solution.

As Muslims, we shouldn’t let this skepticism lead into the deen. We do have Yaqeen (certainty) in our faith and we know that to be true, this is why I titled this section moderated skepticism. For me, knowing this is grounding. Knowing that I can’t trust myself to make decisions gives me a deeper reason to turn to Allah for help and guidance, with the comfort in knowing that this part of my life is certain, and in the grand scheme of things, is the only part of my life that matters.

Learn About Yourself

Cognitive Biases Codex has a chart that details a lot of common and important cognitive biases. This past week, I started a page in my Roam Research app to run through this codex. Every day, I’m choosing one to read about, take some notes on, pinpoint where in my life I’ve used this bias, and how I can help myself be more aware of and counter these fallacies. It’s been interesting, it only takes about ~15 minutes of my mornings, and is a great way to expand my knowledge base. I highly recommend trying it out.

The awareness of our inherent biases is what leads us to better decisions, because we develop a sense of skepticism towards trusting our instincts, leading us to think more analytically and potentially choose a better solution.