Can we challenge our beliefs?
See Minute 2 of “A Private Universe”
How can we build a school that helps us challenge our internal beliefs? “What causes the seasons? Why does Earth have winter?” 23 of 24 Harvard graduates answered the question with “the Earth is farther away from the sun during winter and closer to the sun during summer.” Nobody mentioned the TILT of the earth.
Here is an article in the New Yorker tinyurl.com/21centuryfacts
“Once formed,” the researchers observed, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”
Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted. In this case, the failure was “particularly impressive,” since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from.
Here is Wes Green’s reaction to the article in the New Yorker:
OMG—so much to discuss here! Lemme see... if I can find... something... AH. Here it is. This is a tidbit I transcribed from an article I read a few years ago. (I keep a notebook of stuff I read.) This was written by David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell. It seems salient:
"Each of us possesses certain foundational beliefs—narratives about the self, ideas about the social order—that essentially cannot be violated: To contradict them would call into question our very self-worth. As such, these views demand fealty from other opinions. And any information that we glean from the world is amended, distorted, diminished, or forgotten in order to make sure that these sacrosanct beliefs remain whole and unharmed."
Now, I don't know at what age our opinions harden and we become essentially impervious to new epistemological narratives, but I think Dunning is on to something. And it's a good argument for giving teens passports while their minds are still open.
-- Wes Green, entrepreneur