It's a human tendency to find out the arguments, which support our existing beliefs. We can find out patterns out of nothing. For example, when we observe what happened after the 9/11 incident -we went for a thorough search phase, so that we could find any confirmatory evidence on the caused of that incidence. Seldom did we question, "Are there any other possibilities?" See the video released by Zeitgeist on 9/11 incidence:
I used this video as an example, and I am not saying that, what is shown in the video is perfectly right, but neither am I saying that whatever US government said, was right! The Ideas to ponder is that, "you need to learn to recognize and respect disconfirming evidence if you want to make good judgments." Most people do just the opposite. They seek out evidence that proves them right and ignore or discard evidence that proves them wrong.
Remember the scene from the very famous movie "12 Angry Men":
We tend to misguide ourselves by going too much on either side of the view! Whether its inside the box view or out side the box view! Why can't we see both views (outside and inside the box) at the same time to make a better judgement?
There are millions of such examples ( from our history), and in each of these cases we did the same mistake -"We fell in love with out ideas!". So the lesson is -"Don't fall in love with your ideas". Make them flexible, make them acceptable to new knowledge, information and ideas. Remember had we stuck with the ways we were doing things 50 years ago, we would have been in a different world altogether!
See the last video of this post; Robert Mcnamera's own words about everything from JFK, Vietnam and the Tonkin bay incident, the cold war, Cuba crises...(you can watch all of them here...)
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Remember the scene from the very famous movie "12 Angry Men":
We tend to misguide ourselves by going too much on either side of the view! Whether its inside the box view or out side the box view! Why can't we see both views (outside and inside the box) at the same time to make a better judgement?
There are millions of such examples ( from our history), and in each of these cases we did the same mistake -"We fell in love with out ideas!". So the lesson is -"Don't fall in love with your ideas". Make them flexible, make them acceptable to new knowledge, information and ideas. Remember had we stuck with the ways we were doing things 50 years ago, we would have been in a different world altogether!
See the last video of this post; Robert Mcnamera's own words about everything from JFK, Vietnam and the Tonkin bay incident, the cold war, Cuba crises...(you can watch all of them here...)
It is the Fifth post of many posts that I have written under "Idea to Ponder series" (you can visit all of them here). Stay updated, get updates via email: Click here.
Post written by Anshul Gupta. Follow him on twitter.
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