Bigthink
If people are irrational, how can we agree on anything?
It is actually from the perspective of the irrationality; it is actually very hard for people to reach agreement. If you accept the idea that my reality is different in your reality, how do we fight about the facts? The facts are not something out there, the facts is what we are experiencing. So, I think about from many Israeli’s perspective is—will I be able to watch an event a bomb, a terrorist activity, assassination, anything, and they truly be to view it from the same perspective as a Palestinian. And my conclusion is that we would not.
I want to give a very trivial experiment that can illustrate this. So, we give people two glasses of beers to try. One is a regular beer, and one is beer with balsamic vinegar which we call the MIT brew. And people, taste both of those and we say which one do you like more, which one do you to full glass off. In turns out that in this condition that beer with the balsamic vinegar taste better to most people, so most people go for it. That is the objective reality. Now, what happen if we introduce pre-conception. What happen if we tell people this is regular beer this beer with balsamic vinegar, drink it? Drink as much as you want, and then tells which one you want.
What will happen? Will the pre-conception overwhelmed, the experience? The answer is yes. Under those condition, it does not matter, how much drink beer people drink. They hate the one with the balsamic vinegar. What is happening here is when you expect something to be terrible, your mouth is actually tasting it as terrible. Again our expectation changes our physiology we see something different. You know, it is something that is every sport fan always sees. All right, he is always referees against your sporting team, and if somebody else is sitting in the room and they are fan of a different sports team they will see the referee doing the opposite.
Now, if you take this seriously, what does it mean for two parties? Israelite, Palestinian or whatever it is, sitting together on a table and trying to negotiate, it means that the reality they are going to negotiate about is going to be colored very differently for each of them. In fact, so, much that it is going to be impossible to bridge that. So, what is my solution, my solution is that we cannot overcome that. We cannot overcome the power of expectation on our own experience but if we recognizes and we admit it we might be willing to accept that a third party should make more decision. And in fact, instead of arguing about who was right and who was wrong, saying we understand we are biased therefore we are going to give to a third party to make a decision for us.
So, the moment they take hold, there is no way back. So, if you think about he emotions and if I sit now here I think about the future, I create a situation where I would not be tempted. For example; I usually try not to eat dessert in restaurants but when the waiter comes with the dessert tray, I have always falling into temptation. Right now, go to restaurant and I say to the waiter, do not show me the dessert tray. I can overcome emotion. But it is a trick around the emotion. If he comes anyway with the dessert tray it is going to be very, very hard to overcome it.
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