Anyone who knows me knows that I love reading books with controversial opinions, and even though I classify myself as pretty progressive, I’m also someone who was cancelled in 2019. I’m adamantly against outrage culture, and two of my favorite books from 2021 are Bad News by Batya Ungar Sargon and Woke Inc by Vivek Ramaswamy. Unfortunately, if I ever criticize a book that’s against the nature of “wokeness” for poor arguments and a lack of scientific evidence, some people quickly assume I’m just some social justice nutjob.
A great example is the time Gad Saad blocked me after I wrote a critical review of his newest book The Parasitic Mind. I feel the review was quite balanced and fair, and I even agreed with most of his arguments. Unfortunately, he blocked me without even having a conversation about some of the issues I brought up.
And I get it. As someone who has received thousands of nasty messages, sometimes, your tolerance goes so low that you can’t even tell when someone is trolling or wants an honest conversation. So, when we see someone say certain things or act in a certain way, we assume who they are and make a judgment with our system 1 thinking.
Why? Because it’s in our nature, and that’s kind of the point of this whole piece.
There’s a lot of debate around the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Aside from flawed methodology, it’s also seen as a joke because based on your reaction times, it’s basically a Robin DiAngelo algorithm that calls us all racist. As someone who tries my best to respect the scientific process, I definitely understand the criticisms of the IAT.
The problem is that 100% of the focus goes towards the IAT and completely neglects an insane amount of other studies in the social sciences from respected researchers. I was recently reading an early copy of The Power of Us by Jay Van Bavel and Dominic Packer as well as the new books from Vanessa Bohns, You Have More Influence Than You Think, and The Social Instinct by Nichola Raihani. And whenever I come across some of the topics these books discuss, I regularly think of the research from Paul Bloom’s book Just Babies.
There isn’t a person familiar with the work of anyone on this list that doesn’t respect them. Yet, although they’ve researched and written extensively about our tendency towards tribalism and bias, people tend to simply focus on the IAT.
Like I always say, if you want to debate the degree of bias, misogyny, or racism, let’s do it. But if you want to debate the existence, it’s difficult to take you seriously.
I’m working on writing shorter pieces, so I’m going to give a brief overview of some of the work from these fantastic people that won’t do them justice. So, I highly encourage you to fact-check me by going out and buying their books.
Racist Babies
I really wanted to write an entire book based around the core ideas of this piece, and because of Paul Bloom’s work, I wanted Racist Babies to be the title. Unfortunately (or fortunately) my girlfriend said that was a bad idea, but the idea still stands.
Paul Bloom’s book Just Babies discusses a lot of his research around how the mind develops and when we start getting ideas around morality, fairness, belief systems, and more. In the book, there’s plenty of research that shows how when we’re “just babies” we’re already putting people in groups based on what they look like. In many other studies, they’ve proven that babies prefer adults with a familiar accent and even prefer foods native to their area, which they’re typically fed at home.
So, if we start grouping people and separating them as good or bad and trustworthy or not trustworthy as babies, is it crazy to think we might have some biases? Albeit there are important evolutionary reasons for this, but we can’t neglect the science because we’re afraid the woke patrol will use it as justification for their outrage.
Get Away From Me
I am absolutely loving the new book from Jay Van Bavel and Dominic Packer. I was hooked from the second I started reading it because there’s so much focus on the minimal group paradigm research. If you’re not familiar with this research, basically, the most ridiculous things can make us form ingroup and outgroup ideologies.
The authors conducted and cited extremely interesting research that I haven’t heard about before. Basically, we feel threatened by outgroup members, and they really highlight how it can happen in so many different situations. They found that people feel that “others” are physically closer than they are and there’s a perception of threat. And this isn’t just about race. They did a study with baseball fans from rival teams, and you get the same results.
After hearing about these studies, I immediately thought of the stories of the police killings of unarmed Black men, and it looks like I was on the same page as the authors. To give a real-world example, the authors ask us if it’s at all possible this happened in some of these deaths.
To deny that this is even a possibility seems to take the same mental gymnastics of a conspiracy theorist that refuses to believe the Earth is a sphere or that vaccines cause autism.
Homo Categoricous
I can’t remember where I heard this term, but I loved it. The author was talking about the human obsession to put everything into categories and label things. We do this with good reason too. It’s an important mental shortcut so we’re not using too many cognitive resources.
I actually felt the urge to write this piece as I was reading a chapter from the new Vanessa Bohns book because she highlights this with some of her research. In a chapter titled “Unseen Influence”, she documents the studies of how we put people into groups and develop inferences based on the group we put them in. And when you combine this with some of Nichola Raihani’s research and chapters around tribalism and ingroup cooperation, you see how these can work in tandem.
Am I the Asshole?
I’ve found the best way to get people to let down their ego defenses is to let mine fall down and give examples of how I’ve recognized some of these research results in myself. Now, some will see this as “projecting”, but from my experience, those are typically the people who refuse to adjust their beliefs. I can be the same way, but I do my best to learn, be self-aware, and try to improve.
One of the most recent examples of this came from my conversation with Jonathan Marks for an upcoming episode about his phenomenal book Let’s Be Reasonable. Jonathan is conservative and I’m more of a liberal, but reading his book and agreeing with many of his arguments about issues in Higher Education, I had to update some of my beliefs.
I even told Jonathan in our conversation that when I think of conservatives, I immediately give them characteristics. I think of the most extreme people because their voices are the loudest. I may assume they believe firmly in traditional ideas and that things should always just stay the way they are, or I might assume they’re anti-science and completely irrational.
Much like the above research suggests, while taking mental shortcuts, I can pre-judge people unfairly. This is one of the reasons I love doing my podcast because I can have so many conversations with different people from a variety of ideologies. And although there are many people who argue against certain forms of diversity, there’s plenty of evidence that being exposed to different ideas helps you grow as a person and be less polarized.
A stubborn person may be reading this and thinking, “Pffffft. You might do that, but not me. I’m completely rational 100% of the time. I’m a pure system 2 thinker with an open mind, and you’ll never change my mind on that.”
I was actually having a great conversation with Will Storr this week about his upcoming book The Status Game and we chatted a bit about how beautifully irrational we can all be. What’s more interesting is the self-deception that comes along with it.
Something I learned when I got sober is that many of us addicts are what they call “terminally unique”. We’re think we’re so different and special that it’s destroying our lives. What I realized after some years of sobriety is that this is something most people struggle with. So, if you’re someone who believes you defy human evolution and are the one person who is the exception to all of the research, I suggest you take a long, hard look at your ability to reason.
Is the IAT flawed? Absolutely. Do people take incorrect inferences from the results? Yup. But we need to stop pretending that there isn’t a mountain of evidence from respected researchers that we’re born as a bunch of racist babies. The great news is that we don’t stay that way if we at least acknowledge some of our innate tendencies.
I’ve been working on organizing all the books I’ve read, and I have multiple lists of books on becoming a better thinker. There are lists for thinking, self-deception, biases, and analyzing data. For the rest of the categories, click here.
I’m always open for a conversation and to be shown what I might be missing or where I may be wrong, so feel free to email me at TheRewiredSoul@gmail.com
If racism is predicated on a difference of power between races, how can Black or Asian people be born as a bunch of racist babies? Or do you take a Kendian view of racism?