Lastly and IMHO, this concept is one of the most important of all as it directly affects our resistance to choosing change as an option. It's a two sides of the same coin type deal, a coin I'll call the 'it won't work'. I struggle to articulate this in a decent manner but here goes anyway:
The other side of the coin is economics, the financial and deals more with systems and such instead of behaviour and choices. Massive multinational corporations provide a good example here.
Given the statement:
"removing barriers to private ownership of forest land will actually help to preserve these forests."
Immediate response:
"the big corporations would just buy up all this land and proceed to do bad things to it. It won't work"
The two immediate problems here are:
The general behaviour of the humans making up our modern society, that is, the individual's reactions to everyday events, are a result of, among a few other things, a century or so of 'environment(al) conditioning' (EC from here forward), with a century representing a general top level of human lifespan. Each cohort gets direct influential input from itself and the cohorts immediately before and after, an age overlapping type of deal:
EC here is in the form of such things as promotion of existing social norms, state run education systems, religious institutions/beliefs, the constant barrage of input from all facets, media or otherwise, parental influence, influence that itself was in turn influenced by EC and so on.
While there are exceptions to be sure, in large part this EC not need be looked on like some sinister brainwashing TV plot, instead, a high level view of a way in which humans process input from their senses and experiences. In turn, groups of humans exert a kind of collective influence on the group itself, steering it in generally the same direction like a ship's crew on a destinationless Sunday sail.
On average, humans are not big fans of change, a pretty well known observation. When a requirement for considering change comes along, one bigger than a change of socks, it’s easy to just respond with "it won’t work" followed by a simple declaration that people will react in this or that particular manner, usually against the idea, then ramble off a bunch of reasons based on observation of this point in time and that’s, as they say, that . . . "it won’t work" and the terrible boogeyman of change is avoided once again.
Instead though we must look at our place in the universe as it really is: a complex web where single changes can, and do, have wide ranging effects, the ripple effect. In the case of profound, fundamental and widespread change, such as redesigning a monetary system, there will be a massive impact on humanity, immediately and over time, on how it behaves, reacts, interprets, opinionizes, ultimately invalidating the 'it won't work' argument as the parameters are now new, EC has changed and so will human behaviour. A possible outcome can certainly be suggested at by observation, reason and logic but it will still remain unknown until it, well, becomes known. It won't work in this context tries to claim a definte outcome where none can be had.
The point I'm once again labouring to make is that profound change will have a wide reaching impact on how an individual's decision making process works and how they feel in general, overall. In the context of the topics on this site, particularly liberty and the monetary system, the impact will be positive because the change focus (liberty/monetary system) was also positive. Behaviour modification will be rapid as humans tend towards speedier adoption of things viewed as positive and helpful vs negative.
- in the zero to pre-teen range, parents, their close friends, the prevailing conditioning of their time, etc. all formulate an influence on an individual.
- in the teenage/adult years, the individual gets input from their own cohort/peer group.
- as an individual ages, they get input from their children, the social norms being accepted by them, etc.
EC here is in the form of such things as promotion of existing social norms, state run education systems, religious institutions/beliefs, the constant barrage of input from all facets, media or otherwise, parental influence, influence that itself was in turn influenced by EC and so on.
While there are exceptions to be sure, in large part this EC not need be looked on like some sinister brainwashing TV plot, instead, a high level view of a way in which humans process input from their senses and experiences. In turn, groups of humans exert a kind of collective influence on the group itself, steering it in generally the same direction like a ship's crew on a destinationless Sunday sail.
On average, humans are not big fans of change, a pretty well known observation. When a requirement for considering change comes along, one bigger than a change of socks, it’s easy to just respond with "it won’t work" followed by a simple declaration that people will react in this or that particular manner, usually against the idea, then ramble off a bunch of reasons based on observation of this point in time and that’s, as they say, that . . . "it won’t work" and the terrible boogeyman of change is avoided once again.
Instead though we must look at our place in the universe as it really is: a complex web where single changes can, and do, have wide ranging effects, the ripple effect. In the case of profound, fundamental and widespread change, such as redesigning a monetary system, there will be a massive impact on humanity, immediately and over time, on how it behaves, reacts, interprets, opinionizes, ultimately invalidating the 'it won't work' argument as the parameters are now new, EC has changed and so will human behaviour. A possible outcome can certainly be suggested at by observation, reason and logic but it will still remain unknown until it, well, becomes known. It won't work in this context tries to claim a definte outcome where none can be had.
The point I'm once again labouring to make is that profound change will have a wide reaching impact on how an individual's decision making process works and how they feel in general, overall. In the context of the topics on this site, particularly liberty and the monetary system, the impact will be positive because the change focus (liberty/monetary system) was also positive. Behaviour modification will be rapid as humans tend towards speedier adoption of things viewed as positive and helpful vs negative.
The other side of the coin is economics, the financial and deals more with systems and such instead of behaviour and choices. Massive multinational corporations provide a good example here.
Given the statement:
"removing barriers to private ownership of forest land will actually help to preserve these forests."
Immediate response:
"the big corporations would just buy up all this land and proceed to do bad things to it. It won't work"
The two immediate problems here are:
- this response presupposes the existence of big corporations, that's our reality now, a result of the systems and institutions we have in place at this snapshot in time. With the changes we are discussing here on this site however, especially in the areas of government and monetary reform, these multinationals would not be able to exist in the first place and so the response statement would not be the case at all.
- in an unhampered free market world built on liberty, the benefits of operating like jackass are drastically reduced whereas the benefits of efficient responsible operation are drastically enhanced also rendering the traditional responses invalid.
Term:
Confirmation Bias
Definition:
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is of particular current interest because of the increasing polarisation between left-wing and right-wing political viewpoints, and the gullible acceptance of the current rapid spread of fake news.
Source Reference:
Confirmation bias - Wikipedia