In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we feel bad for the prisoners who have their perspectives controlled by others. We see them as hapless victims being manipulated. However, once the freed prisoner returns to share his new, expanded view of their world, it’s no longer the puppeteers that are managing the reality of the prisoners. It becomes their personal choice to cling to their chains. They don’t want their eyes open to the possibility of a bigger world. The saying, “It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled” captures what Plato’s freed prisoner begins to feel about his mates. He realizes that his co-captives were easier to fool than to convince that they’ve been fooled. He has little luck helping them to see “the light.” Instead, he becomes the object of their ridicule.
Plato’s prisoners show us that we’d rather be comfortable than accurate. Certainty, even under dismal conditions, is preferred to the angst associated with uncertainty. Fulke Greville gave us, “No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.” We see what we want to see. We see what we need to see to feel comfortable. In his book Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish talks about the importance of creating an opportunity to think to make better decisions. Parrish offers several defaults we have wired into us which make clear thinking a challenge. One of these defaults is evidenced in Plato’s prisoners. Instead of thinking, we react. We feel something and then we search for facts to support our feelings and call this thinking. This is the emotional default where emotions override facts. The Canadian/American economist and diplomat, J.K. Galbraith observed, “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof.”
The prisoners feared the wide-eyed wonder of their freed friend and sought an interpretation that justified their feelings over the facts as presented. The philosopher Karl Popper observed, “For if we are uncritical, we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.” We decide, then detail how we’re right. We see what we want to see based on our preexisting beliefs. Popper also noted that, “True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” We actively avoid learning, shielding our eyes and covering our ears from the truth to preserve the comfort of where we are.
This idea was echoed in the Bible and applied to the Israelites that Moses sought to liberate from their slavery under the Pharoah of Egypt. Of those that had the chance to flee, only 20% followed Moses. The overwhelming majority weren’t looking for change. They preferred to dance with the devil they knew. Even of those that did follow Moses, many got grumpy along the way and were willing to turn around and flee freedom back for the shackles of slavery. We don’t like change. We don’t like the experience of encountering experiences or ideas wildly different from our own. Often, we don’t want to see new perspectives. We prefer to cling to the comfort of our own certainty. It’s both easier and feels better to think we understand all we need to know. As Epictetus several thousand years ago observed, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
When faced with uncertainty, we seek the quickest, cleanest, and easiest explanation. Not necessarily one that’s based on facts. We want the comfort of closure more than the effort of learning and finding the truth. Once the uncertainty has been resolved, we then seek to defend our interpretation and discount any encounter with evidence to the contrary. We don’t want the bright light of reality shone on us. We prefer the delusions of our fantasies. In an article, Morgan Housel writes, “What you believe to be true is influenced by how much you want it to be true. The more something helps you deal with uncertainty, the lower the bar is for you to believe it’s true.”
Whether we recognize the limitations of our lens or not, we don’t like the uncertainty of not knowing. Housel observes, “Everyone has an incomplete view of the world. But we form a complete narrative to fill in the gaps.” When in doubt, we make things up. Our desire for certainty, for closure, is so strong that we’ll fill in the blanks to close the loop. We believe life is a math formula that we can figure out with certainty. Hindsight helps us think that the world is explainable. Looking back at past events, causal links appear obvious to us. The world makes sense looking in the rearview. However, even if true, this doesn’t mean that looking forward can be done with the same level of clarity.
Housel writes, “Coming to terms with how much you don’t know means coming to terms with how much of what happens in the world is out of your control. And that can be hard to accept.” Housel continues, “Wanting to believe we are in control is an emotional itch that needs to be scratched… The illusion of control is more persuasive than the reality of uncertainty.” Experts, pundits, and prognosticators cloak us in the comfort of their certainty. Their conviction in their forecasts soothes us despite their overwhelmingly pitiful predictive records. Uncertainty is crippling. If we can’t see for the fog or the surface upon which we’re standing seems unstable, we’re reluctant to move. A sense of certainty allows us to function. This is important. Nonetheless, we must guard against relying on a false sense of certainty to our detriment.
We believe what we want to believe not what’s true. We believe what makes us feel good and what’s easy. We want to close the loop of uncertainty as quickly as we can and then dig in our heels validating our position. That’s the extent of “reasoning” for many of us. The founder of Visa, Dee Hock, said, “We are built with an almost infinite capacity to believe things because the beliefs are advantageous for us to hold, rather than because they are even remotely related to the truth.” When our actions are fueled by fictions instead of facts, we’re likely to end up flat on our back. It might feel good, but we’re not going to accomplish much good.
This framework for recognizing that what we see isn’t all there is, yet this limited view is more comfortable than the full truth has been in many stories. The blockbuster movie, The Matrix, is about exactly this idea. The presentation of the blue and the red pill to Keanu Reeves’ character, Neo, by Morpheus is giving Neo the choice to continue living with the comfort of the limited reality he’s experienced or to irreversibly escape the confines of his past and see a deeper, richer, and possibly darker world that is far more complex than he ever could have imagined. Morpheus encourages Neo to choose the red pill to experience “how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Thankfully, for the success of the movies, Neo makes the choice to take the risk of seeing the real world. Neo, who was blind to reality, now can see. Nothing about this “seeing” is easy. Neo is now like Plato’s freed prisoner.
Wary of this weakness to reason our way to defending feelings Plato countered with, “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing and that is that I know nothing.” Humility helps. Whatever we think we know for however long we’ve known it isn’t set in stone and guaranteed to be correct. Accepting this helps us be open to considering other perspectives or at least tolerating them. Moreover, accepting this is encouragement to explore other ideas. It should allow us to cultivate curiosity. I don’t know everything. There’s more to learn. What other perspectives can I seek out? The Universe of what we don’t know is far greater and ever expanding relative to the tiny little planet of knowledge that we do occupy. Recognize that our defaults exist and that they may not always serve. Seek to manage this tendency by questioning your beliefs and seeking disconfirming evidence.
Summary Points:
Uncertainty is uncomfortable.
We prefer comfort to accuracy.
Filling in the blanks reduces discomfort.
Defending existing beliefs is easier than changing our mind.
Be aware of our default defenses.
Humility helps overcome our intransigence.
Act with intention and seek out additional perspectives as well as question existing beliefs.