We start to feel protective not only about the big question but also about all the individual strands. And then, when an individual strand is attacked, it makes us feel protective about the bigger question and that's where all the acrimoniousness of the debates come from. And so, in terms of ... there's a couple of concepts that I was thinking about when you said your previous question, which is, we're very good at being critical of things that don't fit with what we believe but we're not very good at being critical with things that naturally slot into the bigger sets of beliefs that we already have about a topic. So when we are confronted with a new piece of evidence that fits in, it's as if our brain asks the question, "Can I believe this?" If it doesn't fit in with what we already believe, if it clashes with that, it's as if our brain asks the question, "Do I have to believe this?" And so, that really sets in motion a very different way of you dealing with a piece of evidence. If it fits in, if it confirms what we believe, there's no critical investigation. If it clashes, we start to try and poke holes into it. And that's why, what, in that debate that you just described, happened. It's that people, automatically, the most wrong thing that they can see is the thing they pick up on and then they attack the other side for that. But, probably, within any difficult debate, there are little bits of the puzzle that people get wrong, where they over-egg their case or something like that. Another concept that's interesting that fits in here is the concept of motivated reasoning. So that's a concept from psychology where it has been known for quite some time that when people become very passionate about something, they stop reasoning about it in what we would normally call the cold rational way. And we start to engage in hot reasoning, in emotional based reasoning. And within motivated reasoning - it's called motivated reasoning because we have a strong motivation for our reasoning process to reach to conclusion that fits with what we already believe. And so, the more passionate we become engaged in a topic, the more we are prone to motivated reasoning, and the lower the quality of our reasoning process, the more we start to pull in all of these different bits of knowledge that we think are convincing but that are to the other side completely wrong. And that means that these difficult debates are often, there's often a lot of fluff hanging around them, a lot of really bad arguments on both sides of the debate. Interesting, because you said the two sides and this course is dealing entirely with two sides, it's just dealing with did Shakespeare, we call him Shakspere of Stratford to separate him from Shakespeare the author, did he write the works attributed to him or was it someone else? So we are really looking at that and there's a polarity there. But of course, as soon as you ask the question, "Did Shakspere write Shakespeare?", the other thing comes in, "Well, if not him, who did?" And what we're not doing on this course is looking at all the different candidates, and there are many. And what I've noticed is that people, as soon as they get some doubt about it being Shakspere of Stratford, they almost immediately put someone else in the place. So they start building a case for an alternative candidate, because obviously, someone, one or many people wrote these works. It seems to me that human beings just want certainty and immediately start committing to an individual candidate. And so, in fact, there are multiple sides, (when we allow that) so you get Oxfordians, and Derbyites, and Marlovians, and Baconians, who all agree that it probably wasn't Shakspere or Stratford but they all disagree about who it was. So, then you get more problematic argument there because of people going to certainty. Is there a way that people can - and maybe once people have become really certain, then that might be very hard to dislodge - but is there a way of people dwelling in uncertainty? Can they just stay with the uncertainty and be more skeptical about everything? What would you advise as a way of trying to - it's hard to police your own thoughts, but - what would you advise as a way of trying dwell in uncertainty? Well, I think the best way to deal with that issue is to see yourself taking those first steps of a particular pyramid, because you may well become convinced that Shakspere of Stratford wasn't the person who wrote it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to automatically pick sides on any of the other persons. And so, you can be aware of the first steps you're taking and the first little bit of the pyramid you're descending. The further down you go, the harder it becomes because the more it looks like the truth to you. And so, why would you even question the truth? We are not really good at doing that. But, so, those first steps people can sort of say, "Okay, hold on, I'm starting to feel a little bit too passionate about this. I will try to tone down the rhetoric that I use when I'm talking with other people about this." And perhaps that then leads us to be less sort of wanting to be driven to certainty. Because it's partly the rejection that we're receiving from people who don't agree with us that drives us down that pyramid, that wants us to be ever more certain and have ever more evidence that we believe we can whack the other side with on the head, or the different parties in this debate, because as you said there are different groups in this. So it might be that on that occasion, if we have more constructive conversations with other people, that we feel less the need to be so certain about having an answer to that particular question. So the thing there is to avoid arguments, avoid that kind of conflict. You can have discussions but if it gets heated - because that's where you are likely to step up your certainty and become really invested in this side of it - so the answer is, if you see someone on the other side getting very like they want to have a fight about it, just to back off and just go, "Okay, because... I'm going to let it go", rather than end up being really invested in becoming more certain, and then losing the ability to see other possibilities. Because think that's what happens, isn't it? You get into your certainty and then become blind to other possibilities. So avoid conflict, essentially, of that kind. Yes, avoid conflict but also understand, because of course the emotions that we have, when our views are being challenged, don't go away by understanding where they come from. And it's not because you know about cognitive dissonance that you don't feel that feeling of discomfort when you are in a situation where someone challenges your cherished beliefs. But what we can do is choose to respond differently to it. So we can say, for instance, when we do feel a pang of anger when someone is talking to us, rather than responding very quickly online in this angry response, we can say, "Hold on, I know this feeling, I've been here before. Let me step away from it for maybe a few hours or a day, think carefully about what that person, where that person is coming from, where that comment is coming from and then see if I can give them more constructive comments that then doesn't spark his or her angry response towards me." Because it's those feelings of anger at being misunderstood and of being misrepresented that really are the ones that drive us towards more certainty. And then you will feel if you manage to do that a little bit, that perhaps the conversation becomes a bit more amicable. And if the conversation becomes amicable, it can be heated and passionate without being acrimonious and negative. So there are two ways of using these insights from neuroscience and psychology. One is to bolster your own belief that you're right and the other side is wrong because, see, look, I'm really right and they're having cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias and they're motivated reasoners. And that's of course not the way to use it, because then it just becomes an additional set of arguments why we're right and the other side is wrong. The way to use it is to question yourself and to reflect on your own assumptions and your own interactions with other people. That's a much more constructive way of using it because that will allow us to make the debates less negative and less "You're an idiot", "No, you're an idiot." And that is totally what I encourage people to do. Thank you so much Kris. Really helpful.
