Misconceptions and ethics

Our misconceptions are used by master manipulators in ways that will not make us proud. It takes a special type of knowledge and mindfulness to resist. For more please read here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Convincing people and con artists

In 2002 a startup I worked in was acquired by a bigger company. I was happy to get my own fair share of money out of the deal, and I was also eager to succeed in the new company. After a month of work, I understood that some things do not add up. Then the CEO gathered all of the employees and explained the company’s strategy. He was talking confidently and passionately, his language was flawless, he was seven feet high, with golden hair and blue eyes. He was convincing beyond all doubt. I was very moved by his speech, and very willing to believe everything he said. I still knew that things do not add up, only now I thought the CEO did not know about it. I waited as long as I needed to vest all my options and left the company. A couple of years later the CEO was in jail for his financial manipulations. He is free now, teaching and lecturing, being as passionate and convincing as ever.

Real things are messy, full of contradictions. Evolution is a theory very hard to believe in, even when there is a very sound scientific research supporting it. It is very hard to accept that we live on a small ball circling a giant fiery inferno somewhere in the cold vastness of space. I cannot even imagine an object called “black hole”, squeezing the time itself in all its glory. Some very smart people doubt that the global warming is caused by CO2. We have many very unlikely theories, that we accept to believe in only because any alternative is even more unlikely.

And then there are very reasonable, very likely things, things we want to believe it, explained by articulated and charming people. And we really want to say: “YES!”, only they are not true. When I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book everything made sense, all observations appealed to my personal experience and common sense and felt like a real discovery, except they did not stand professional examination. A person that is convinced in his beliefs is likely to manipulate data, a person looking for the truth will likely change his own convictions if the data does not support them.

Con artists use convincing rhetorics and manipulate data to make us act in a certain way. If you see a lot of numbers you cannot verify that undeniably point in some direction, you are being manipulated. Con artists use lies, damn lies and statistics: be it their own “conviction”, misrepresentation of other people, selective information, or alternative facts. These lies are told very passionately and articulately, and we really want to believe them, only they do not stand the scrutiny of examination.

The triple filter test

This is a short story I like so much, I bring the full text:

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”
“Hold on a minute,” Socrates replied. “Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”
“Well, no,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and…”
“All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now, let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”
“Umm, no, on the contrary…”
“So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about my friend, but you’re not certain it’s true. You may still pass the test though because there’s one filter left—the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”
“No, not really.”
“Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true, nor good, nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”

Information needs to be true, good and useful. Otherwise, why tell it? Sometimes students have issues memorizing the texts they read. So I ask them to send me the texts. To my amazement, probably a third of these texts does not pass the triple filter. Sometimes the author uses so many complex formulations and abstract ideas, that one needs to read the full book to understand it is about nothing. Other times, the author is so motivational and provides so many ideas that he sounds convincing, only these ideas do not have any verifiable information in them. If you honestly try to read a book and see you cannot remember a thing from it, either you should change your perspective towards the book, or the book is useless and you should not waste your time using it.

Marketing pull

Marketing persuasion is a fair game. Here are some really useful techniques:

• Twisting words. Simply changing a very familiar conversation pattern introducing something totally unexpected has a hypnotic effect on us. It makes us stop our automatic thinking and notice the sentence. Moreover, we get slightly hypnotized very likely to be persuaded. If we are asked to voice our own concerns, each of them is masterfully declined by the salesperson, who has a lot of experience in this sort of conversations.
• Norm of reciprocity. The salesperson offers us something valuable without being asked to. We are psychologically inclined to give something back. And then comes an offer we are not likely to refuse.
• A foot in the door. We agree to a deal with very small monetary value. We get more than we asked for. Then we are offered another deal, this time with a higher value. Will we decline?
• Try it free of charge. Once we have something, we value it twice as much as when we do not have it. The value proposition comes after we try the product for a limited amount of time.
• Time limited exclusive offer. You are given an offer that is scarce and has an expiration day. You are hard pressed to accept.
• Social proof. If many successful people buy a product, so should you.
• Friendship factor. When we are friends with people, we are more likely to do what they want. Being personal and knowing a person is a good way to get more.
• Authority. We are very likely to do something when an authority figure asks us to do it, especially when the authority is wearing a uniform or backing his requests by statistics.

Every business needs to use some or all of these tricks to sell the product. Typically the offer is fair and the price is good. Making deals with people we like is a good thing. The bad thing is our susceptibility to the same methods when they are used by people who do not want to create a win-win scenario. We should have doubts regarding the product: how will we use it, when will it help us? When the case for buying a product is too clear and we have no doubt we need it, it is a good time to stop and check the facts.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness can be a protection for some manipulations. Being mindful we are aware of our own motives and motives of other people, we understand our emotions and can fight them, we get an additional perspective that is always with us and allows to view the situation as an objective observer.

Higher levels of disposition mindfulness predicted higher critical thinking ability. Also, the executive control skills of inhibition and updating were found to be positively related to critical thinking. Interestingly, the positive effect of present-moment awareness on critical thinking was fully mediated by inhibition. However, a more complex relationship emerged… potential candidates include decreases in worry and repetitive thought, greater emotional regulation and positive mood, and the tendency towards acceptance and non-elaborative processing brought about by engagement in mindful attention, each of which may impair critical thinking.

This is a complex way of telling, that the more we control our emotions, the higher the level of discipline, the more accurate will be our evaluation of the situation and how we act.

There is also a darker motive to mindfulness: we start to believe people giving us positive spiritual messages. And we do not stop to ask why they do it since we trust their main motive is to make the world a better place.

Many of the people providing spiritual guidance are great people with pure souls and intentions. However, occasionally, some of these people tend to do despeakable acts. I am not saying you should not trust your mentors, but verify their intentions stay pure throughout your relationships.

Self deception

The best way to convince other people of something is believing in it. We can easily convince ourselves. There are certain signs which show we may be doing this:

• All or nothing. When we see only two choices, we are probably misrepresenting the reality.
• If it happened, it must be true. Some stories are just anecdotes. The y do not have statistical validity. If they do not repeat many times, possibly they are a fluc.
• See the good only or the bad only. Nothing is good or bad, there are good and bad aspects to everything. Seeing only one side is a sign of blindness.
• Personal emotional response. There is probably nothing special about us. If we feel something is personal, we might be missing the bigger picture. If we respond emotionally, we might be unwilling to consider the evidence.

Having a clear ethical compass we may deal with our own misconceptions, and we may be more aware of other people not following their moral compasses.