George Saunders has been following Trump around the last few months (Saunders is a writer for The New Yorker). He was just on National Public Radio (NPR) here in the US and talked about how Right and Left have gotten so far apart it\u2019s like they\u2019re in different universes.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve followed the neuroscience of political difference for the past few years, but have never heard it stated so simply as Saunders did when trying to explain the different views.<\/p>\n
he said something like this: \u201cI think it hearkens back to cave days. Imagine you have 2 groups \u2013 one the curious group, one the cautious group. The curious group sees a bunch of guys coming toward the cave and thinks, \u201cOh, look, they\u2019re dressed in an interesting way. What\u2019s that they\u2019re carrying and isn\u2019t it interesting the way they talk.\u201d The cautious group looks and says, \u201cWait a minute, what\u2019s that expression on their faces? Are they carrying spears? We better get ready to attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Left and Right, respectively, in case it wasn\u2019t obvious).<\/p>\n
And one more somewhat tangentially related story from NPR, I heard a few days ago, which gives a kind of scary sense of how utterly different other people may be from you even when they seem to be somewhat similar.<\/p>\n
They interviewed a 60 year old woman who only recently discovered she was mildly autistic. When it was explained to her, so much of her life made sense to her, especially her life long difficulty reading social cues.<\/p>\n
So they did an experiment. They showed her a video, then did some minor electrical stimulation of her brain, then showed her the same video. Here was her response.<\/p>\n
She sees a video where this guy has borrowed some CDs and is returning them to a woman. The CD cases are empty. He says to the woman, \u201cIs this alright?\u201d and she says, \u201cYes, it\u2019s alright.\u2019 Then he says, \u201cCan I borrow some more?\u201d And she says, \u201cSure, you can borrow some more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman watching the video is dumbfounded. She can\u2019t understand why the woman isn\u2019t outraged that the guy brought back the CD cases without the CDs and on top of that, she\u2019s going to let him borrow more??<\/p>\n
She then watches the video after the brain stimulation. She has a completely different experience. Initially, she perceived the woman as stating calmly that it was ok that he returned the CD cases without the CDs and that it was fine with her that he borrow more (I don\u2019t know if this will come across in writing \u2013 maybe if you say it out loud it will make a stronger impact). She now, after the brain stimulation, hears the woman saying, YEAH, ITS ALL \u201cRIGHT\u201d!! in an angry, sarcastic tone, and then saying \u201cYEAH, \u201cSURE\u201d YOU CAN BORROW MORE.\u201d (meaning, no way you\u2019re going to steal more of my CDs)<\/p>\n
She couldn\u2019t get over that she had completely missed the meaning of the woman\u2019s statement the first time she watched the video.<\/p>\n
I think if you look at about 98% of conversations on the net where people are arguing (which means, about 100% of those 98% of conversations), this is pretty much what is happening. Almost nothing to do with logic or reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
George Saunders has been following Trump around the last few months (Saunders is a writer for The New Yorker). He was just on National Public Radio (NPR) here in the US and talked about how Right and Left have gotten so far apart it\u2019s like they\u2019re in different universes. I\u2019ve followed the neuroscience of political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ipi.org.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}