Arjun Khemani

I’ve always been somewhat greatly intrigued by the intricate ways of human thinking. In particular the concept of human bias, perspective, and human error in ways of perceiving the world, attract me greatly. And in the last couple of weeks or so, my curiosity for them has intensified and in turn made me desirous to learn more about the subject of human psychology (if you’ve been reading my recent articles, you’ll know how much I’ve been contemplating <and writing> on human thinking and behavior lately) A little bit of my revived heightened interest comes from the book I’m reading by Hans Rosling⁠— “Factfulness”. It talks a lot about (in fact the whole book is <about>) the 10 kinds of human tendencies that make us go wrong in our worldview. It’s a great book and really sets the reader to re-think their beliefs and their self-evident worldview, and instead in it’s place sets out the foundation of a fact-based worldview for greater beneficial advantages for everyone in any field of today’s complex world (as it always was).

It’s kind of odd, yet at the same time obvious to think that if a person gets their worldview wrong, statistically and factually wrong, then that person will get many things, if not everything in their life as wrong as their perspective of the world allows them to. It’s certainly not good practice to get important things about the world wrong. And there’s evidence that we go “wrong” in our perspective of the world and everything in it because of our biases, which make us look at the world as we want it to look or as the way we are, and not how it really is.

This is why I find human bias as such an intriguing topic. The natural psychological tendency of bias; however it may be born, shaped or influenced distorts the truth. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher (and many others too) was wrong in believing that the world was geo-centric—the theory stating that all planets and the sun revolved around the Earth—and he was proved so by Nicolaus Copernicus, like centuries later. It’s likely that the observations made by Aristotle and the other philosophers were of some leniency and bias toward the theory then later produced (that Earth is the center of the Universe, thereby unique). Human bias can influence scientific and experimental results, at times to a great extent. Biased views can lead to false information, and false realities created by the biased individuals. People from 500 BCE all the way to the 16th century lived a lie, thinking that the amazing place they lived in was the center of the Universe and that all celestial bodies, all stars revolved around the Earth.

This is just one example. But it is a profound one. Like this, there could be so many other false conceptions, led by the evil power of human tendency, creating a false assumption of the world. This is why I want to know more about human tendency. And this is why I want the world to know more about human tendency, so that we can suppress it together. With it, there are lies, without it is the truth. But, at the end we all have this natural tendency with us. And there’s probably a good reason for it. Or maybe not good, but there must be a reason for it.

So the question I want to answer is: How can we see the world as it really is?