Executive Summary

• The twin perils of Confirmation Bias and The Backfire Effect
• Why the coming market crash is going to be a real face-ripper
• The coming resource crisis is going to be much harder for us than any financial crash
• Steps for responding today to tomorrow’s threats

If you have not yet read Part 1: Make Your Choice: Change By Pain Or Insight, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Why So Hard?

One of the things I struggled with early on was why it was so darned hard to get people to actually change in response to the data in the Crash Course.

Worse, we’re now half-way through the twenty-year period I originally defined back in 2008, and things haven’t changed nearly as quickly as I had thought they would.

As it turns out, I had rather hopelessly (hopefully?) deluded myself with the idea that when people are presented with incontrovertible evidence, that they’ll change their minds and therefore their actions.

I now have a much better appreciation for the fact that information alone causes very few people to change what they do or think.

Inductive reasoning has a few powerful psychological enemies including confirmation bias (when we seek out data to confirm what we already believe), and the backfire effect (when non-confirming data finds us):

The Backfire Effect

The Misconception:When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth:When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm.You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you.

Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead.

(Source)

If we really are in this period of disruptive transformation as I’ve outlined it, then both confirmation bias and the backfire effect are your mortal enemies.