It’s hard to imagine how
big the universe is since everything that has ever happened to us, has happened
here on earth, everything that we have ever known in the entire our history
happened right here.
But earth in comparison
to the universe is smaller than a grand of sand compare to the desert. In fact,
109 earths would fit inside the sun which is considered one of the tiniest
stars out there.
And guess what! Our entire
solar system is absolutely nothing in comparison to our galaxy because there
are over 100 billion stars out there that are way bigger than our sun.
And what’s even more
mind-blowing than all of this is that, there are around 2 trillion galaxies out
there in the entire universe.
It’s even difficult to
comprehend all of this, and yet the most complicated object in the entire this
universe (as far as we know) is located right here on earth, specifically right
inside your head.
Yes, that’s your brain.
And guess what, your
brain on whom you rely for almost everything, has been cheating you for a while
already, and you probably have not realize that.
How? That’s exactly what
we will find out now.
Unlike other parts of
your body, your brain is in charge of everything that you do. Every action that
you take has to go through your brain first.
You might do many things
at the same time, like walking, speaking, moving your hands, looking around,
digest information, and like other parts of your body, your brain gets tired
and it starts looking for some shortcuts to make this process easier, because
it wants to save energy, so it creates algorithm to make most of its activities
automatic.
You see a nice dude in a
suit, you automatically assume he is a good smart person, although that he
might be the complete opposite. And vice versa of course.
And that’s known as
confirmation bias, your brain is tend to believe in what you already know just
to confirm it.
That’s why it’s really
difficult to win an argument because we naturally look for evidence just to
confirm what we already know and not necessarily the truth.
Although that we have
tons of evidence that smoking is harmful, you will find smokers defending that it’s
not that bad, look there is a guy in some corner of the world who is over a
hundred years old and he smokes, why is he in a perfect health.
He will ignore every
other piece of evidence and solely focus on that one case just to confirm what
he already believes. And that happens to all of us.
In fact, people naturally
defend themselves because it was their choice and that’s known as choice
supportive bias. If you are a mac user for instance, you naturally ignore all
the downsides of using a MacBook and solely focus on its advantages and vice
versa of course.
Because your brain wants
you to feel good about your decisions. Have you ever heard people saying when
they do something wrong - at least I didn’t do that.
Although what they did
was wrong or when your favorite politician candidate does something wrong, you
defend him because you voted for him.
Then there is Bandwagon
Bias People have the tendency to believe in whatever the rest of the people
believe in. A lot of people in United States for example believe that Terrorism
is their biggest threat because that’s what everyone says in the TV, that’s
what your family and friends believe, but if you look at facts, you are more
likely to be killed by a policeman than by a terrorist even though the police
is hired to protect you.
Your brain automatically
assumes than if everyone believe in something, then it must be right because
your brain is looking for shortcuts because it doesn’t want to be involved
again in some deep thinking since that takes a lot of energy.
That’s why we are all
bias in one way or another because that’s how our brains are designed to work. That’s
why you should always be open to other people’s ideas because you might be
wrong without knowing that.
