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Cognitive Dissonance

I argue that much of what we do is to alleviate the pain of cognitive dissonance

Pressures around us make us act before we have considered the position fully.
We mathematically decide/act with the lowest information state we will ever have
Cognitive Dissonance is also backward looking and compares our current beliefs with our previous actions. The brain prefers things that it's seen before and values consistency of actual behaviors over abstract issues that it hasn't encountered personally or physically. Our reasoning mind may have decided that using an iPhone is bad because it uses slave labor to build. However our experience suggests that using an iPhone is good because of all the things we have been getting from it. So our brain prefers the habit that we have formed, rather than the abstraction to higher moral reasoning.
Great surprises exist the opposite way but are more rare. Eating Tony's chocolonely is great, because the chocolate was the best I have had - what a mitzva then to find out that it's also slave free chocolate - an even better reason to buy it!
Because we are forced to act with some minimal amount of information we will always find more information about the things we are doing and whether they comport with more "high level" thinking/ethics that we purport to hold.
What does it say about our society however that each of the things we do, buy etc... we come to find out later that they conflict with what seem to be basic ethic or moral positions?

Copyright (c) 2020 Andrew Kemendo