This is a purely personal opinion, I based it on an article I read recently but with certain additions and changes of my own; some contacts sometimes send me private messages asking why I prefer to use profane language, act funny/sarcastic/ironic or simply be rude to the people who try to set up a “serious debate” — not for nothing have I set “Irreverente Antipático” as my subnick, that is my stance toward any other user of these anti-social networks. My reaction when they come in with their tremendous “intellectual arguments” about a topic — I stress the quotation marks — is the following:

The internet — contrary to what many people claim — has dragged the world into a dark age of knowledge, a golden age of bad information. You can run an experiment: post a picture of a field hunter and just wait a few minutes to see a whole row, waiting list included, “intellectually” and heatedly opining about animal abuse, animal rights, vegetarian diets and such, most of the time parroting a couple of phrases or words from something they saw on a… Desmotivaciones image? without the slightest solid argument (Although when they do give “valid” and lengthy arguments, they’re another breed of people, and I’ll talk about all of that here). When you analyze all the different points of view on a topic, you could say that every time we gain more knowledge or that we’re getting better and better informed. But that’s not what really happens, our neurons make sure that all these heated debates only make us narrower in our way of thinking.

The human brain, or pride, is neither made nor focused on finding truth or logical reasoning, but on winning and always having the “right” of it. You’ve never seen a case where someone shows up and refutes what another person claims with a couple of sentences, and the one who was wrong accepts that their whole life has been based on false beliefs and thanks whoever corrected them — the day that happens, find a way to wake up, because you’re definitely dreaming. Whoever is clinging to an idea, be it a professor, a politician, a student, a religious man, even if you prove it to them with evidence they’ll keep insisting on their erroneous thesis; the process of clinging to one’s ideas seems to be the only reason humans argue.

The argumentative theory of reasoning establishes that human beings didn’t learn to ask questions and offer answers in order to find universal truths, nor to help improve their beliefs so as to make good decisions, but rather they did it as a way to win authority over others. Reason evolved to help us intimidate people into getting what we want. It’s a purely social phenomenon — helping us convince others and being careful when others try to convince us. Truth and accuracy are by no means the central point.

Naturally, the brain, from its primitive state, should have evolved and overcome these “anomalies”, but it hasn’t, because these cognitive flaws are perfectly adapted to a system that works perfectly well. Our evolutionary compulsion is to prevail, even if that means being totally illogical.

On the internet there are tremendous “intellectuals” — and here I put great emphasis on the quotation marks — who, for any debate they get into, grab their browser, open a search engine with more than 10 tabs on the topic they’re debating, and rattle off a hundred book titles, authors, dates, facts, all to feel the great pleasure of winning a discussion. That means there are two reasons someone might argue with you: because they genuinely want to absorb some of your knowledge, or because they’re trying to establish their dominance over you to lower your “status in the tribe” and thus raise their own — an absolutely ridiculous pleasure.

If you’re smart, you know you shouldn’t trust anyone. That’s why we can forgive ourselves for using dishonest tactics to win an argument. We’re sure the other person is “very, very wrong”. The world is so full of ideologies that we have to do everything we can to keep up in terms of knowledge, and that translates into our code for lying. Think about all the people you’ve disagreed with this month. How many of them do you think were deceiving you?

Experts say it’s almost certain that you want to have the truth. It’s called the trust gap, and a scientist sees it emerge every time a human is asked to estimate how trustworthy another one is.

The problem is that when you assume someone is lying to you, you never find out that the one who’s wrong might be you. You just congratulate yourself for having sniffed out the trap from the start.

From a young age we assume people have hidden motives for springing their trap on you, and from that moment on, we can’t lose an argument for the rest of our lives. After all, if we assume that the person we’re arguing with is basing their argument on a lie, the only thing we could do is applaud them, since they’re a very good liar.

It’s impossible to learn anything from a conversation with someone you believe is lying to you. Your arguments are so strong that you switch your brain off before they even start talking. Or are you one of those people who actually listens to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons when they knock on your door?

No matter which side you’re on regarding a belief or ideology, you’ve always played this game, and the only thing you’re doing is giving yourself an excuse to disregard everything the other person argues. You believe all their points are lies, they believe you’re lying to them, so what’s the point of that conversation? Unless you’re on a television show where they’re going to pay you a fortune for winning the debate, it would make no sense at all, nothing more than mere pleasure or pride over something meaningless.

As humans we’re strongly predisposed to criticize without examining ourselves. This is known as the fundamental attribution error. It’s a universal thought process that says that when people do something considered bad that you don’t do, it’s because those people are stupid. But when you do it, it’s totally circumstantial. If you see a friend arrive drunk, it’s because he’s an alcoholic totally out of control. But if you arrive drunk, it’s because, well, you fancied it and needed a distraction. If you automatically dismiss other people’s explanations and call them “excuses”, stop for a moment and think: a life without examination is not worth living…

There are a lot of people who join one of the political sides to support it, and who really have nothing to do with the matter, they just want the chance to join a team, to belong to something. Now think about how much it would hurt them to have to switch sides. That’s why the so-called confirmation bias exists. We read an article in the press that supports what we believe, and we add it to the “I’m right” pile. The news that contradicts what we believe is already part of a well-planned conspiracy by the other side. Experiments have been run in which brain scanners are hooked up to individuals and then a story is read to them pointing out something stupid their favorite politician said or did. The logical parts of the brain stayed switched off, while the emotional parts of the brain lit up. In other words, what they believe isn’t based on what it means logically, but on the emotional/social consequences of their position being wrong.

That’s why we stay entrenched, and the internet makes it worse, because many of your political or social beliefs are scattered all over the place backing up your thinking. You can’t change your mind because many people think like you, and you do everything you can to relate to similar people, “It’s right there in writing, isn’t it? Why back down?” Every inch of your psychology fights against it being any other way.

Technology gives us the possibility of always being wrong. The worrying part is that the very same logical fallacy that keeps the madman from admitting his end-of-the-world prediction over and over again is the same fallacy that drives partisan politics and, therefore, government policy. And that’s why, believe it or not, technology sometimes works against us…

Always think about whether debating is really useful, whether you’re going to win or get something out of it, whether it isn’t more advisable to keep quietly and privately studying your own affairs. There’s also an impulsive need to seek out people or groups with different ideas and go set up “debates”, trusting in the knowledge acquired and starting the debate assuming the others don’t have your intellectual level, because you’ve read X or Y books or know more about a topic (or so you think). What’s the point of starting that debate if you start it thinking the others are inferior to you? Are you some kind of evangelist?

Anyway, and in conclusion: go fuck yourselves, cordially, with love, and respectfully yours: Javier Orozco