STREET DOGS

The human mind is a lot like the human egg, which has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort. And it doesn’t just catch ordinary mortals; it catches the deans of physics.

According to Max Planck, the really innovative, important new physics was never really accepted by the old guard. Instead, a new guard came along that was less brain-blocked by its previous conclusions. And if Planck’s crowd had this commitment tendency that kept their old inclusions intact in spite of disconfirming evidence, you can imagine what the crowd that you and I are part of behaves like. — Charlie Munger

Once the mind has accepted a plausible explanation for something, it becomes a framework for all the information that is perceived after it. We’re drawn, subconsciously, to fit and contort all the subsequent knowledge we receive into our framework, whether it fits or not. Psychologists call this “cognitive rigidity”. The facts that built an original premise are gone, but the conclusion remains — the general feeling of our opinion floats over the collapsed foundation that established it. Information overload, “busyness” and emotion all exacerbate this phenomenon. They make it harder to remain open-minded. — Ryan Holiday

You might read this and think, “I’m open-minded. I can do that.” But open-mindedness is usually viewed as an acceptance that other people might be right, rather than an active process of discovering where you’re wrong. Those might seem like the same thing, but they’re not. Being open to the possibility of others being right is passive. Real openmindedness is trying as hard as you can to disconfirm your own ideas. — Morgan Housel