Certainty Trap
Description
BY ILANA REDSTONE:
"The Certainty Trap refers to a resolute unwillingness to consider the possibility that we’re wrong or that we’re not right in the way we think we are. It has cousins in intellectual arrogance and incuriosity, but those concepts don’t quite go far enough. After all, if I tell someone to be intellectually humble or curious, there’s a tacit assumption that they can identify where they lack those things in the first place.
It turns out that we’re not great at recognizing exactly what it is we should be either humble or curious about. It’s a bit of a paradox in the sense that, if you understand your own need for humility, you’re already halfway to a solution. So how do we tackle a problem we can’t directly observe? We tackle it by learning to think differently — by recognizing that our clue that we’re falling into the Certainty Trap isn’t a feeling of being certain. No, the clue that we’re falling into the Certainty Trap is when we feel the urge to harshly judge and demonize those who disagree with us. When we see the answers as simple, only a stupid or evil person could think otherwise."
(https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/campuses-certainty-problem)