Saturday, April 23, 2011

A Ciência da Estupidez Humana

O socialismo fracassou como sistema politico e econômico e matou mais de 100 milhões de pessoas no século passado. Isso é um fato. Apesar disso ainda há gente que acredita que o socialismo pode dar certo. Como explicar tanta estupidez? A resposta da neurociência é a de que :
Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.
We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Talvez o motivo real para que muitos continuem acreditando no socialismo seja mesmo a hipótese de K. Popper: somos uma espécie composta de boçais bem-intencionados.