Heuristics, Conspiracy Theories and The Virus

March 25, 2020

Hueristics are mental shortcuts that we take to get to the point. The other day I got a call from my friend Richard Hawkey. But my brain took a short cut and read the name on my phone as his buxom hot babe sister Rachael Hawkey. I just scanned the name, got the R and the Hawkey and answered “Hey hot mama” and he was all like Whuuut? My brain took a shortcut and kinda screwed me on that one. At least it was funny.

Hueristics are a great mental tool but they can sometimes lead you astray. It’s great when you meet someone new and in just a few seconds you can conjure up a gut feeling. You can take into account all of your past experiences, everyone you’ve ever met, every scent, sight, feeling, process it all and whammo! Gut feeling. Instinct. And you’re usually right; that guys a creep. The massive processing skill of the brain produces an instant outcome that’s usually pretty accurate. Intuition. It’s kind of cool and the height of processing in the human brain. But it can sometimes lead you astray.

Hueristics can be conscious or unconscious. The unconscious one I did above didn’t work out too well. But there are some conscious ones you can do that generally work pretty well. For instance conspiracy theories. You can consciously dismiss every single conspiracy theory ever and 99% of the time you’ll be right. Because conspiracy theories are a stupid attempt by our simplistic hominid brains to make sense of the complexity in the world we can’t understand.

The coronavirus is not an attempt to overtake our economy. This wasn’t some bio weapon created in a lab. They’re not coming to get your guns, this isn’t an attempt to take away all of your rights, the national guard isn’t coming to take over your town.

The compulsion to jump to unfounded conclusions based on instinct is powerful. But don’t. This is not some big secret plan to manipulate the economy or take your guns or bio terror the whole world. This is a virus and viruses gonna virus, it’s what they’ve been doing for literally a billion years. Overcome your basic animal instinct to jump to erroneous conclusions. The compulsion to ascribe simplistic explanations to unfathomable complexity is hueristically compelling and easy to give in to. But don’t. Don’t panic. Chill. This is biology not conspiracy. Trust the experts and give six feet and wash your hands and cough into your elbow and binge watch the crazy gay tiger guy and yeah, it sucks that you’re out of work right now. But we’re collectively saving millions of lives. Social distancing is a prescription not a conspiracy. It’s sometimes hard to not be stupid. But we can do this. Together. Don’t be stupid.