Humans are prone to tunneling, the more intelligent the person is the more precise would be his justification for tunneling.
Here is how tunneling is defined:
First Problem:
Given a piece of information, man would make an assumption/forecast or estimate. Basically he would make a perception based on the data. Now the problem is that he wouldn't really be confident about his perception if the information is too less. As we increase the information provided, the confidence in the perception increases linearly. As the confidence increases, then so does the precision and we start adding details to our perception.
Second Problem:
As you make a perception, then that perception becomes contagious and humans start to think in groups. The first perception influences the second perception made by someone else and the First Problem spreads like a disease.
Here is a real life example. 100 years ago, Jews were persecuted by Christians but lived in relative harmony in Ottoman Empire. 100 years later, Jews are loved by Christians and persecuted by Muslims. Historical perceptions not only tunnel but these perceptions flip flop.
An increasing information makes you more confident in your perceptions and people rarely question these perceptions due to the high confidence level.
Whenever we read a book which negates are previous perceptions and allows us to form new ones then we religiously believe in these new perceptions. Now increasing information doesn't lead to an increase in perception but leads to more confusion as at any time the information provided would be incomplete. I have been talking to atheist recently and I soon realized that they had really high confidence levels in their "rational method", yet when I asked some serious philosophical questions related to episteme and incompleteness of information then they rarely had any coherent replies.
Here is how tunneling is defined:
First Problem:
Given a piece of information, man would make an assumption/forecast or estimate. Basically he would make a perception based on the data. Now the problem is that he wouldn't really be confident about his perception if the information is too less. As we increase the information provided, the confidence in the perception increases linearly. As the confidence increases, then so does the precision and we start adding details to our perception.
Second Problem:
As you make a perception, then that perception becomes contagious and humans start to think in groups. The first perception influences the second perception made by someone else and the First Problem spreads like a disease.
Here is a real life example. 100 years ago, Jews were persecuted by Christians but lived in relative harmony in Ottoman Empire. 100 years later, Jews are loved by Christians and persecuted by Muslims. Historical perceptions not only tunnel but these perceptions flip flop.
An increasing information makes you more confident in your perceptions and people rarely question these perceptions due to the high confidence level.
Whenever we read a book which negates are previous perceptions and allows us to form new ones then we religiously believe in these new perceptions. Now increasing information doesn't lead to an increase in perception but leads to more confusion as at any time the information provided would be incomplete. I have been talking to atheist recently and I soon realized that they had really high confidence levels in their "rational method", yet when I asked some serious philosophical questions related to episteme and incompleteness of information then they rarely had any coherent replies.
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