Open-mindedness and Non-attachment to Views

Consider that one of the greatest obstacles to our well-being is our attachment to views — that we are right and others are wrong. As a result, we find it hard to change our views and to hear others. This can result in dogmatism, fanaticism and even violence both physical and emotional. At a personal level, our attachment to views may be one of the greatest obstacle to our own well-being and enlightenment because of the difficulty we face relinquishing deep-rooted beliefs in an inherently existing ‘self’ or ‘I’.²

In this primer we look at three areas related to this issue. First, we look at what we mean by attachment and non-attachment to views and their relationship to engagement and detachment. We clarify that non-attachment is not **de-**attachment but rather un-attached engagement and open-mindedness.

Second, we present the scientific evidence that we are attached to views: that we resist changing our views despite strong, contrary evidence. We discuss various reasons why that might be and the impact of this materially and spiritually.

Third, we explore the deeper connections with ontology and our ideas of self in philosophy and Buddhism.

What are Attachment and Non-Attachment?

Ordinarily we think of attachment as something positive or even neutral: I’m attached to this old watch because my father gave it to me, or the boat is attached to the shore by a rope. And conversely to be unattached offers sounds a bit negative. For example, if you say “I’m unattached” it means you are without a romantic relationship — whereas to be attached is to have one (observe that common slang for getting married is to “get hitched” which roughly approximates to to “get attached”).

And this sense is still there when it comes to views. Not to be attached to a view is to be de-tached. Whilst there can be a positive sense of dispassionate and independent as in “the judge considered the arguments with a sense of detachment”, there is also the sense of uninvolved and uncaring: “the man watched the dogs attack the fox with an air of detachment”.

Thus our use of attachment may be surprising. In ordinary english attachment is often used in as positive context: we are attached to places, people and things that we like and care about. Conversely, the opposite of attachment — detachment — has a mildly negative sense of emotionless unconcern, anomie, lifelessness — “he kissed her with an air of detachment”, “he lived detached, absent, as if something were permanently missing”.

Our use of attachment and non-attachment are somewhat special and rather specific. It derives from a Buddhist tradition. In that tradition “attachment” is the translation for key concept around the way that we “cling” to things: experiences, things, ideas, even consciousness. It can be found as a key phrase in translations of the Four Noble Truths, the core teachings of the Buddha³:

1. Life involves suffering

2. Suffering arises from attachment [also translated as “craving”,

   “clinging to” …]

3. Suffering ceases when attachment ceases

4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

The special usage also explains why we use *non-*attachment rather than de-tachment as the contrast to attachment. Non-attachment, which is our focus here, is not detachment. It is not simply an absence, a lack of attachment. Rather it is something positive, a positive choice that makes true engagement and commitment possible.

Consider an analogy with listening. When we listen to another person we can listen in several ways. One way to listen is to do passively. It is listening just as not talking but without really engaging with what the person is saying. What they say comes in our ears but we do not really hear it or listen to it in a true sense. This is “detached” listening. On the other hand, there are times when we truly listen and listen deeply. This is an active not a passive act. Where actively engage ourselves with what they are saying, opening our mind to it, positively welcoming what they are saying.

Common garden examples of attachment

Research on Attachment to Views

Misinformation, False Beliefs and Cognition

If we look around us: at newspapers, at our friends, even in our own lives, it becomes clear that misinformation is ubiquitous, and that false and erroneous beliefs are widespread and persistent.

For example, over half of all voters in Republican Primaries in 2011 were “birthers” who believed that President Obama was not born in the United States despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Or the fact that a sizeable minority in Britain and the United States now believe, erroneously, in a link between vaccination and autism thanks to a single 1998 study which was widely reported at the time but subsequently discredited. This has had a large impact for public health as parents refuse to vaccinate their children resulting in a significant number of preventable deaths and illness.⁴

There is now a sizeable body of scientific research on why false beliefs persist.

What are we interested in?

• Conclusive evidence that a) people have false beliefs b) that these

  persist in face of presentation of contradictory evidence c) why
  that is — what cognitive and ontological mechanisms are at work d)
  what practical recommendations would come out of this for creating
  open-mindedness and non-attachment to views

• Questions: framing in terms of “false” belief and misinformation

• People don’t change views -> they discard ignore or dismiss

  contradictory evidence -> they do this because it conflicts
  with / threatens the security of their identity (ego) -> leads
  us into ontology -> buddhist attachment to views -> becoming
  more open-mindedness requires addressing our attachment ->
  buddhist practice (e.g. meditation) as this generates awareness
  and equanamity, which then can lead to a falling away of our
  attachment

  • Guarding the senses

A real world impact of “attachment” (Lewandowsky et al. 2012, pp. 106-107):

It is not just the facts, it is the narrative we tell about the facts (“I don’t want to be right”):

Relation to self-identity

Denial vs healthy scepticism

A Loving Father Rejects His Son

From The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh, pp.87-89

The Buddha told the story of a merchant, a widower, who went away in a business trip and left his little boy at home. While he was away, bandits came and burned down the whole village. When the merchant returned, he didn’t find his house, it was just a heap of ash. There was the charred body of a child close by. He threw himself on the ground and cried and cried. He beat his chest and pulled his hair. The next day, he had the little body cremated. Because his beloved son was his only reason for existence, he sewed a beautiful velvet bag and put the ashes inside. Wherever he went, he took that bag of ashes with him. Eating, sleeping, working, he always carried it with him.

In fact, his son had been kidnapped by the bandits. Three months later, the boy escaped and returned home. When he arrived, it was two o’clock in the morning. He knocked on the door of the new house his father had built. The poor father was lying on his bed crying, holding the bag of ashes, and he asked, ‘Who is there?’ ‘It’s me, Daddy, your son.’ The father answered, ‘That’s not possible. My son is dead. I’ve cremated his body and I carry his ashes with me. You must be some naughty boy who’s trying to fool me. Go away, don’t disturb me!’ He refused to open the door, and there was no way for the little boy to come in. The boy had to go away, and the father lost his son forever.

After telling the story, the Buddha said, ‘If at some point in your life you adopt an idea or a perception as the absolute truth, you close the door of your mind. This is the end of seeking the truth. And not only do you no longer seek the truth, but even if the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you refuse to open it. Attachment to views, attachment to ideas, attachment to perceptions are the biggest obstacle to the truth.’

Links

• I Don’t Want to Be Right - New Yorker

  http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-dont-want-to-be-right

• Memory for Fact, Fiction, and Misinformation: The Iraq War 2003

  Psychological Science March 2005 16: 190-195

• Nyhan, Brendan, Jason Reifler, and Peter A. Ubel. 2013. ‘The Hazards

  of Correcting Myths About Health Care Reform’: Medical Care 51
  (2): 127–32. doi:10.1097/MLR.0b013e318279486b.
  http://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/Abstract/2013/02000/The_Hazards_of_Correcting_Myths_About_Health_Care.2.aspx

  • Context: Misperceptions are a major problem in debates about

    health care reform and other controversial health issues.
    Methods: We conducted an experiment to determine if more
    aggressive media fact-checking could correct the false belief
    that the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels.”
    Participants from an opt-in Internet panel were randomly
    assigned to either a control group in which they read an
    article on Sarah Palin’s claims about “death panels” or an
    intervention group in which the article also contained
    corrective information refuting Palin.
    Findings: The correction reduced belief in death panels and
    strong opposition to the reform bill among those who view
    Palin unfavorably and those who view her favorably but have
    low political knowledge. However, it backfired among
    politically knowledgeable Palin supporters, who were more
    likely to believe in death panels and to strongly oppose
    reform if they received the correction.
    Conclusions: These results underscore the difficulty of
    reducing misperceptions about health care reform among
    individuals with the motivation and sophistication to reject
    corrective information.

• Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and

  Successful Debiasing Psychological Science in the Public Interest
  December 2012 13: 106-131,
  http://psi.sagepub.com/content/13/3/106.full

• Lord C, Lepper MR, Ross L. Biased assimilation and

  attitude polarization. The effects of prior theories on
  subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and
  Social Psychology 1979; 37: 2098-2110.

  • http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.372.1743&rep=rep1&type=pdf

  • People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are

    likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a
    biased manner. They are apt to accept "con- firming" evidence
    at face value while subjecting "discontinuing" evidence to
    critical evaluation, and as a result to draw undue support for
    their initial posi- tions from mixed or random
    empirical findings. Thus, the result of exposing contending
    factions in a social dispute to an identical body of relevant
    em- pirical evidence may be not a narrowing of disagreement
    but rather an in- crease in polarization. To test these
    assumptions and predictions, subjects supporting and opposing
    capital punishment were exposed to two purported studies, one
    seemingly confirming and one seemingly disconfirming their
    exist- ing beliefs about the deterrent efficacy of the
    death penalty. As predicted, both proponents and opponents of
    capital punishment rated those results and procedures that
    confirmed their own beliefs to be the more convincing and
    probative ones, and they reported corresponding shifts in
    their beliefs as the various results and procedures
    were presented. The net effect of such evaluations and opinion
    shifts was the postulated increase in attitude polarization.

• Hart, P. Sol, and Erik C. Nisbet. 2012. ‘Boomerang Effects in

  Science Communication How Motivated Reasoning and Identity Cues
  Amplify Opinion Polarization About Climate Mitigation Policies’.
  Communication Research 39 (6): 701–23.
  doi:10.1177/0093650211416646.

  • http://crx.sagepub.com/content/39/6/701

  • The deficit-model of science communication assumes increased

    communication about science issues will move public opinion
    toward the scientific consensus. However, in the case of
    climate change, public polarization about the issue has
    increased in recent years, not diminished. In this study, we
    draw from theories of motivated reasoning, social identity,
    and persuasion to examine how science-based messages may
    increase public polarization on controversial science issues
    such as climate change. Exposing 240 adults to simulated news
    stories about possible climate change health impacts on
    different groups, we found the influence of identification
    with potential victims was contingent on participants’
    political partisanship. This partisanship increased the degree
    of political polarization on support for climate mitigation
    policies and resulted in a boomerang effect among
    Republican participants. Implications for understanding the
    role of motivated reasoning within the context of science
    communication are discussed.

• Fishing a Superfund Site: Dissonance and Risk Perception of

  Environmental Hazards by Fishermen in Puerto Rico

  • http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1991.tb00603.x/full

  • Risk perception studies show that individuals tend to

    underestimate significant risks, overestimate negligible ones,
    and distrust authorities. They also rely on a variety of
    strategies or heuristics to reach decisions regarding their
    risk-taking behavior. We report on a survey of fishermen and
    crabbers engaged in recreational and subsistence fishing in a
    Puerto Rican estuary (near Humacao), which has been declared a
    “Superfund site” because of suspected contamination by
    mercury, and at ecologically similar control sites. Nearly
    everyone interviewed at the Humacao site was aware of the
    mercury contamination, but either denied its importance,
    believed the contamination was restricted to a distant part of
    the estuary, or assumed that the estuary would be closed by
    the authorities if the threat was real. All site-users
    consumed the fish and crabs they caught

• Garrett, R. Kelly, and Brian E. Weeks. 2013. ‘The Promise and Peril

  of Real-Time Corrections to Political Misperceptions’. In
  Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Computer Supported
  Cooperative Work, 1047–1058. CSCW ’13. New York, NY, USA: ACM.
  doi:10.1145/2441776.2441895.

  • http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2441895

  • Computer scientists have responded to the high prevalence of

    inaccurate political information online by creating systems
    that identify and flag false claims. Warning users of
    inaccurate information as it is displayed has obvious appeal,
    but it also poses risk. Compared to post-exposure corrections,
    real-time corrections may cause users to be more resistant to
    factual information. This paper presents an experiment
    comparing the effects of real-time corrections to corrections
    that are presented after a short distractor task. Although
    real-time corrections are modestly more effective than delayed
    corrections overall, closer inspection reveals that this is
    only true among individuals predisposed to reject the
    false claim. In contrast, individuals whose attitudes are
    supported by the inaccurate information distrust the source
    more when corrections are presented in real time, yielding
    beliefs comparable to those never exposed to a correction. We
    find no evidence of real-time corrections
    encouraging counterargument. Strategies for reducing these
    biases are discussed.

• Lewandowsky, Stephan, Michael E. Mann, Nicholas J. L. Brown, and

  Harris Friedman. 2016. ‘Science and the Public: Debate, Denial,
  and Skepticism’. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 4
  (2): 537–53. doi:10.5964/jspp.v4i2.604.

General Cognitive Mechanisms

• Belief in the Law of Small Numbers. AMOS TVERSKY and

  DANIEL KAHNEMAN. Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Psychological
  Bulletin, 1971, Vol. 76, No. 2. 105-110.

  • Abstract - People have erroneous intuitions about the laws

    of chance. In particular, they regard a sample randomly drawn
    from a population as highly representative, that is, similar
    to the population in all essential characteristics. The
    prevalence of the belief and its unfortunate consequences for
    psvchological research are illustrated by the responses of
    professional psychologists to a questionnaire conceming
    research decisions.

  • http://pirate.shu.edu/~hovancjo/exp_read/tversky.htm

Buddhism and Ontology

• The Emerging Role of Buddhism in Clinical Psychology: Toward

  Effective Integration
  [PDF]
  *** TODO - finish reading

Appendix: Braindump

• Central role of Buddhism in all of this

• Buddhism and non-attachment and misunderstandings

• **Addiction: extreme pathological attachment. Substance and

  behavioural addiction. What about “ontological addiction”:** the
  unwillingness to relinquish an erroneous and deep-routed belief in
  an inherently existing ‘self’ or ‘I’ as well as the ‘impaired
  functionality’ that arises from such a belief

Buddhism, non-attachment and misunderstandings …

People seem to hear the 4NT and attachment part as: “life is about the cessation of suffering, detachment is the way to do, just hook yourself up to a morphine drip”. And normally react to that like: “No, i don’t want to have a lobotomy, I want to live and experience and i accept suffering etc etc. See e.g. for a fairly nuanced look at this which still seems to go down this route: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2010/03/secular-buddhism.html

E.g. you have translations like:

• Life is suffering.

• The origin of suffering is attachment.

• The cessation of suffering is attainable.

• The path to the cessation of suffering is eightfold path

In my view, this is an misinterpretation. It equates non-attachment with detachment rather than engagement.

Mis-interpretation

• Getting a lobotomy

• Living in a hut in the forest

• Having no possessions

• Never doing what you enjoy because you get attached to it …

The truth is peace and the ultimate freedom can be obtained right here within everyday life. So then if stripping yourself of all possessions and worldly responsibility isn’t the point of non-attachment, what is?

Metaphors

Clench / unclench

Attachment ... Detachment
    |

    V
Engagement

People think of non-attachment = opposite = detachment = apathy, disengagement, absence etc …

Not so!

Non-attachment != Detachment but rather = Engagement without attachment

Random Stuff

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2010/03/secular-buddhism.html

In the world of clinical psychology and social work, among attachment theorists and clinicians who study crying and grief, there are some who make a distinction between "sad crying" and "protest crying." "Protest crying" expresses the refusal to accept loss. It treats the fact of loss as a terrible injustice, and demands an immediate return of whatever it is that's been lost. It says, "I don't want this, and I don't accept it." (Not coincidentally, "protest crying" is more likely to elicit a hostile or irritated reaction from others, since it's out of proportion, disconnected from reality, and makes people feel manipulated.)

"Sad crying," on the other hand, expresses despair over loss. It expresses our recognition that whatever's been lost is really gone, and expresses our feelings of grief about it. It says, "I don't want this, but I understand that this is how it is." (And it's more likely to elicit sympathy and compassion and attachment from other people… the good kind of attachment, the clinical- psychology "connecting with others" definition of attachment, not the bad Buddhist definition.)

Appendix

Cognitive Dissonance

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Festinger/index.htm

Einstellung Effect

Crudely: Prior experience gets in the way of finding new ways of doing things? (Attachment to existing knowledge)

The counter-intuitive possibility that prior knowledge can have a negative effect on

future performance is a theme in a range of areas of psychology that at first sig

ht might seem unrelated. For example, in negative transfer paradigms previous experience make it more difficult to adapt to a new setting than it would be without such experience.

http://dspace.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/2276/1/Einstellung-Cognition.pdf

Why Good Thoughts Block Better Ones: The Mechanism of the Pernicious Einstellung (set) Effect

Nice Example of Retained Beliefs

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html

Some years ago I participated in a test of applied kinesiology at Dr. Wallace Sampson's medical office in Mountain View, California. A team of chiropractors came to demonstrate the procedure. Several physician observers and the chiropractors had agreed that chiropractors would first be free to illustrate applied kinesiology in whatever manner they chose. Afterward, we would try some double-blind tests of their claims.

The chiropractors presented as their major example a demonstration they believed showed that the human body could respond to the difference between glucose (a "bad" sugar) and fructose (a "good" sugar). The differential sensitivity was a truism among "alternative healers," though there was no scientific warrant for it. The chiropractors had volunteers lie on their backs and raise one arm vertically. They then would put a drop of glucose (in a solution of water) on the volunteer's tongue. The chiropractor then tried to push the volunteer's upraised arm down to a horizontal position while the volunteer tried to resist. In almost every case, the volunteer could not resist. The chiropractors stated the volunteer's body recognized glucose as a "bad" sugar. After the volunteer's mouth was rinsed out and a drop of fructose was placed on the tongue, the volunteer, in just about every test, resisted movement to the horizontal position. The body had recognized fructose as a "good" sugar.

After lunch a nurse brought us a large number of test tubes, each one coded with a secret number so that we could not tell from the tubes which contained fructose and which contained glucose. The nurse then left the room so that no one in the room during the subsequent testing would consciously know which tubes contained glucose and which fructose. The arm tests were repeated, but this time they were double-blind – neither the volunteer, the chiropractors, nor the onlookers was aware of whether the solution being applied to the volunteer's tongue was glucose or fructose. As in the morning session, sometimes the volunteers were able to resist and other times they were not. We recorded the code number of the solution on each trial. Then the nurse returned with the key to the code. When we determined which trials involved glucose and which involved fructose, there was no connection between ability to resist and whether the volunteer was given the "good" or the "bad" sugar.

When these results were announced, the head chiropractor turned to me and said, "You see, that is why we never do double-blind testing anymore. It never works!" At first I thought he was joking. It turned it out he was quite serious. Since he "knew" that applied kinesiology works, and the best scientific method shows that it does not work, then – in his mind – there must be something wrong with the scientific method. This is both a form of loopholism as well as an illustration of what I call the plea for special dispensation. Many pseudo- and fringe-scientists often react to the failure of science to confirm their prized beliefs, not by gracefully accepting the possibility that they were wrong, but by arguing that science is defective.

Speculation on Why We Are Attached to Views [Game Theory and Evolutionary Biology]

Why do we have such strong commitment to views. In particular, why do we seem to emotionally involved in what we believe: finding ourselves angry and upset when our beliefs are threatened? (Think of that common agreement to have no religion or politics at the dinner table or in bars because it leads to unpleasant disagreements — even violence).

Here I’m going to offer up some suggestions. These are a bit tongue in cheek:

Commitment problem

Basic idea: emotional “attachment” to our views is a solution to a commitment problem of credibility with others.

Abe and Ben are hunter gatherers. Abe says to Ben: I’ve seen lots of nice Moose over that hill.

Should Ben believe Abe and spend a day trekking over the hill to find the Moose? After all:

A. Mistaken

a. Abe could be talking out of his ass (he just says stuff like

b. Yes, he has some evidence but not a lot

B. Lying

If “talk is cheap” then Ben probably should not believe Abe as there is no reason that Abe has very high credibility — one of those three options is probably true.

However, suppose instead that talk is not cheap: that Ben knows that Abe really likes to be right. That he gets upset and angry when he is wrong, or, that gets really guilty and stressed. Then that fact really adds weight to Abe’s claim. After all if Ben does go over the hill and finds no moose there will be an emotional cost for Abe.

=> This makes Ben more likely to believe Abe.

And, of course, this emotional cost to being wrong and payoff to being right will not just be limited to the location of Moose. It will naturally spread to include all beliefs and opinions we hazard.

This will quickly become a barrier to updating one’s views and opinions if it is associated with “being wrong”. Such commitments to one’s pre-existing views and opinions will even spread to abstract ideas like belief in God. It may become so emotionally welded to our sense of identity and self that it is strong enough that we will kill for our views and opinions — and admire those who do.

Furthermore, such strong feelings create problems for changing our views especially when combined with the inevitable uncertainty of life. To to back to our story: perhaps the moose are not always in the same place, so the moose being absent when Ben goes over the hill does not necessarily mean that Abe was mistaken and Abe has a strong reason to interpret the data that way. With uncertainty we all now we have a valid reason to ignore and even discard new data points that are inconsistent with our pre-existing beliefs.

Aside: lying. The above explanation talks more to option (A) case of genuine mistake. However, the logic also applies in the lying case. Lying would also potentially have evolutionary benefits — Abe wants Ben to go to the wrong place so that Abe gets food and Ben does not etc. However, to lie well requires you to be credible. Once again either having or being able to fake a real emotional cost to being wrong is valuable. In addition, with lying the ability to deceive yourself is very valuable — the best liars are the ones who believe their own lies. Thus, the lying option would also encourage a mechanism for deceiving ourselves. This mechanism would contribute even more to our tendency to ignore or dismiss evidence which contradicts our pre-existing views.

Background: Commitment Problems

Suppose two robbers Abe and Ben rob a jewellery store. After the robbery they need to split up to reduce their risk of being caught. In addition, it is best if only one of them looks after the loot. In addition, Abe has all the contacts needed to sell it.

However, Ben is worried that if Abe has the loot then he may just run off it with himself. What can they do?

The issue here is what game theorists like to call a time inconsistency problem: at the moment just after the robbery the best thing is for them to split up and only one of them to hold on to the loot. But once they have done that, whomever has the loot has an incentive to make off with it all themselves. If they cannot solve this issue they may be forced to do something less optimal: split up the proceeds right now even though that exposes them to more risk and they won’t get as good a price, or to stay together to sell the proceeds together which is even riskier.

What is really wanted here is way for Abe to make a credible commitment to Ben that he will not run off. This is good for both Abe and Ben — they will both end up with less risk and get more money.

A credible commitment for Abe needs to involve something with a greater cost than the benefit of ripping Ben off and taking all the loot for himself. One option might be that Abe’s daughter is married to Ben’s son. In that case, ripping Ben off will cause huge harm to his family. Another option might be that Abe knows Ben is a crazy guy who will stop at nothing if he is taken advantage of, that Ben would track him down and kill him — even if that meant risking huge jail time — just to get even if Abe ripped him off. Though it might sound bad, Ben being crazy in this sense would actually be good for Abe as it would provide a way for Abe to make a credible promise to Ben — Ben would know that Abe knew that he is a crazy guy and would trust Abe not to rip him off.

The other classic example is nuclear weapons. Remember Dr Strangelove and the Russian’s Doomsday Machine

A classic issue in game theory is how to solve commitment problems.