Something we rarely think much about…

I have just played two games of chess online. My opponent’s name was Santosh Kanavalli. Santosh lives in Coimbatore, India. 7617 kilometers away, if I am to trust the Playchess server. The games were blitz-games, 3 minute-games. Average lag-time/move was 0,52 seconds.

100 years ago, not one in ten Danes ever got to cross the national border during their entire life. Today, we don’t even need to, even if many of us do, some people more than once a year: We don’t need to because we can communicate effortlessly with complete strangers living literally thousands of kilometers away. Many of us, having grown up in an environment like this and never having experienced things the way they were before, don’t even spare a thought as to how “unnatural”, how amazing this is – we just take it for granted. I know I do. But then I catch myself at it, thinking how ungrateful and arrogant such an attitude is.

Libertarians often blame socialists for taking too much for granted – sometimes just by stating the obvious, ie. by pointing out that most people just don’t work as hard when you double their marginal tax rate. But socialists aren’t the only ones doing this. We need to keep in mind this is an error most humans quite often fall prey for. The world is a remarkable place, and there’s nothing “natural” about the current state of affairs – try to remember this, even if it’s hard.

Yes, I know – one might have heard the same words from a 70+ year old man lecturing his grandchildren. The fact that some people might think of this as a valid objection is in itself revealing; as it is, my experience tells me that old people often have important things to tell us. However, we rarely listen. Or we forget to ask. Or we ask too late. So in the end, we repeat their mistakes, until we grow old ourselves and try to warn our own children not to do the same. In vain. The circle of life… Status quo bias is one of the most important and influential biases of all, that and confirmation bias are probably the two most important of all.

So don’t just nod and then move along. Give it some thought. Simple truths are often the most important ones, but because of the very fact that they are simple, we often don’t give them the attention they deserve.