In 2013, a team of researchers held a math test.
The exam was administered to over 1,100 American adults, and designed, in part, to test their ability to evaluate sets of data.
Hidden among these math problems were two almost identical questions.
Both problems used the same difficult data set, and each had one objectively correct answer.
The first asked about the correlation between rashes and a new skin cream.
The second asked about the correlation between crime rates and gun control legislation.
Participants with strong math skills were much more likely to get the first question correct.
But despite being mathematically identical, the results for the second question looked totally different.
Here, math skills weren’t the best predictor of which participants answered correctly.
Instead, another variable the researchers had been tracking came into play: political identity.
Participants whose political beliefs aligned with a correct interpretation of the data were far more likely to answer the problem right.
Even the study’s top mathematicians were 45% more likely to get the second question wrong when the correct answer challenged their political beliefs.
What is it about politics that inspires this kind of illogical error?
Can someone’s political identity actually affect their ability to process information?
The answer lies in a cognitive phenomenon that has become increasingly visible in public life: partisanship.
While it’s often invoked in the context of politics, partisanship is more broadly defined as a strong preference or bias towards any particular group or idea.
Our political, ethnic, religious, and national identities are all different forms of partisanship.
Of course, identifying with social groups is an essential and healthy part of human life.
Our sense of self is defined not only by who we are as individuals, but also by the groups we belong to.
As a result, we’re strongly motivated to defend our group identities, protecting both our sense of self and our social communities.
But this becomes a problem when the group’s beliefs are at odds with reality.
Imagine watching your favorite sports team commit a serious foul.
You know that’s against the rules, but your fellow fans think it’s totally acceptable.
The tension between these two incompatible thoughts is called cognitive dissonance, and most people are driven to resolve this uncomfortable state of limbo.
You might start to blame the referee, complain that the other team started it, or even convince yourself there was no foul in the first place.
In a case like this, people are often more motivated to maintain a positive relationship with their group than perceive the world accurately.
This behavior is especially dangerous in politics.
On an individual scale, allegiance to a party allows people to create a political identity and support policies they agree with.
But partisan-based cognitive dissonance can lead people to reject evidence that’s inconsistent with the party line or discredits party leaders.
And when entire groups of people revise the facts in service of partisan beliefs, it can lead to policies that aren’t grounded in truth or reason.
This problem isn’t new— political identities have been around for centuries.
But studies show that partisan polarization has increased dramatically in the last few decades.
One theory explaining this increase is the trend towards clustering geographically in like-minded communities.
Another is the growing tendency to rely on partisan news or social media bubbles.
These often act like echo chambers, delivering news and ideas from people with similar views.
Fortunately, cognitive scientists have uncovered some strategies for resisting this distortion filter.
One is to remember that you’re probably more biased than you think.
So when you encounter new information, make a deliberate effort to push through your initial intuition and evaluate it analytically.
In your own groups, try to make fact-checking and questioning assumptions a valued part of the culture.
Warning people that they might have been presented with misinformation can also help.
And when you’re trying to persuade someone else, affirming their values and framing the issue in their language can help make people more receptive.
We still have a long way to go before solving the problem of partisanship.
But hopefully, these tools can help keep us better informed, and capable of making evidence-based decisions about our shared reality.
At the temple of the fisherman, Quexo, the village shaman, looks out over the ocean and frowns.
It’s a still morning– unusually still, and the lack of wind is the latest in a series of troubling signs.
The year is 1400 BCE.
Quexo’s village sits in the dusty, treeless desert between the towering Andes and Pacific Ocean.
The villagers live off the sea, harvesting reeds, drying them in the sun, and using them to build fishing boats.
Every day in the summer, the men set out on these boats to hunt shark and other fish while the women harvest shellfish and sea urchins.
In winter, storms bring powerful waves, which cross the vast ocean unobstructed to detonate on these shores.
Most years, Quexo’s village catches more than enough fish.
But this year, the winds have died and the fish have dwindled.
Quexo has seen this pattern before: the fish disappear, then the violent rains arrive, causing flash floods that dissolve mud bricks and wash away settlements.
He needs to stop the bad weather before the storms come— his only hope is a special ritual he’s been planning.
Quexo spends much less time in the ocean than the other villagers.
He became a shaman after seeing a sign in the sea one morning— like his father and grandfather before him.
This morning, he walks to the nearby sacred mountain as the sun rises.
There, he gathers ceremonial cactus and herbs like “horse tail,” “stonebreaker," and valerian, along with the mineral hematite.
Back in the village, everyone is preparing to leave for a religious festival at a large temple inland.
The festival marks the beginning of what is usually the season of abundance, but with the signs pointing to storms, Quexo isn’t feeling too celebratory.
Whole families travel to the festival, where they camp for a few days.
They’ve packed seaweed, carved bones, gourd bowls, reed mats, and other goods to trade in the market around the temple.
Quexo inspects the goods to make sure everything is of the finest quality.
He brings the herbs he gathered to trade for cinnabar, a mineral that comes from the highlands in the Andes.
He needs cinnabar for his ritual to ward off the storms.
Around lunchtime, the sprawling temple rises out of the desert ahead.
People have come from all along the coast and the foothills.
The women handle trade transactions— they’re looking for cotton and ceramics.
Men aren’t usually allowed to do the trading, but shamans are an exception.
Though Quexo is a man, during rituals he becomes half man, half woman, and this ambiguity makes his role more flexible outside ceremonies too.
Quexo can’t find any cinnabar in the market, so he heads to the main temple, dodging children playing in the plaza.
He puts on his ceremonial garb: red face paint, earrings, and a necklace of shark’s teeth and vertebrae.
Inside, the ceremonies are already underway, and the shamans have drunk the sacred cactus drink.
Many of them are Quexo’s friends from festivals over the years, but he doesn’t see the mountain shamans who would have cinnabar.
He begins to panic.
If the highland shamans don’t show up, his only option will be to make the long walk into the mountains.
It’s a dangerous journey that takes five days, precious time he doesn’t have to waste.
But perhaps he has no choice.
He refuses the sacred cactus and sets off toward the mountains.
As he leaves the settlement behind, he sees a group approaching.
He recognizes them as highlanders by their llamas.
He dashes toward their shaman.
Barely pausing to say hello, he offers him hematite, dried seaweed, and empty shells to grind up for lime and chew with coca leaves.
In return, the other shaman gives him the precious cinnabar.
With the key to his ritual in hand, Quexo heads home to the temple of the fisherman in hopes of turning the tide.
My name is Stuart Duncan, but I'm actually probably better known online as "AutismFather."
That's me on the internet.
I know the resemblance is uncanny.
(Laughter) But I'm going to talk a little bit today about Minecraft.
That's my Minecraft character.
If you don't know the game very well, don't worry too much about it.
It's just the medium that I used at the time to fill a need.
And what I want to talk about applies to pretty much every situation.
So about four years ago, I started a Minecraft server for children with autism and their families, and I called it "Autcraft."
And since then, we've been in the news all around the world, on television and radio and magazines.
Buzzfeed called us "one of the best places on the internet."
We're also the subject of an award-winning research paper called "Appropriating Minecraft as an Assistive Technology for Youth with Autism."
It's a bit of a mouthful.
But you get the idea, I think.
So I want to talk a little bit about that research paper and what it's about, but first I have to give you a little bit of history on how the server came to be.
Back in 2013, everybody was playing Minecraft, kids and adults alike, with and without autism, of course.
But it was the big thing.
But I saw parents on social media reaching out to other parents, asking if their autistic children could play together.
And the reason is that when they tried to play on public servers, they kept running into bullies and trolls.
When you have autism, you behave a little differently sometimes, sometimes a lot differently.
And we all know a little bit of difference is all you really need for a bully to make you their next target.
So these terrible, terrible people online, they would destroy everything that they tried to make, they would steal all their stuff, and they would kill them over and over again, making the game virtually unplayable.
But the worst part, the part that really hurt the most, was what these bullies would say to these kids.
They'd call them rejects and defects and retards.
And they would tell these kids, some as young as six years old, that society doesn't want them, and their own parents never wanted a broken child, so they should just kill themselves.
And of course, these kids, you understand, they would sign off from these servers angry and hurt.
They would break their keyboards, they'd quite literally hate themselves, and their parents felt powerless to do anything.
So I decided I had to try and help.
I have autism, my oldest son has autism, and both my kids and I love Minecraft, so I have to do something.
So I got myself a Minecraft server, and I spent some time, built a little village with some roads and a big welcome sign and this guy and a lodge up on a mountaintop, and tried to make it inviting.
The idea was pretty simple.
I had a white list, so only people that I approved could join, and I would just monitor the server as much as I could, just to make sure that nothing went wrong.
And that was it, that was the whole promise: to keep the kids safe so they could play.
When it was done, I went to Facebook and posted a pretty simple message to my friends list, not publicly.
I wanted to see if there was any interest in this, and if it really could help.
Turns out that I greatly underestimated just how much this was needed, because within 48 hours, I got 750 emails.
I don't have that many Facebook friends.
(Laughter) Within eight days, I had to upgrade the hosting package eight times, from the bottom package to the most expensive package they had, and now, almost four years later, I have 8,000 names on the white list from all around the world.
But the reason I'm up here today to talk to you isn't just because I gave kids a safe place to play.
It's what happened while they played.
I started hearing from parents who said their children were learning to read and write by playing on the server.
At first they spelled things by sound, like most kids do, but because they were part of a community, they saw other people spelling the same words properly and just picked it up.
I started hearing from parents who said that their nonverbal children were starting to speak.
They only talked about Minecraft, but they were talking.
(Laughter) Some kids made friends at school for the first time ever.
Some started to share, even give things to other people.
It was amazing.
And every single parent came to me and said it was because of Autcraft, because of what you're doing.
But why, though?
How could all of this be just from a video game server?
Well, it goes back to that research paper I was talking about.
In it, she covers some of the guidelines I used when I created the server, guidelines that I think help encourage people to be their very best.
I hope.
For example, communication.
It can be tough for kids with autism.
It could be tough for grown-ups without autism.
But I think that kids should not be punished, they should be talked to.
Nine times out of ten, when the kids on the server act out, it's because of something that's happened in the day at school or home.
Maybe a pet died.
Sometimes it's just a miscommunication between two kids.
One doesn't say what they're about to do.
And so we just offer to help.
We always tell the children on the server that we're not mad, and they're not in trouble; we only want to help.
And it shows that not only do we care, but we respect them enough to listen to their point of view.
Respect goes a long way.
Plus, it shows them that they have everything they need to be able to resolve these problems on their own in the future and maybe even avoid them, because, you know, communication.
On most servers, as video games are, children are rewarded, well, players are rewarded, for how well they do in a competition, right?
The better you do, the better reward you get.
That can be automated; the server does the work, the code is there.
On Autcraft, we don't do that.
We have things like "Player of the Week" and "CBAs," which is "Caught Being Awesome."
(Laughter) We award players ranks on the servers based on the attributes they exhibit, such as the "Buddy" rank for people who are friendly towards others, and "Junior Helper" for people that are helpful towards others.
We have "Senior Helper" for the adults.
But they're obvious, right?
Like, people know what to expect and how to earn these things because of how they're named.
As soon as somebody signs onto the server, they know that they're going to be rewarded for who they are and not what they can do.
Our top award, the AutismFather Sword, which is named after me because I'm the founder, is a very powerful sword that you can't get in the game any other way than to show that you completely put the community above yourself, and that compassion and kindness is at the core of who you are.
We've given away quite a few of those swords, actually.
I figure, if we're watching the server to make sure nothing bad happens, we should also watch for the good things that happen and reward people for them.
We're always trying to show all the players that everybody is considered to be equal, even me.
But we know we can't treat people equally to do that.
Some of the players get angry very easily.
Some of them have additional struggles on top of autism, such as OCD or Tourette's.
So, I have this knack of remembering all of the players.
I remember their first day, the conversations we've had, things we've talked about, things they've built.
So when somebody comes to me with a problem, I handle that situation differently than I would with any other player, based on what I know about them.
For the other admins and helpers, we document everything so that, whether it's good or bad or a concerning conversation, it's there, so everybody is aware.
I want to give you one example of this one player.
He was with us for a little while, but at some point he started spamming dashes in the chat, like a big long line of dashes all the way across the screen.
A little while later, he'd do it again.
The other players asked him not to do that, and he'd say, "OK."
And then he'd do it again.
It started to frustrate the other players.
They asked me to mute him or to punish him for breaking the rules, but I knew there had to be something more to it.
So I went to his aunt, who is the contact that I have for him.
She explained that he had gone blind in one eye and was losing his vision in the other.
So what he was doing was splitting up the chat into easier-to-see blocks of text, which is pretty smart.
So that very same night, I talked to a friend of mine who writes code and we created a brand-new plug-in for the server that makes it so that any player on the server, including him, of course, could just enter a command and instantly have every single line separated by dashes.
Plus, they can make it asterisks or blank lines or anything they want -- whatever works best for them.
We even went a little bit extra and made it so it highlights your name, so that it's easier to see if somebody mentions you.
It's just one example of how doing a little bit extra, a small modification, still helps everybody be on equal footing, even though you did a little extra just for that one player.
The big one is to be not afraid.
The children on my server are not afraid.
They are free to just be themselves, and it's because we support and encourage and celebrate each other.
We all know what it feels like to be the outcast and to be hated simply for existing, and so when we're together on the server, we're not afraid anymore.
For the first two years or so on the server, I talked to two children per week on average that were suicidal.
But they came to me because I'm the one that made them feel safe.
They felt like I was the only person in the world they could talk to.
So I guess my message is: whether you have a charity or some other organization, or you're a teacher or a therapist or you're a parent who is just doing your very best, or you're an autistic, like I am, no matter who you are, you absolutely must help these children strip away those fears before you do anything else, because anything else is going to feel forced unless they're not afraid.
It's why positive reinforcement will always do better than any form of punishment.
They want to learn when they feel safe and happy.
It just happens naturally; they don't even try to learn.
These are words from the kids on the server to describe the server.
The one thing I would hope that you could take away is that no matter what somebody else is going through in life right now, whether they're being bullied at school or at home, if they're questioning their sexuality or even their gender, which happens a lot in the autism community, if they're feeling alone or even suicidal, you have to live your life in such a way that that person feels like they can come to and tell you.
They have to feel perfectly safe in talking to you about it.
If you want to see a group of autistic children -- kids who society wrongly thinks are supposed to be antisocial and lacking in empathy -- if you want to see them come together and build the most compassionate and friendly and generous community you've ever seen, the kind of place that people would write about as one of the best places on the internet, they'll do that.
I've seen it.
I'm there every day.
But they have some huge obstacles that they have to overcome to do that, and it would be really helpful to have somebody there who could help to show them that the only thing they really have to fear is self-doubt.
So I guess I'm asking you to please be that person for them, because to them, those kids -- it means everything.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)