Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #64. Cultivate the Naive Mind

It has been said that the human computers in Frank Herbert's Dune novels cultivated "the naive mind" to process information without bias. The guidelines of the Wikipedia neutral point of view (NPOV) are a tested way of cultivating the naive mind in your thought and communication.

The completely objective person is a common trope in science fiction, from the mentats (so-called "human computers") in Dune, to the legal profession of Fair Witness in Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land, to the character of Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Being dispassionate is also a fairly common geek ideal, and occurs in both Western and Eastern philosophies (the Stoic Sage and the Buddha). However, some postmodern philosophers such as Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty have questioned the concept of objectivity, saying that every human being is biased in some way. "You can't be objective" has become a commonplace in certain segments of our culture, such as academia.

The Wikipedia Project, a collaborative web-based encyclopedia that has surpassed the Encyclopaedia Britannica both in the number of articles it contains and in the amount of Internet traffic it receives, recognizes the ubiquity of human bias and the hard problem of objectivity, but has attempted to forge a practical official policy anyway. The project has developed a set of guidelines it calls the neutral point of view (NPOV).

Despite the fact that any casual reader can click the "edit this page" button ...