Epistemology

I am a software engineer at JPMorgan Chase as of writing this blog. I joined in 2022. When I joined, we were following a hybrid model of 3 days a week from office and 2 days remote. I decided that I would go to office every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There was some rationale behind it. The specific rationale is not very important to our discussion here, the important point is, that it was a logical decision with some meaning attached to it. As weeks progressed, going to office every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday became a norm. I did not give it much thought. It went something like this, “Today is Monday, I am going to office”. That’s it. No reason, this had become a norm. After a point, other people in my office and home started noticing the pattern. They started expecting me to go to office on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The norm almost became a rule. If someone would see me in office on a Thursday, they would be shocked. If I don’t go on Monday, my mother would ask me, “Are you okay? Visit the doctor if you are ill today”. After a point, the logic behind going Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday was lost (not lost exactly in this case, it was easy to recollect if I tried, but you get the point). It was just a rule. This example, though trivial, reveals a very important aspect of human psychology. Let’s discuss that today. ...

If you follow politics, you might have noticed that politics dealing with “us vs them” works very well where the “them” is considered an enemy. The “us” and “them” could be based on religion, caste, language or any other such thing that comes to your mind. Why does it work this well? You might think that if a person belongs to a particular religion, they have deeply internalized their religious beliefs and if they come across any conflicting belief, they react in… not an ideal way, to say the least. This leads to politicians exploiting their radical mindset and using it for their own benefit. While this is correct, I feel that it lacks nuance. So let’s explore this “us vs them” mindset on an individual level, rather than on a societal level. ...