If you are only thinking about it, yes. If you want to take a decision based on the thought process, you have to pick a side at one point, knowing that it might not be the right side.
You can make decisions in the face of uncertainty based on an assessment of the risk and the probabilities of the possible outcomes. If you get in your car you put your seatbelt on without knowing whether you're going to need it for that particular ride. There's no need to "pick a side" on the question of whether you're going to have an accident on that ride. Being uncertain about something is almost the opposite of cognitive dissonance, which comes from being quite certain about contradictory propositions.
Only if you think your decisions purely based on fact, rather than thinking of your decisions as based on the best facts you have at the time.
Cognitive dissonance is believing that two contradictory theories are most likely true based on the evidence you have. Since the evidence of the truth of one is also evidence for the untruth of the other, it means that when evaluating the evidence for one, you discount a different set of evidence than you do when evaluating the evidence for the other.
This is never rational, and never something that you have to do. It's usually done to avoid conclusions that would force you (according to your own ethics) to give up something that you have, or not take something that you want.
> This is never rational, and never something that you have to do.
Not sure I agree with that.
The real world is full of mutually exclusive moral problems, like when "do unto others" runs directly into "first do no harm" when deciding to give help to someone whose bad behavior you might be enabling.
jules|9 years ago
pessimizer|9 years ago
Cognitive dissonance is believing that two contradictory theories are most likely true based on the evidence you have. Since the evidence of the truth of one is also evidence for the untruth of the other, it means that when evaluating the evidence for one, you discount a different set of evidence than you do when evaluating the evidence for the other.
This is never rational, and never something that you have to do. It's usually done to avoid conclusions that would force you (according to your own ethics) to give up something that you have, or not take something that you want.
riprowan|9 years ago
Not sure I agree with that.
The real world is full of mutually exclusive moral problems, like when "do unto others" runs directly into "first do no harm" when deciding to give help to someone whose bad behavior you might be enabling.