The above was a quote from Tim Rowe, professor of paleontology at University of Texas at Austin, in an article discussing a new species of dinosaur discovered recently in Arizona. It immediately grabbed me as it relates to how we can often be tempted to look at the world.
As humans, our nature over time has been to fiercely outcompete each other and other species for control over land and resources. It's true throughout our history. It's true today. Just look at the organizations and institutions we've created. Nearly all of them fiercely compete to grow as big as possible.
Prior to this finding in Arizona, we applied that same logic to dinosaurs. They were massive creatures who dominated the land, so they must have been like us, right?
I think this too is in our nature—to look at things in ways that make us feel good about ourselves or in ways that support our point of view for analyzing ideas—rather than really digging in to find the truth, especially when it's likely to be counter to what we want to believe.
As a modern proof point, look at how businesses are viewing social data. We're creating dashboards that pull up every mention of our product, service, company and competitors, but nothing else. That's all we care about. What are people saying about us and our competition?
We ignore the truly important stuff—everything else the people who talk about our products/services/companies are saying. We don't care about what their lives are like. We only care about what they think about us versus the people we compete against.
Looking at research through self-tinted glasses is a great way to make us feel good about ourselves and what we're doing. It's also a great way to figure out the things we need to say in response to people's comments. But when we get so caught-up in the minutia of ourselves, it makes us blind to things coming about which could make us extinct and it doesn't help us see the things we need to do to keep that from happening.
I hope we pull off our self-tinted glasses in time to keep ourselves from going the way of the dinosaurs. Then again, part of our nature is to fall into old habits so maybe it's best if the people who prefer to see the world this way just keep them on while the rest of us build a better future without them.
