August 3, 2011

Predictable Irrationality of Hizmetophobia: Islamophobia in the Case of Hizmet Movement

Aristotle defines human beings as rational animals, emphasizing reason as a characteristic of human nature. Two thousand years later Descartes rejected the traditional notion of humans as "rational animals," suggesting instead that they are nothing more than "thinking things"1. Today both seem to be challenged further, especially when we consider decision-making and judging others. Using many interesting case studies, Dan Ariely demonstrates in his bestseller that when the issue at hand is somewhat complicated, where even the complexity is as little as an additional choice in a survey form, we humans make rather irrational decisions without thinking. The story does not end there, no matter how silly our initial decisions were, those become anchors for us, and we make a habit of repeating them in the long-term -- hence the title of Ariely's book, Predictably Irrational.2