The Space Between Us: Why We Disagree

Have you ever counted the number of friends or colleagues who are no longer in your life simply because of a midnight argument in a Facebook comment section?In this episode, Dr. Sabir Haque takes a microscopic look at the exact moment our chest tightens during an online disagreement. Moving past surface-level political anger, we dive deep into the underlying neurobiology and psychology of conviction.Using Leon Festinger’s theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Ziva Kunda’s framework of Motivated Reasoning, and Jonathan Haidt’s famous Elephant and the Rider metaphor, we uncover a uncomfortable truth: when we argue online, we are rarely pursuing truth. Instead, we are deploying our intellect as a defense lawyer to protect our own ego and emotional survival.Tune in to discover why the digital public square is engineered to feed our worst defensive instincts—and how we can begin leaving an "inch of light" between our identities and our opinions.