What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#51

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, May 30, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

amasad wrote: post #7

danieltillett wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason why people don't update their beliefs when new evidence comes to light. Only if you reject the evidence that does not fit with your beliefs. If you use the new evidence to examine and update your beliefs then you can be both open to new evidence and avoid cognitive dissonance.

What if the new evidence puts you at even (or close to even) odds? Then you have to live with the cognitive dissonance until further evidence.

Cognitive dissonance is not picking X sometimes and !X sometimes, because they're both around 50%.

Cognitive dissonance is saying that X is 90% certain and that !X is also 90% certain.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#52

Post by riprowan » Mon, May 30, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #38

bonobo3000 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 diffe…

> 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.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#53

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 30, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #31

amasad wrote: post #5

Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself recently. In coding for example, I used to suffer mental anguish over seeing inconsistencies in codebases I'm working on and have an OCD-like drive to fix them. Learning to live with those consistencies freed me up to work on what actually matters. Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason…

The ability to deal with uncertainty is not the same as cognitive dissonance. There is no cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that mutually contradictory propositions P and Q could be true, you just don't know yet which is. Cognitive dissonance is when you believe that both P and Q are true at the same time. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions because they don't like not knowing something, and any an…

[deleted]

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#54

Post by WalterSear » Mon, May 30, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #48

spoofball wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, an argument of taste comes into mind. If my life is based on daily enjoyment in my meals then giving up flesh is lowering my happiness. The enjoyment, the participation in a carnivorous human culture is integral to my existence. Food being a major part of it. Dogs in China, chickens in the rest of the world, calves, lambs and other babies. Factory farming makes their life miserable (or maybe the fact that dog f…

So animal slavery is the same as human slavery? Should animals automatically be assigned the same rights as humans?

I feel for you, bro.

(I mean neither sarcasm, nor condescension)

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#55

Post by wwweston » Mon, May 30, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

amasad wrote: post #5

Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself recently. In coding for example, I used to suffer mental anguish over seeing inconsistencies in codebases I'm working on and have an OCD-like drive to fix them. Learning to live with those consistencies freed me up to work on what actually matters. Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason…

Yeah.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

I've also noticed something about the term "cognitive dissonance" in popular discussion. It's used as a pejorative explanation when the speaker can't figure out how someone else harmonizes two apparently inconsistent or contradictory positions. But when it's a speaker responding to someone else's accusation of cognitive dissonance, something like Fitzgerald's line usually comes up.

It's probably a useful concept in the context of doing actual psychology (either science or therapy), but I've come to believe that in an argument it's often a form of ad hominem attack, like most stories participants in arguments tend to spin about each other.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#56

Post by spoofball » Mon, May 30, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #48

spoofball wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, an argument of taste comes into mind. If my life is based on daily enjoyment in my meals then giving up flesh is lowering my happiness. The enjoyment, the participation in a carnivorous human culture is integral to my existence. Food being a major part of it. Dogs in China, chickens in the rest of the world, calves, lambs and other babies. Factory farming makes their life miserable (or maybe the fact that dog f…

So animal slavery is the same as human slavery? Should animals automatically be assigned the same rights as humans?

I'm not saying it is the same.

It's just that our reactions to the cognitive dissonance are the same.

For example, you had attempts at laws of humane handling of slaves during the US slavery period. Slaves were disposable creatures, just like animals.

Our handling of the cognitive dissonance was attributing inferior characteristics to slaves (intelligence, different skin, can't learn to read etc.). Same thing is done with animals to argument their handling and disposability.

Then you try to add "humane" into your reasoning. Which is filled with oxymoron terms like "humane slaughter", "humane rape", "humane electrocution".

Justification of having the right to a slave's life because you feed him and give him the right to live is absolutely mirrored in the argumentation when it comes to non-human animals.

Nice thought experiment to confirm your cognitive dissonance is to think of what you would do with homo neanderthals or homo erectus or maybe australopithecus genus? Would you keep them in zoos? Have them as disposable servants? Of course you wouldn't.

Cognitive dissonance is present because you've been raised in a certain environment that starts to have (or you start to recognize it having) characteristics that go against your moral stands.

If you try to have thought experiments similar to the one above (the environment in which you didn't grow) you can think more in line with your true positions, and leave the faulty argumentation behind.

Of course, you might try to skew the argumentation for the homo/australopithecus case to be consistent with your actions in your non-human animals case, but that wouldn't come natural, that would come through cognitive dissonance (you spot the connection between the two, it distrubs you, and instead of admitting that environment conditioned you - cognitive dissonance comes to play).

Slavery, nationalism, fascism, heterosexual supremacy, male dominance, all are ideologies spawned from existing environments whose supporters suffer from cognitive dissonance. All of these ideologies share the same characteristics as those of enslaving animals, massively killing them, poisoning the environment etc. In that particular way, these ideologies are the same.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#57

Post by UhUhUhUh » Mon, May 30, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

As far as I know the actual cognitive dissonance involves ideas, beliefs or values. Note that these three categories do not belong to the same class. Beliefs and values involve an emotional component, along with wishes, desires and all actions carried out for any sort of emotional gratification whereas ideas do not. It is clear that we can hold contradictory ideas in our mind. There can be no progress without that ability. Holding contradictory emotional states is very different however. It is akin to the ability to tolerate ambivalence, of which it is a general expression. This can drive some people crazy (literally). The authors seem to wave at the insula (the emotional component in that instance) to focus on the cognitive, executive component, thus not really localizing dissonance but rather the areas involved in the brain’s efforts at neutralizing it. A sort of homeostatic mechanism unknown to Vulcans...

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#58

Post by Bluestrike2 » Mon, May 30, 2016, 7:34 PM UTC

jules wrote: post #31

amasad wrote: post #5

Tolerating some amount of cognitive dissonance is one of the best things that I was able to develop in myself recently. In coding for example, I used to suffer mental anguish over seeing inconsistencies in codebases I'm working on and have an OCD-like drive to fix them. Learning to live with those consistencies freed me up to work on what actually matters. Furthermore the unforgiving drive for consistency is a reason…

The ability to deal with uncertainty is not the same as cognitive dissonance. There is no cognitive dissonance involved in accepting that mutually contradictory propositions P and Q could be true, you just don't know yet which is. Cognitive dissonance is when you believe that both P and Q are true at the same time. Humans have a tendency to jump to conclusions because they don't like not knowing something, and any an…

For the most part. Cognitive dissonance is the stress that results in believing P and Q are true at the same time, along with a few other scenarios such actions contradictory to one's beliefs or being confronted with evidence that is contrary to one of your beliefs (belief disconfirmation paradigm). We then engage dissonance reduction to arbitrate the difference and lessen the stress. One of the easiest methods of which is ignoring or rejecting the conflicting evidence or ignoring the voices that are--literally--causing you mental pain.

Socially, belief disconfirmation is arguably the most problematic because it turns rational discourse into something very, very ugly. Instead of persuading people, evidence and debate can further entrench a given belief instead. When certain issues became almost identity and lifestyle statements (climate change denial, the anti-vax movement, GMO hysteria, etc.), contrary evidence is perceived as a personal attack instead of a weighing of scientific evidence to determine fact. Unfortunately, overcoming this isn't easy. And it's made that much harder when people are able to retreat into their preferred echo chambers rather than be forced to directly confront the dissonance.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#59

Post by xenadu02 » Mon, May 30, 2016, 8:34 PM UTC

Cognitive Dissonance seems like a mechanism to moderate rate of change, plus a weak form of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

If you have strong beliefs (regardless of how you got them) it takes repeated exposure to contrary evidence over time to change those beliefs.

Re: What Happens to the Brain During Cognitive Dissonance? (2015)

#60

Post by Bluestrike2 » Mon, May 30, 2016, 8:36 PM UTC

ItWasAllWrong wrote: post #26

Sadly enough, cognitive dissonance is also one of the coping mechanisms that keeps people captured in a cult. I've been raised in a high control religion/cult. I've been out now for a while, but I was in for 24 years. The cognitive dissonance was very high at times, and I'm not the only one [1]. Looking back at it, I almost can't believe it took soo long to realize consciously what was happening to me. It's a weird t…

Interestingly enough, Leon Festinger first developed the theory of cognitive dissonance after looking at the behavior of doomsday cults. His book, When Prophecy Fails is fascinating: it looks at a doomsday cult in the 50s that believed aliens were going to rescue the cult from the world's end on a specific date. The members went all out preparing for the end, selling their belongings and gathering in one place. The date came went, but instead of accepting that they were wrong, the members justified it by saying "the force of Good and light" spared humanity and became more fervent as a result.

While I can't speak to your experience, I will say that it's amazing that as many people manage to leave JW as they do. Out of curiosity, what do you think was your last straw if you don't mind sharing?