"""
Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views. This, they write, “may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change people’s attitudes.”
"""
Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
11–20 of 347 posts
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#12Oh boy, sweeping conclusions based on psychology research!
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/25/071530
"False report probability is likely to exceed 50% for the whole literature. In light of our findings the recently reported low replication success in psychology is realistic and worse performance may be expected for cognitive neuroscience."
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#13The interactionist perspective presented is enlightening. It both motivates and explains many of the classic reasoning snafus that we "suffer" from. In the end our mental artefacts (including beliefs) are just tools, and their value (or "truth") is a function of their utility.
If we were to present a 19th century carpenter with a nail gun he would agree upon demonstration; "that is very nice and all, thanks but i'll stick to my hammer". He would have neither a compressor, gasoline and a long enough hose, nor a wall socket and extension chord. The nail gun has no place in his toolshed because he doesn't have the required infrastructure and context to put it to use, and therefore the utility of the nail gun to him is close to zero.
Beliefs are the same, and a relation to "facts" or "truth" is not a requrement for their utility. When presented with new facts and truths we always evaluate their utility before we ascribe to them. We might fool ourselves that this process is somehow "rational" but rationality is just a social preference with some second-order effects with regards to science and the developement of technology (which indeed has "utility" but is far from the only "utility" beliefs can achieve).
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#14The interactionist perspective presented is enlightening. It both motivates and explains many of the classic reasoning snafus that we "suffer" from. In the end our mental artefacts (including beliefs) are just tools, and their value (or "truth") is a function of their utility. If we were to present a 19th century carpenter with a nail gun he would agree upon demonstration; "that is very nice and all, thanks but i'll…
> Beliefs are the same, and a relation to "facts" or "truth" is not a requrement for their utility.
If your beliefs about the world are entirely false then you are going to have a bad time.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#15Another factor here is when people abuse the word "fact" regularly. If you ever get into a discussion with somebody who claims they've proved their point by citing "facts", then actually follow up on their citations and discover that it doesn't actually say what they think it says it creates an impression of the messenger, not the message. Enough messengers saying the same faulty message over and over and you distrus…
>then actually follow up on their citations
Not to mention that citations are not all they are touted to be.
Just because something has been written by someone somewhere doesn't make it an objective reality fact.
Just because something has been published on a peer reviewed journal doesn't make it an objective reality fact.
Just because something has the consensus opinion doesn't make it an objective reality fact.
Just because something is supported by the numbers given by some government, state agency, NGO etc doesn't make it an objective reality fact.
And in many cases someone with actual "skin in the game", who knows a subject empirically can be right, and know they are right, against "citations" from all of the above.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#16Vaccines are safer for a population, and they are safer for individuals in an unvaccinated population. In a vaccinated population the risks to the individual having a vaccine are low, but non zero. The risk of not having the vaccine may well be lower. The problem is that by not being clear that having a vaccination is an altruistic act with marginal risk but a massive social good the way is left open for claims of duplicity. This may be the key issue; some people won't agree with the desired position because the fact we are using isn't a fact at all. We fail to persuade because we don't make a good case.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#17The interactionist perspective presented is enlightening. It both motivates and explains many of the classic reasoning snafus that we "suffer" from. In the end our mental artefacts (including beliefs) are just tools, and their value (or "truth") is a function of their utility. If we were to present a 19th century carpenter with a nail gun he would agree upon demonstration; "that is very nice and all, thanks but i'll…
> Beliefs are the same, and a relation to "facts" or "truth" is not a requrement for their utility. If your beliefs about the world are entirely false then you are going to have a bad time.
Or a very good time. One's circumstances are seldom that much dependent upon their beliefs about the world.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#18> The fact that both we and it survive proves that it must have some adaptive function
No, no, no, absolutely not, no, it doesn't. No. A feature can maintain itself in a population for a number of reasons:
- it's neutral or not detrimental enough to drive affected individuals to extinction (ie, to get them killed before they have a chance to reproduce)
- it's linked to some other trait that provides actual benefits
- it's so recent it didn't leave time to be selected against
- or, yes, it actually has some adaptive function.
But just because a feature is found does NOT "prove" anything in and of itself.
> Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments.
Excuse me, what?? There's little advantage in reasoning clearly while hunting prey and making tools and building traps to catch huge mean animals that can and will kill you if you do anything wrong?
And there's much to be gained from "winning arguments" in a cave, while pondering about one's social standing?? Come on.
* * *
I suggest a more simple and straightforward explanation for the limitations of "reason": our brain is, in fact, write only.
We usually don't notice it because it also has a huge capacity and so we can always write more, it never gets full.
But to one given named item corresponds a unique value, that cannot be overwritten.
If you want to store a new value you have to create a new name to store it with.
To "overwrite" something you can create lookup tables of sort, that tell you that the old value is in fact "wrong" and that said item should be associated with another, newer item. But this is costly, and so is avoided whenever possible (because the first rule of life is to be lazy, ie to conserve resources).
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#19The described permanence of lies even after they are revealed as such really lends weight (dare I say credit?) to the tactics of fake news and propaganda in general. The value of being the first to form an impression of an event, law, etc. on someone even if that impression will later be proven false just can't be overstated.
This value never ceases to confound and frustrate me. Just like the impact of littering every yard with a brightly-colored name campaign sign has on elections. It must sway some people, maybe more than biased new reporters do. So we can hate the game, but at what point can we start hating the players?
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Beliefs are the same, and a relation to "facts" or "truth" is not a requrement for their utility. If your beliefs about the world are entirely false then you are going to have a bad time.
Or a very good time. One's circumstances are seldom that much dependent upon their beliefs about the world.
> One's circumstances are seldom that much dependent upon their beliefs about the world.
You are interpreting belief in a very narrow and mysterious way. If you believe that poison is food, or that bus impacts are healthy, then you are going to have a bad time. There are many beliefs that must be correct in order to ensure survival. It isn't all relative.