Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#21

Post by unit91 » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

enord wrote: post #13

The 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.

Is that statement true?

> When presented with new facts and truths we always evaluate their utility before we ascribe to them.

Did you evaluate the utility of that "fact" before believing it?

I'm not trying to be rude here, but the problem with this sort of postmodern view is that it's ultimately self-refuting.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#22

Post by brightball » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #15

brightball wrote: post #10

Another 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. Ju…

Exactly.

When that is a known reality you're left with breaking things down into logical positions or acting emotionally.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#23

Post by bambax » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

> There must be some way, they maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous.

There is: have them been born outside the US. Those two beliefs are specific to Americans; hardly a good example of "humanity" as a whole.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#24

Post by JackFr » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #9

squozzer wrote: post #4

Here's an application of our faulty, socially-dependent reason: Health care is a right, yes or no? Please explain your reasoning. The article mentions ACA so my proposal should not be too off-topic.

I think the discourse about "rights" is part of the problem in US politics, it makes the default mode of reasoning about ideology, rather than outcomes. The government should be in the healthcare business since the nature of the service precludes a functional market.

> it makes the default mode of reasoning about ideology, rather than outcomes.

That is nonsense. To claim to focus solely on 'outcomes' is to simply make the ideology behind the recommendation implicit and outside the bounds of debate.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#25

Post by charles-salvia » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

Evolutionary explanations are often speculative just-so stories with no basis in actual genomic research. Nobody ran a hierarchical clustering algorithm over the human genome, inspected the dendrogram, and then found meaningful gene expressions that indicate confirmation bias somehow.

The reality is confirmation bias is probably deeply rooted in many other elements of human psychology. My (completely worthless) conjecture is that your "opinions" are deeply associated with your own sense of self-identity and self-worth, and therefore they register as very much worth protecting, regardless of external data. Opinions also often overlap with tribal affiliations, which makes them even more deeply rooted in evolved primate cooperative behavior, and therefore even more worth protecting.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#26

Post by methehack » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

I guess it should come as no surprise that the comments section for an article called “facts don’t change our minds” would be so disappointing. For me, this article — and many like it that point out how whimsical and feeble our natural, undisciplined cognitive capacities are — are a rally cry to continue the enlightenment project, as best we can and in as personal a way as we can. Years ago I learned that my family motto from way back was “through faith we are free”. I found that immediately alienating because for me it was always “through doubt we are free.”

From this article to my comment to current events: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/opinion/the-enlightenment...

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#27

Post by RichardHeart » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

These are not limitations of reason.

“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective."

Once awareness of the game becomes more common, than playing that new game including that new awareness will replace the old game. (Just like saying someone else ate the cookie when caught as a child, gets replaced with more elaborate things like, "you ate the cookie after you came home from drinking 2 nights ago."

Reason evolves.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#28

Post by ZeroGravitas » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #9

squozzer wrote: post #4

Here's an application of our faulty, socially-dependent reason: Health care is a right, yes or no? Please explain your reasoning. The article mentions ACA so my proposal should not be too off-topic.

I think the discourse about "rights" is part of the problem in US politics, it makes the default mode of reasoning about ideology, rather than outcomes. The government should be in the healthcare business since the nature of the service precludes a functional market.

Though something that gets lost in the "aargh, socialist death panels" style discussion in the US, is that there are plenty of market-based mechanisms within the most "socialist" health care systems around the world, and there's a whole bunch of weird, anti-market bureaucracy in the American system.

So you're right that talking about rights is unhelpful, I'd go further and suggest that just making healthcare provision better, rather than more/less market-based should be the main discussion to further avoid the conversation bogging down into "reasoning about ideology, rather than outcomes".

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#29

Post by JackFr » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

> If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration.

The complete absence of self-knowledge and high level of unintentional irony here is astonishing. "Confirmation bias and groupthink happen to other people, not me."

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#30

Post by fiatjaf » Tue, Mar 07, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #23

> There must be some way, they maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous. There is: have them been born outside the US. Those two beliefs are specific to Americans; hardly a good example of "humanity" as a whole.

Strangely the most successful country in the history of mankind by all criteria.