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Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

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Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#31

Post by coldtea »

laretluval wrote: post #20
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>If you believe that poison is food, or that bus impacts are healthy

That's more about being crazy than about having false beliefs in the casual (and not "narrow and mysterious") sense of the word belief.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#32

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

veli_joza wrote: post #8

The source of confirmation bias is explained as evolutionary mechanism that developed capacity for reasoning not for critical thinking but for purpose of arguing and getting others to do our bidding. In that context it would make sense to protect our own opinion from inconvenient things such as facts. > "This is one of many cases in which the environment changed too quickly for natural selection to catch up." How can…

This has already happened. I suspect the average medieval peasant didn't have a particularly sophisticated world view, or much understanding of cause and effect at all.

But objective reality-based reasoning is a skill that has to be taught, learned, practiced, and promoted. And even then a lot of people won't be particularly good at it.

When you add the fact that there are obvious political and financial advantages to lying to the public then it becomes very fragile indeed.

I suspect the only practical answer is to reinvent society's reward functions - e.g. by making the intellectual/political/media equivalent of poisoning the well as much of a criminal offence as dumping a dead body inside a school water tank.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#34

Post by Mikeb85 »

Facts don't change our minds because we make up our world views and beliefs in a way that's expedient for us to happily continue about our lives.

For instance, we all NEED to believe we're the 'good' guys. Whether the 'we' is our religion, our job, our state, political stance, etc... This prevents existential angst from realizing we're in the wrong, and then needing to change our behaviour which would disrupt our everyday lives.

This is also the reason why we stay in failed relationships, keep toxic friends, jobs we hate, etc... It's easier and more conducive to our survival instincts to keep the status quo, whatever it is. Only when things get extremely bad do we ever change.

On the flip side, let's say popular opinion about a particular topic flips. When it becomes expedient to change our opinion, then we're very quick to do so. When keeping an archaic opinion begins to cause friction in our everyday lives, we change to the prevailing opinion because again, staying with the tribe is easier than going against it.

But of course, realizing all of this would be to reduce human existence to base survival instincts, which would also ruin our self-narrative. So we think we're all special, enlightened, unique and think for ourselves no matter how much the evidence points to the fact that we all devolve into holding the same popular opinions.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#35

Post by pklausler »

fiatjaf wrote: post #30
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.

"Most successful" obviously doesn't mean life expectancy, quality of education, or infrastructure, it would seem.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#37

Post by baldfat »

The issue isn't facts. The issue is our worldview. If it is a binary worldview (Good vs Evil) then what we don't agree with is always bad/evil (Black Hat Cowboy) and what we do agree is good/good (White Hat Cowboy).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_white_hat_symbolism_...

So when our side makes a mistake we defend and spin till it is okay for us to still think of them as wearing a White Cowboy Hat. Anything good will also have conspiracies and spin so that they always wearing a Black Cowboy Hat.

If you want evidence ask anyone with a strong feeling for Trump/Clinton and you will see this in action.

The issue is when people change their minds (with a binary worldview) it isn't accepting a small fact but it is a whole worldview change of astronomical proportions. I feel that people have gotten more and more binary and we need more shades of gray where it isn't world changing to accept a problem with a fact.

From Asia thinking about American Worldview: http://www.atimes.com/article/americas-binary-worldview-kill...

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#38

Post by agumonkey »

More than facts and logic, is a big "why" ? People use "facts" to satisfy their relative ego (point or surface) and will stop digging for reason or distort said facts to reach that goal.

When you stop arguing and start agreeing, it's a whole different game.

That's why the whole political paradigm is obsolete. Rallies and speeches are mostly emotional drivers. They amplify the problem naturally (it's a nice form of competition).

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#39

Post by matt_wulfeck »

baldfat wrote: post #37

The issue isn't facts. The issue is our worldview. If it is a binary worldview (Good vs Evil) then what we don't agree with is always bad/evil (Black Hat Cowboy) and what we do agree is good/good (White Hat Cowboy). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_white_hat_symbolism_... So when our side makes a mistake we defend and spin till it is okay for us to still think of them as wearing a White Cowboy Hat. Anything go…

That's an extremely oversimplified explanation of the world.

In my experience a lot of misunderstanding comes not from lack of facts, but a lack or difference in perspective. Hardly anyone even feels the need to justify their actions, let alone squeeze it into some bizarre cowboy metaphor.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#40

Post by luhn »

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…

> I seem to remember a github repo that was posted to HN a couple of years back that did exactly that. They showed the same data set and presented 3 different ways with 3 entirely different conclusions.

Does anybody remember what repository this was? I'd be interested in seeing it.

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