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Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

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Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#111

Post by jdavis703 »

coding123 wrote: post #63
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I ABSOLUTELY agree with this, and this is completely lost on people. For every study that says coffee is bad there's 10 more that say it's good, simply because people want it to be good, NOT because it's actually good. The problem is, we humans play right into that as if the number's game actually means something - 1 out of 10 studies says something is bad - the other 9 say it's good. So rather than actually work off…

Good and bad are opinions. 9/10 studies saying coffee causes earlier mortality (not saying this is true, just giving an example) is a fact. For me the enjoyment of coffee might outweigh loosing a year of my life, and wind up saving the government money on my pensions and healthcare in the long run. So is this good or bad?

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#112

Post by baldfat »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #39
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.

To think in this example of a binary worldview in logical thinking it would be a genetic fallacy. Everything that comes from one person is good and everything that comes from another person is bad/evil.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

>That's an extremely oversimplified explanation of the world.

It isn't a over oversimplified it is an actual legitimate worldview in Philosophy/Ethics for many individuals. There is not one worldview that is up to each individual and different cultures. I wasn't trying to paint everyone but I am stating that many people absolutely think this way.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#113

Post by 77pt77 »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #46

Translation: "Why did Trump win the election even though he and his policies are obviously nuts?" Seriously, not trying to inject politics or my opinion on Trump, but there do seem to be a lot of these "why do people make act so crazy" articles lately. I too am trying to make sense of it all and failing.

It's quite explicit:

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

Not even being subtle.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#114

Post by conistonwater »

dllthomas wrote: post #107
conistonwater wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you disagree, why did you put "Right" at the beginning? I don't understand your comment, there must be a misunderstanding somewhere.

I didn't think I was disagreeing... can you expand on what you are seeing?

The way I parsed your comment: there are so many bad arguments possible even for good ideas that if you see people use a bad argument for their idea, it doesn't mean there isn't a good argument instead that can replace it. Then, you'd think good arguments would get accepted more universally than bad arguments, but probably not. Is it even in the same ballpark?

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#115

Post by projektir »

Diederich wrote: post #100
projektir wrote: post #92

I think the problem is that there's often a lot of risk with changing one's mind and not all that much benefit. How much does being right really help one in their day-to-day life? And there are many ways it could hurt them.

What kinds of risk are you seeing as associated with changing one's mind?

Being classified as a loser in any given argument is probably the biggest one. You do not get a very positive response for admitting that you're wrong in the vast majority of settings. There's generally an expectation that being wrong is associated with fundamental problems and should be punished by suffering. Being wrong is already perceived as a state so bad that correcting yourself from it is only marginally beneficial. This creates a very negative association with being wrong and kills that incentive. Yet being able to say that you're wrong is a necessary prerequisite to changing your mind.

There's also a fairly high risk of actually changing your mind towards the more wrong conclusion. Anything you already believe is likely rooted in something relatively deep, like childhood experiences, experiences in general, and a long, involved chain of partially logical, partially emotional reasoning that you can't even remember most of anymore. The incoming "facts" are often disembodied, not actually connected to anything, and often not that hard to fabricate because of how disconnected they are.

Now take these two concepts together, and consider what an attempt at making a person believe something different from what they do usually looks like. They're going to be told some disembodied facts, given some rough evidence or appeals as to why those facts are true, and then told that the only reason they don't already agree with those fact is because they are dumb, mean, uneducated, or otherwise undesirable.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#116

Post by dwringer »

thefalcon wrote: post #108
dwringer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for that result, but [isn't the increase in probability of winning the Monty Hall problem by switching doors an increase from 1/3 to 1/2]? [ED: no] The summary claims it is "doubled". I'm also interested in some kind of control for the concept that pigeons simply get bored inevitably with the first choice and tend to switch in spite of whether it gives them any advantage. I don't see evidence that this experi…

There are a lot of givens and provisos to make the Monty Hall problem work[1], but in the end if you stick with your door you have a 1/3 chance of winning and if you switch you have a 2/3 chance of winning. [1]Monty must always open a non-winning door based on his insider knowledge and always give you the chance to switch, and of course the prize has to always remain behind its original door.

Ahh. of course... funny how even after learning the problem multiple times I could still forget the correct answer and manage to have the wrong intuition about it :) Ah, to be a pigeon.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#118

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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…

Bayesian probability is supposed to be the answer to this idea that we can't know anything for certain.

Just because something can't be known for certain doesn't mean it can't be known to a high probability.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#119

Post by Brockenstein »

meheleventyone wrote: post #91
coldtea wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this more a distinction between science and science reporting In a way yes, but if we include the summaries of findings that scientists deliver to the public/governments/etc as "science reporting", then science reporting is 100% of science as we know it (unless we happen to practice it). Consider dietary advice that has since found to be BS, that was passed in the 70s and 80s as "scientific fact", not just by…

Right but wasn't that advice basically the state of the field at the time? That we know different now doesn't mean the scientists then should have acted on information unavailable to them.

Right? Might as well be critical of public schools not teaching object oriented programming in the 1950's. And that's why my parents can't program, because schools were inferior...

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#120

Post by kbenson »

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…

The problem is that any layman not specifically in that chain has no way of making a determination between the person with "skin in the game" that is right and the corpus of information stating otherwise, not the contemporary expert with "skin in the game" that agrees with the existing literature.

The opposite scenario can be true as well,where the literature is correct but the expert is wrong, for any number of reasons (including random distribution of experience).

In the end, without some probability distribution between the scenarios, which is likely wildly different based on field, we can't use this information to any useful effect beyond acknowledging that the consensus can be wrong, which is useful in itself.

In the end we are left having to decide whether following what we hope is usually careful scientific consensus has left us better off than alternatives, to which the answer is I don't know, but I sure hope so. :/

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