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Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

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Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#211

Post by Qcombinator »

I'm tempted to file this as another "Humans think oversimplistically, says oversimplistic study". The world is a massively complicated place, and nobody can come close to understanding it all. If your intellectual background tells you that vaccines don't cause autism and somebody comes to you with a study that purports to say they do, is rejecting it "confirmation bias" — or is it in fact the rational thing to do, even if you lack the medical expertise to explain where the study goes wrong?

Of course, your background beliefs are never going to be perfect, so sometimes you will reject the wrong things, but that's not because our reason is "broken" per se, it's an engineering trade-off: we have to take certain shortcuts, make certain assumptions, apply certain guesses, because working everything out in full mathematical detail just isn't possible.

(That said, I'm certainly not claiming that most people are brilliant thinkers — the line "Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking" would come as news to everyone from Aristophanes to Zamyatin.)

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#212

Post by psyc »

jimbokun wrote: post #60
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…

All you are really saying is its impossible to know anything for certain. Having a citation from a well regarded source is better than having no citation. Peer review is better than no review. There is probably a higher correlation for a statement from an official state agency being true, than a random statement with no attribution. So yes, a statement can satisfy any of the things you mention, and still not be true.…

Even leaving philosophical skepticism completely aside, there's an indeterminate gap between a "fact" according to peer-reviewed literature, and a fact that would actually stand up to verification indefinitely, unless it's a fact that naturally gets verified a lot.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#213

Post by crdoconnor »

redial wrote: post #209
crdoconnor wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Having a citation from a well regarded source is better than having no citation." Not if the "well regarded source" has a clear motive to lie. "There is probably a higher correlation for a statement from an official state agency being true" Not when the statement conveniently exculpates the agency or high ranking members of the agency of wrongdoing. Then there is probably a higher correlation for a statement being f…

> Not if the "well regarded source" has a clear motive to lie. Then it is not a well regarded source any more.

The police are considered a well regarded source by the general public:

"THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-...

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#214

Post by manmal »

komali2 wrote: post #82
bambax wrote: post #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 -…

The only problem I take with the "write only" mindset is that memory has been demonstrated to be able to be "changed" after the fact - i.e. making a person "remember" that the color of the truck was red, even though it was blue and they had correctly stated remembering it being blue.

Yeah I don't think it's as simple as write only. There is also memory compression, which could not happen in a write only memory.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#215

Post by betenoire »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #122
betenoire wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't share your interpretation at all. The gist is that humans are not rational computing machines. And that we can't expect each other to respond rationally to every word spoken or act observed. If you don't see the merit in winning arguments over being correct, uh... I dunno broaden your social circle maybe?

I think the personal attack was unnecessary there.

Fair enough. It wasn't meant as at attack, but I can see that.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#216

Post by Silhouette »

bambax wrote: post #167
Silhouette wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest a more simple and straightforward explanation for the limitations of "reason": our brain is, in fact, write only. That seems to be inconsistent with the research described in the article where subjects were asked for an opinion, then in some way required to explain that opinion, and then asked for another opinion on the same issue. People apparently did weaken in their convictions, but only when forced to c…

If you're referring to this paragraph: > A recent experiment performed by Mercier and some European colleagues neatly demonstrates this asymmetry. Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems... then no. While I don't know the exact content of the experiment or the wording of the questions, a reasoning problem isn't an opinion, it's a process. A process (a function) can indeed yield a diffe…

I was referring to the third section, about Sloman and Fernbach's work.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#217

Post by Spivak »

tbrownaw wrote: post #68
nsxwolf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've noticed related to this - your average global warming skeptic that you talk to in day to day conversations (not entrenched stakeholders on the internet) becomes far more willing to believe in man made climate change once you remind them that they are under no obligation to support or accept any particular policy to mitigate it. But if you tell them they have to give up this or that lifestyle, or pay mo…

Well yeah. If you conflate those things or tie them together, you've basically declared your intent to demand a mile if they give so much as an inch. Which means the only sensible response is to fight tooth and nail every step of the way.

This is basically the NRAs strategy as well and it's been incredibly successful. They know that their opponents intend to use compromise as a foothold for total disarmament so they have no choice but to occasionally take extreme or irrational stances. I don't blame them in the slightest.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#218

Post by Klover »

crdoconnor wrote: post #213
redial wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not if the "well regarded source" has a clear motive to lie. Then it is not a well regarded source any more.

The police are considered a well regarded source by the general public: "THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none." http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-...

Your article is inaccessible to me beyond the first 2 paragraphs. Please provide additional quotation. I do see that it is in the opinion category, so perhaps a more reliable source could be provided? Something like a main article of the NYT would probably have less chance to be skewed into a bias, than an opinion piece by the author of "Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness".

The reason I would like to know more, is because I learned so many years ago of the importance of doubt in criminal cases in the US. As Wikipedia tells it[1]:

>Beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest burden of proof in any court in the United States. Criminal cases must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

If it's currently the case where all that's needed for a suspect to be found guilty, is for a police officer to say they are, then the entire justice system needs to be reworked.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_doubt

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#219

Post by noobiemcfoob »

bambax wrote: post #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 -…

> write only

I doubt it. Coming from neural algorithms, it would seem the current theories point more to extreme compression algorithms. After a point, your brain stops or at least reduces the amount of "new data" and instead starts to represent new experiences as composites of fragments from the existing memory base.

Memory drift or fabrication could be explained as the existing set of fragments becoming altered either by loss or the natural re-weighting of the brain.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#220

Post by FabHK »

BeetleB wrote: post #186
FabHK wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-vac crowd might not be idiots, but they're selfish as hell (free-riding on herd immunisation while not willing to accept the (very very tiny) risk of vaccination to their precious child).

>The anti-vac crowd might not be idiots, but they're selfish as hell (free-riding on herd immunisation while not willing to accept the (very very tiny) risk of vaccination to their precious child). You mean, selfish like everyone else is? Is it even appropriate to use a broad attribution like "selfish" to a specific case of selfishness? I know both pro and anti-vaccines. I can definitely assert that some of the anti-…

Hi, yes, I mean selfish.

The reason I "moralise" it is that it is but an instance of a prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons. Same applies to signalling while driving, not stealing in stores, jumping the queue, lying on your CV, etc. etc.

As in the tragedy of the commons, we have a lot to gain by cooperating, but individually have an incentive to defect/cheat. I personally think that there is no karma or god imposing justice or preventing cheating, thus it is incumbent on us to police compliance and discourage cheating.

Furthermore, there are good arguments made that we have evolved capabilities to detect cheating and a tendency to punish cheaters (even to our cost).

So, I'm both viscerally and, I think, rationally opposed to that and other forms of selfish cheating, and it warrants opprobrium and moralising disapproval, to minimise it. That's the purpose.

Is that what you're asking?

> I can definitely assert that some of the anti-vacciners are less selfish than the pro-vacciners I know.

Not entirely sure what you mean - do you mean to say that the anti-vaccine stance is not selfish (which is in a sense a scientific issue), or that (while it is) there are people that are (in other ways) not selfish?

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