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Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

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Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#251

Post by coding123 »

makecheck wrote: post #192

When people find out who said a particular thing, the “what” seems to fall by the wayside and the “who” seems to matter more. The statement is accepted or rejected outright because of the person. Maybe it is time to change that. For instance, imagine a world where every bit of text you encounter — every news story, every tweet, every statement, every message — had no attributions AT ALL. Meaning, you have no idea if…

I loved this thought experiment. I often feel like this too, a lot of people identify with R or D or Trump or Clinton, not because of any specific policies they wrote. It's almost always your community, basically what level of shunning am I going to receive for believing X. We're all tiny machine learning experiments that push our personal agendas. We align with an issue that's important to us or we align with a group that's important to us. People are very "group oriented" so specific issues, while important, are typically less meaningful than the tribe mentality.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#252

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

coldtea wrote: post #76
jimbokun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> All you are really saying is its impossible to know anything for certain. Yeah, in the sense that all you are saying is its possible to have degrees of trust on difference sources of "facts". That said, you'd be surprised how often the fact (pun intended) that it's "impossible to know anything for certain" is lost on people. > Having a citation from a well regarded source is better than having no citation. Peer rev…

The article you linked doesn't actually address either of the points you claim it negates. It doesn't look at peer-reviewed status or citation quality (or quantity) as variables. It claims that most published research findings are false, but you're making a misleading interpretation of its findings.

> That said, you'd be surprised how often the fact (pun intended) that it's "impossible to know anything for certain" is lost on people.

It's certainly not lost on the millions of newly minted epistemic skeptics, who all of sudden over the last few months feel a calling to publicly argue against the knowability of objective facts.

I took an epistemology class in college, and I do agree that there is a sense in which facts are never truly and finally knowable to us. But I vehemently disagree that we should import this philosophical doubt into matters of everyday life. Even if our ability to capture facts is imperfect, throwing up our hands and saying "nobody's ever actually known a single fact, so why bother trying to agree on the terms of debate, lets just agree to disagree about the facts" is a transparent gesture towards legitimizing ignorance.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#253

Post by BeetleB »

sqeaky wrote: post #247
BeetleB wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nope: everyone else gets vaccines, they are clearly more selfish in this regard From their perspective, they are not getting a benefit. How are they selfish? Great of you to take one piece of my comment and ignore the main point of it.

Perspectives can be wrong. They are gaining benefit. Ever wonder why non-urban menengitis outbreaks tend to happen in churches that preach some non-sense about vaccines being bad and not to groups that vaccinate?

>Perspectives can be wrong.

Can you be selfish if you do not believe you are gaining something from it?

From Webster:

>concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others

They do not believe in vaccine's efficacy, so they are not concerned with themselves any more than others.

>arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others

Same issue here.

My question is not being answered: I gave an alternative phrasing that maintained the facts, but eliminated the word selfish. Why the need to add that label? Ultimately, it's not even whether they are selfish or not. In the debate, what useful information did that word add? If I want to increase vaccination rates, will that word help me?

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#254

Post by jimmaswell »

luhn wrote: post #40
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.

Similar idea: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#pa...

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#255

Post by kofejnik »

coldtea wrote: post #76
jimbokun wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> All you are really saying is its impossible to know anything for certain. Yeah, in the sense that all you are saying is its possible to have degrees of trust on difference sources of "facts". That said, you'd be surprised how often the fact (pun intended) that it's "impossible to know anything for certain" is lost on people. > Having a citation from a well regarded source is better than having no citation. Peer rev…

Exactly, it has been a fact for a very long time that fats are quite bad for you and you should mostly eat carbs. A fact published in reputable sources and irrefutable to most people.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#256

Post by coding123 »

kpwagner wrote: post #165

This is a really tough problem. Like many in the HN community, I try to fight against confirmation bias, but sometimes it feels like a lost cause. Compare it to a reasonably complex math problem--I'm talking an Algebra II / Calc I type problem. You are relying on so much previous knowledge to complete the problem. That knowledge may have been "earned", meaning you really took the time to build up an intuition, or "un…

And, as we know, overfitting is bad.

I think you hit it on the nose, I mean look at our Supreme Court.. like the TOP court, a set of people that are supposed to do their absolutely best at leaving out bias. I mean that's the resume - NOT BIASED PERSON JUDGING THINGS. Yet almost like clockwork, each Justice is delivering carefully crafted prose fully backed up by legal jargon to explain their final judgement. 90% of the time when the judgement falls into some political trap, the court is split down to the R or D President that got them there (with exceptions of course). Shouldn't those opinions basically be identical? Why are we not FIXING that, instead we let them die, and feverishly get a new president that matches our worldview more so the new Justice can fix our world.

I remember watching some news program like 60 minutes or 20/20 back in the day. They put on two fake trials, but I think the jury thought it was all real. In one they presented the defendant as a old man that had probably looked ugly. In the other they presented the defendant as a young man with good posture in a suit. All of the orchestrated words in both trials was the same. In the end they fried the old-ugly man and let the suit go. Why don't we change anything? Why is this acceptable? I can think of countless other crazy things in this planet that we shockingly let slip by.

Given that THIS is the world we live in, I'm absolutely not surprised the talking heads can easily just push completely biased information and everything goes unchecked. In the end it's simple really, it's just a big war of who's right and wrong, but we all lose. The EGO has taken over this planet.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#257

Post by BeetleB »

sqeaky wrote: post #246
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).

I haven't met one that wasn't an idiot. Around my location they are all claiming that vaccines cause autism or deferring to Jesus for his medical opinion like he actually exists. EDIT - Downvote away, but I would prefer if you demonstrated I was wrong by presenting a sensible reason to allow mass anti-vaccination. I understand there legitimate reasons for an individual to avoid a vaccine, like immune deficiency or al…

>Downvote away, but I would prefer if you demonstrated I was wrong by presenting a sensible reason to allow mass anti-vaccination.

Probably downvoted due to the swiftness by which you call someone an idiot...

It's a broad term. I'm sure I can find someone who believes in the things you listed who can do several things better than you (be it mathematics, programming, etc). Who would the idiot be?

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#258

Post by pps43 »

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.

Probably this one: http://guns-vs-homicide.github.io

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#259

Post by coding123 »

sqeaky wrote: post #245
noir_lord wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you just wrote was nuanced, and there's very little room for nuance recently. It certainly seems like that has become the case though I wonder if it's always been like that and modern technology just exposes it better. > "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance" I saw a stand up comedian misquote that as "Tyranny is the absence of nuance" which I think I actually preferred. As for your point on the vaccina…

I am afraid I fall into one of these extreme camps. I don't see room for a gray area on this issues like I can on other issues. I see no practical downside and lots of benefit to vaccines. Children, plural, Children have died in my home city because of this anti-scientific attitude and the "serious side-effects" are either non-existent or so rare as to not be worth discussing. There is no link with autism, and this i…

Here is the gray area, for a gander: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/feb/03/...

This article is Pro-vaccine and agrees with the reported death count in 2014, for example at 122. In the case of vaccines I live completely in the gray areas. For example, there are something like 80 vaccines automatically given to children. Why don't we limit that to the vaccines that are absolutely necessary?

Also pet vaccines, totally important to not over-vaccinate. Many of them include adjuvants that have a high correlation to sarcomas that appear in the injection site, cause cancer and kills the pet. My wife worked in vet hospitals and there was a much much lower rate of pet killings in the clinics that use adjuvant free vaccines.

Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds

#260

Post by Retra »

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…

This fails because things can't simply be broken down into a sets of "good" and "bad," and people really only do this because they want to justify things they already believe. Those who want to actually learn and understand things tend not to be satisfied with "coffee is good" or "coffee is bad." Neither of those represent the results of any kind of expertise.
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