291–300 of 347 posts
This means I totally suck when it comes to debating anything. Sometimes I wish I could just be a rock and not sway around so much.
Of course this has the political implication that people should be governed by enlightened rulers - Plato didn't trust democracy either. Now i think that people are perfectly competent at deciding if they are better of now rather than they were four years ago; maybe I am fighting against a strawman here, but no, democracy still is the best of all systems out there.
The dissident songwriter Alexander Galich has a song about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuXx6gU5wRc (In Russian)
http://songpros.ru/1/Aleksandr-Galich/tekst-pesni-Boytes-tog...
"don't fear neither praise nor blame / don't fear hunger nor thirst / only fear but the one who says 'I know how it ought to be' / the one who says 'follow me i will teach how it has to be done' " (my attempt at translation)
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…
> How can we as a society fix this? Don't mate with irrational people.
For me, the most important statement was as follows: "If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views."
In other words, more information doesn't help people. But asking people to understand the implications of their thoughts, and encouraging to consider those implications, will lead people to be more moderate, thoughtful, and deferential to experts -- who have spent lots of time considering the implications.
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…
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…
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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.
Maybe this is why facts don't change our minds. Given exact evidence that it was wrong, which we all accept, and then turn around and say, oh yeah, we got it right this time. We're all trying to feed into our biases, not change our minds. I'm not trying to point out what you're beliefs in low-fat vs low-sugar diets have changed, I'm trying to point out the fact that you see evidence that science was wrong, and you st…
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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 paper you cite says that most published research is false.
You infer from this that published research is no better than no source.
But this is wrong! If published research is true 30% of the time, but people's intuitions (on questions research is published on) are so only say 10% of the time, then going with published papers is a better choice.
I'd like to know if people feel, after reading TFA (or the psychology literature), how likely it is that people are wrong most of the time on important questions.
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Everyone is selfish but being selfish in a way that could, if enough people also followed that movement, cause an epidemic is worth labeling as such. Selfish is not a broad term. It is an adjective used to describe a person, usually in conjunction with some action they are taking. Your anecdotal experience with both pro- and anti-vaccination supporters has no real backing beyond ignoring the above and generalizing th…
>The purpose of moralizing is to shame those that ignore our struggle as living organisms. So how is that working out? Think of all the campaigns that have effected change. How often did shaming work? Sure, you have a few cases like the fight against Apartheid, but in general? Not effective. Here's the thing. I'm as pro-science as they come. However, I've been blessed to come from communities that fall prey to anti-v…
However, I do think it's important to try to get into the minds of how others think, to be able to come up with a strategy.
Before reading this thread, I always thought anti-vaxxers were just bad at science. But now another possibility has been shown - they understand the odds well enough, but simply prefer a very small advantage for their children over a large advantage for society.
It doesn't mean pro-vaxxers should tell them that.