"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
-- Upton Sinclair
Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
331–340 of 347 posts
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#332I'd say the article's reasoning is flawed :) We cannot be experts in everything. We can hardly be experts in a very narrow field; for all the rest we have to trust other people. The only thing we can do is to choose who(m) we trust. Now, there are no rational rules to do this; we do this based on I don't know what. Experience, gut feeling, whatever; our own understanding of the world, of course, but it's bound to be limited.
The fact that some people claim that they are devoted to science and reason doesn't make it so. The French Revolution claimed it was scientific; they gave us SI units everybody is so fond of. And Marx's "Capital" looked very reasonable for a very long time and even now many people still believe in its reasoning (or think they do; most don't understand it anyway). The Soviet propaganda and education made it a point that the communist theory was, you know, the only "scientific" theory of progress and everything. And it did look convincing, especially if you were exposed to nothing else since childhood; I'm talking as a survivor here :) And I say: no. Thanks, but the reason is not enough.
Edit: typos.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want facts that won't change after 15 years, you should study Mathematics. I was just watching The Man Who Knew Infinity the other night and I would dispute that even Maths won't change after 15 years. Once in a generation, someone like Ramanujan comes along and manages to change something even as fundamental as Mathematics.
Hell, Hilbert's program, Godël, and Turing.
I think a lot of mathematicians distinguish zealously between Mathematics per se, as opposed to mathematical logic/philosophy.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards.[5] He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. Despite various publications of results where ha…
It would be better if you provided more recent examples: medical science was very primitive in the 19th century, and Galileo was not persecuted by scientists. More recently, Marshall and Warren's research on stomach ulcers quickly led to the rejection of the expert consensus which had prevailed for decades, because technological advances enabled them to present convincing evidence to a profession which had come to ac…
You want a more recent example: I give you me.
I was diagnosed with Atypical Cystic Fibrosis at age 35. It is genetic, thus incurable. Having managed my condition without a diagnosis for decades, I had my own ideas about what was going on with my body, different from the current scientific consensus.
Armed with a proper diagnosis, I began to get myself well. My CF doctor's response was to express zero curiosity and schedule me fewer appointments because "other patients needed him and I did not."
I have been shit on left and right on multiple internet forums for trying to talk about my experiences. I have been called a quack and accused of being mentally ill and had uglier personal attacks made against me. I have had "sciency" people tell me that "13 years of consistent forward progress is a wild coincidence, stranger things have happened, it isn't evidence that you know anything."
No one has yet locked me up in an insane asylum or beaten me to death, but I have absolutely experienced firsthand that this has not really changed. I am currently homeless, which I guess is a slightly better fate than being essentially murdered for trying to share new information, but the way I get treated doesn't speak well of society at large.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 welfar…
I actively left the word selfish out of my post, and the wording really doesn't matter. I don't care what they believe or what they do don't deserve. All I care about is the results.
They are gaining benefit with vaccines and are causing harm without. They are safe and effective. Other people's children die when enough people choose not to vaccinate. I still don't see a grey area, no amount of mincing words adds a grey area, this should be mandatory.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. But seeing retreating glaciers after being told why they are retreating is still relying on something you were told. As long as we are being "told" we can change the channel and choose our preachers. There is nothing that can stop anyone from doing so in a "free" country. The point is, normal people have no way of knowing about most things anyway, that it isn't just fake news that is fake, it's that news as we…
I agree with your larger point "normal people have no way of knowing about most things", but the glacier example was pretty clear. Just the change in vegetation over the course of the valleys was a pretty obvious indication that a huge amount of the glaciers had retreated quite suddenly from their previous, well established positions. The moraine topology was another indicator. Even if you had never heard of "global…
Right. But to your advantage, here you've demonstrated how you've interpreting evidence to fit with other evidence and knowledge to strengthen your set of facts. Most people will not see what you saw and think what you thought. And this can be applied to everything really. Evidence is everywhere, though even if people saw it, they won't know what it says or how to measure it.
With the internet we can go directly to the source for evidence. Sources can be completely open and transparent regarding their motives and research. And anyone who wishes to learn should be able to start with learning how to identify the bubbles of fake news and alternate facts. Then we'd be talking. Until then, most everything you hear is just somewhere on the BS spectrum.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#337> 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 -…
It's also wrong. Hunter-gatherer societies are much less concerned about social standing than agrarian ones.
yeah but being cast out of your tribe got you killed. It's why shame is so painful to feel.
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe, but consider adding another constraint to the game of maximizing your chance to being right -- you have a finite amount of resources (eg, time) to spend on examining evidence, so you need to strategize even what evidence is worth considering and to what extent -- looking more carefully at one thing means you now have less time to look carefully at something else, nothing is free Of course, in real life, we do…
> Of course, in real life, we do have this constraint Which IMO is what causes confirmation bias. But science should strive to get rid of confirmation bias as much as possible.
Your comment is vacuous if you don't expand on it; it goes without saying we want to try to minimize bias as much as possible. Science is part of a world of limited resources too, and investigators have to decide what experiments to try, what topics to pursue
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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?
I use vitriol to convince in casual conversation, because it works. Just as the article indicates and many smart people before me have demonstrated people like to ignore facts that don't agree with them. Put another way "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason into", so you need to use something else. I like peer pressure, sarcasm and shame. Even just a tiny cheap laugh can dislodge all but the…
>I use vitriol to convince in casual conversation, because it works.
>I like peer pressure, sarcasm and shame.
Interestingly, when you read influence/negotiation books, all of these are listed as tactics that create resistance, and all recommend not using these tactics.
One of the golden rules is to criticize the idea, not the person.
>Even just a tiny cheap laugh can dislodge all but the most strongly held beliefs if those laughs come from their close peers.
Agreed. But the reason you have so many anti-vaccine folks is that their peer group thinks like them.
If you say it works for you, great! Not been my observation, and definitely not the observation of folks who do this stuff for a living.
>I have no regret caller anti-vaxxers idiots
This comment speaks to the reason I went off in this thread.
Who is asking you to feel regret?
Re: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm not trying to defend my side or persuade anyone. I have no clue where you got that idea.
I agree that shaming people isn't a good way to argue but they're still selfish by definition and morally in the wrong.
Your original conjecture wasn't even about what you are talking about now. You kept complaining about the terms used by someone else. Your previous assertions were all based on bad definitions and anecdotes.