Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

> it's bothersome that all the political examples leaned the same way.

But they don’t: The article also cites the example of vaccine denialism which is much more pervasive on the political left (though they tie it back to Trump). As an aside I agree that it’s somewhat lazy that these kinds of articles always come back to politics. Then again, it’s hard not to discuss the Trump administration when talking about “post-truth”.

EDIT: apparently I was misinformed, vaccine denialism doesn’t seem to follow political leaning, though it does seem to follow political extremism (on both sides of the political spectrum), see [1]. But apparently my mistake is a somewhat widespread belief ([2]).

[1] https://theconversation.com/anti-vaccination-beliefs-dont-fo...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

The Minnesota Transracial Adoption [1] study is something that, for better or for worse, changed my outlook. It was a major and longterm study designed to try to prove once and for all that environmental factors were the dominant factor in the correlation between race and IQ. The study followed the results of well to do white parents adopting children of black, half black, indigenous/asian, and white ancestry. In it they controlled for location, income, family stability, age of the adopted children, etc -- as many environmental variables as they could.

The problem is that the study ended up showing the exact opposite of the desired outcome. By age 17 the difference in IQ between an adopted black child and an adopted white child was 18 points. Interestingly even adopted white children and the biological white children born to well to do parents showed a substantial 4 point difference in IQ which could be explained by genetic differences in those who end up of the means to adopt children, and those who end up in situations where they're left to give away their children for adoption.

There was even a phenomenal accidental control. A number of the adopted children originally identified as having two black parents actually had one white and one black parent. And these children fit the IQ outcomes of the other half-black half-white children, which was about 10 points above the children from two black parents. This means even though the parents thought the children came from two black parents, and the children themselves also thought they came from two black parents - their performance mapped to their genetic background and not their environmental assumption.

The authors have tried to undermine the results of their own study in two main ways. The first is by suggesting that differences could be attributable to prenatal environmental differences. This not only defies belief given the differences and extreme consistency, but if the authors actually believed this, it would have made the entire study, which went on for nearly 2 decade, completely pointless. The other is suggesting that skin color can create environmental differences. This is a much stronger argument against the results. However it also suffers from the same post-facto rationalization, but even more importantly -- this hypothesis is also strongly undermined by the accidental control group of half black children. Given their misidentification it's safe to say that these children did not have strongly indicative transracial features. And in any case they would have identified as 100% black given that's what they thought they were.

I think that this study's results are precisely why there have been no further studies, of the same scale, performed on the topic. The results are not what we want to believe.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...

> even now evolution is still only considered a theory

No, you simply misunderstand what “theory” means in the scientific context. It’s a synonym for “explanatory model”. And “evolution” in this context stands for something close to “gradual change via random mutations and natural selection [as well as other, less important mechanisms]”. Calling it “theory” does not imply that it’s not based on observable facts, or that there’s doubt about it. It’s simply used to distinguish observable facts from an explanatory model.

There is no “progression of certainty” from hypothesis → theory → fact. As another commenter has said, evolution is as much a theory as gravity.

I agree. It might be better to say, "People don't change their minds when we want them too. But people do change their minds when they come to their own realizations about the information they have. And sometimes that sucks because it can takes days, months, years, a lifetime."

For example, I'm an ex-Jehovah's Witness and over on the r/exjw subreddit a common thing you see is a person starts posting. They've just realized their long held sacred beliefs are nonsense, but all their friends and family are JWs (which is a problem because JW culture is such that losing your faith makes you a pariah, and possibly shunned by those friends and family) so they want to know how to wake up their friends and family to the fact that JW beliefs are nonsense. But you just can't. Believers have strong faith and ignore contrary evidence and apostate arguments while under the spell of their faith. The believer has to make a lot of decisions for themselves to be able to read a bunch of facts, apply them rationally and decide that their faith doesn't stand on it's own two feet.

And depending on how or what you believe in, not just religion, but any subject, if you have pre-established or long held beliefs about it, information that runs contrary becomes suspect.

After all people will argue until they use up all the oxygen in the room over evolution (because of the perceived implications to their religious faith or other beliefs). But not a goddamn person you've ever met is going to pick the atomic weight ceiling of the heaviest possible atom as the hill they want to die on.

Lurking beneath the surface, I'm sure, is bewilderment at the Trump phenomenon by New Yorker readers. But nevertheless, the piece isn't a partisan screed.