Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview • Hacker News Board

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#91

Post by mercer » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 5:52 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #59

tabtab wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: I have learned that objectivity...is astonishingly rare. As somebody who has been in many political debates, I have to agree. A good many are addicted to authority figures to tell them how to think. Another frustrating aspect of human nature is that most people don't know how to be logical . I strive to be logical as a personal goal, but it's often not valued in the work-place, or anywhere. Keep in mind "logical"…

A good many are addicted to authority figures to tell them how to think. To be fair, if you have (for example) a high school education, simply taking the word of someone who has (for example) a PhD in X subject is a best practice. From the article: In theory, resolving factual disputes should be relatively easy: Just present the evidence of a strong expert consensus. Though I've spent time in an anti-vax community --…

Good point. The world would be a better place if we at least learned /who/ to trust when it comes to expertise...

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#92

Post by mercer » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 5:57 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #70

ska wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a false dichotomy. I value objectivity a lot, but recognize that there are lots of issues in human interactions that you just cannot solve well with this approach. In trying to break it down to something tractable, you throw out the important bits. I suspect that sometimes the resistance you find is not due to you applying logic, but instead misapplying it. For what it's worth, I also suspect that som…

It’s not a false dichotomy. Objectivity allows you to assess data and make decisions based upon that data opposed to a gut feeling. Objectivity is very helpful when it comes to persuading and manipulating people, as it means you are making decisions based upon your observations of them opposed to your personal opinions of them.

Our senses are not objective, and our mental processing of said sensory input even less so.

While generally I do agree that trying to be 'objective' in the way you describe is a solid approach, I've met plenty of people and had plenty of experiences where this backfired because I or others had too much trust in the ability to be 'objective' about something, overruling our very subjective but also correct 'gut feeling'.

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#93

Post by 0xff00ffee » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #82

0xff00ffee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portlander here. Sometimes it's hard being a liberal when you have to deal with the fluoride idiots or the "EM radiation causes autism" ... not just from the lesser-intelligent, but from intelligent-yet-highly-misinformed people (e.g., I know severeal doctors who believe Wi-Fi routers might be dangerous and are worried about 5G deployment... yes, I said DOCTORS ... show me some double-blind studies, people). Every gr…

There are no double-blind studies of the effect cell phones on cancer. That would be impossible - how would you create a control group that thought they were using cell phones but actually weren't? And even if you could magically solve that problem, who would pay to run such a study on thousands of people for years? And Democrats have their own bigots. They're probably worse than Republicans on appearance discriminat…

Go back to 4chan.

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#94

Post by johnsonjo » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 6:45 AM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #45

austincheney wrote: post #12

Twice I have been through interviews that use hours of psychology assessments to filter candidates. One of those was a large hedge fund. Through that I have learned that objectivity is a measurable and identifable personality trait that is astonishingly rare. Most humans are hardwired to seek mutual security, which means banding together as a stress coping mechanism. That incidentally means some natural revulsion of…

Re: I have learned that objectivity...is astonishingly rare. As somebody who has been in many political debates, I have to agree. A good many are addicted to authority figures to tell them how to think. Another frustrating aspect of human nature is that most people don't know how to be logical . I strive to be logical as a personal goal, but it's often not valued in the work-place, or anywhere. Keep in mind "logical"…

> Another frustrating aspect of human nature is that most people don't know how to be logical. I strive to be logical as a personal goal, but it's often not valued in the work-place, or anywhere. Keep in mind "logical" is not necessarily the same as "being right", at least not my working definition. Being logical is being able to back up your viewpoint and claims using a clear chain of logic. I define any assumptions I make as givens, and my conclusion can be formed directly from those givens. I don't necessarily write it out in formal logic, but if one questions a specific informally-written step, I can and do formalize/clarify it.

Logic can only get you so far. Your argument can be perfectly chained together logically, but logic says nothing about whether your premises/givens are true this is the difference between sound and valid arguments. This is probably what you meant by being logical is not always being right. Honestly you can be as valid in your arguments as you want, but that doesn’t always make your argument sound, because when your givens turn out to be false your whole chain of logic is moot and your conclusion is not true (as some might think) but instead inconclusive [1]. Just as someone with invalid logical chains and possibly even correct assumptions conclusion would be inconclusive and not false as some may presume (I’m thinking of the fallacy fallacy [2].) Sure it’s important to have a valid argument, but people with unsound valid arguments can make a lot of confusion too and possibly even more so.

> Most don't return the favor. "My guts have proven accurate and I'd rather trust my gut feelings" is a common response. Screw Guts, I want logic, damn humans! Human guts have proven dumb.

Your givens you describe on setting up your logic could also be categorized as a gut feeling as well. As they say it’s turtles all the way down.

Now don’t get me wrong I agree we should be more logical in our arguments. I just think people can take your reasoning too far which is why I added some input.

[1]: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_false_prem...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#95

Post by dang » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 7:16 AM UTC

0xff00ffee wrote: post #93

leereeves wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no double-blind studies of the effect cell phones on cancer. That would be impossible - how would you create a control group that thought they were using cell phones but actually weren't? And even if you could magically solve that problem, who would pay to run such a study on thousands of people for years? And Democrats have their own bigots. They're probably worse than Republicans on appearance discriminat…

Go back to 4chan.

You can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#96

Post by dang » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 7:16 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #82

0xff00ffee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portlander here. Sometimes it's hard being a liberal when you have to deal with the fluoride idiots or the "EM radiation causes autism" ... not just from the lesser-intelligent, but from intelligent-yet-highly-misinformed people (e.g., I know severeal doctors who believe Wi-Fi routers might be dangerous and are worried about 5G deployment... yes, I said DOCTORS ... show me some double-blind studies, people). Every gr…

There are no double-blind studies of the effect cell phones on cancer. That would be impossible - how would you create a control group that thought they were using cell phones but actually weren't? And even if you could magically solve that problem, who would pay to run such a study on thousands of people for years? And Democrats have their own bigots. They're probably worse than Republicans on appearance discriminat…

Please don't use HN for political and ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#97

Post by nickthemagicman » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 7:26 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #60

padmanabhan01 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always logic vs guts. Logic is great when you are dealing with theoretical problems that are well defined and you know the variables involved etc. In real life problems, often there are way too many variables, are time bound, things aren't as well defined. It's in those cases that people resort to gut..

I've found the lack of an ability to use basic logic to be extremely widespread down to simple conversational matters. It severely impedes and distracts conversations (online and off). I wish it were primarily a problem when dealing with theoreticals, as I find it's a problem just about any time you converse where there are many people. Emotionalism is rampant. I have yet to find a forum - in ~25 years of near daily…

The issue goes all the way to the top.

There is objective logical evidence Trump sold out the country on that phone call to Zelinsky.

Republicans can't logically argue that so they're turning to emotion and their supporters have primitive logic failure responses.

It's really disappointing to see the Republicans lack of logic.

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#98

Post by mettamage » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 7:47 AM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #45

austincheney wrote: post #12

Twice I have been through interviews that use hours of psychology assessments to filter candidates. One of those was a large hedge fund. Through that I have learned that objectivity is a measurable and identifable personality trait that is astonishingly rare. Most humans are hardwired to seek mutual security, which means banding together as a stress coping mechanism. That incidentally means some natural revulsion of…

Re: I have learned that objectivity...is astonishingly rare. As somebody who has been in many political debates, I have to agree. A good many are addicted to authority figures to tell them how to think. Another frustrating aspect of human nature is that most people don't know how to be logical . I strive to be logical as a personal goal, but it's often not valued in the work-place, or anywhere. Keep in mind "logical"…

I like your goal.

I also wrote a literature review on when humans should and should not trust their gut.

It was a personalized assignment that I fought to obtain as it was not a standard assignment.

Writing it taught me a lot.

If you’re interested, email me and I’ll send it to you.

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#99

Post by afiori » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 7:55 AM UTC

d1zzy wrote: post #75

padmanabhan01 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always logic vs guts. Logic is great when you are dealing with theoretical problems that are well defined and you know the variables involved etc. In real life problems, often there are way too many variables, are time bound, things aren't as well defined. It's in those cases that people resort to gut..

That's fine and all except we should at least recognize when we've decided by gut and when by logic. Unfortunately this doesn't happen in most cases which means that when weighing alternatives we give equal credit to gut and logic based decisions because we don't even know which is which. Saying "I don't know" is one of the most honest and correct things a human can say about most problems. Then starting from that th…

I agree on the honesty part, but in many cases "because I think it is right" is a valid argument.

It is wrong to pretend to have a logical reasoning behind your gut feeling where there is none, but there is nothing wrong in not wanting to work with a company because they give a 'bad feeling"

Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview

#100

Post by afiori » Sat, Feb 01, 2020, 7:56 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #60

padmanabhan01 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always logic vs guts. Logic is great when you are dealing with theoretical problems that are well defined and you know the variables involved etc. In real life problems, often there are way too many variables, are time bound, things aren't as well defined. It's in those cases that people resort to gut..

I've found the lack of an ability to use basic logic to be extremely widespread down to simple conversational matters. It severely impedes and distracts conversations (online and off). I wish it were primarily a problem when dealing with theoreticals, as I find it's a problem just about any time you converse where there are many people. Emotionalism is rampant. I have yet to find a forum - in ~25 years of near daily…

Not directly a forum, but...

https://slatestarcodex.com/about/