"Everything we hear is opinion, not fact; everything we see is perspective, not the truth" - Marcus Aurelius
Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
131–137 of 137 posts
Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect that there are many situations where the "facts" are poorly established or just wrong, and "logic" is just a set of assertions rendered plausible by the rhetorical skill and popularity of the debater. Stubbornness may be a survival trait for a social animal. We humans are flooded with facts and logic contrived to cause us to sacrifice our own self interest in favor of someone else's. I've even read that the…
The "logical" thing to do in most real world situations is to be extremely uncertain. I think just about only way that logic enters into real world considerations is through maintaining a set of not-logically-arrived assumptions and heuristic arrived at models and then using some logic and math to keep your behavior consistent. A lot of what people call logic are things like "not expecting a different result from the…
Re: A lot of what people call logic are things like "not expecting a different result from the same behavior"
That can be semi-formal logic if it's stated as a given rule-of-thumb. Most of the time your debate partner(s) will agree with such rules of thumb, barring some odd edge case. If an edge case is allegedly in play for the context, that path is then explored in more detail.
In IT, often rules of thumb will conflict, such as "a stitch in time saves 9" versus "keep it simple" (YAGNI). In such cases I often use labor hours and finance-like decision making techniques, not unlike deciding on insurance: what are the monthly premiums (ongoing costs), how likely is the targeted/prevented event to happen, and what's the cost of not having the prevention or preparation in place. It's not a perfect model, but at least is a numeric framework to discuss with rather then "I feel that...". Probabilities and money (labor hours).
Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with trying to be "define any assumptions" and using "a clear chain of logic" is that, if you do this right, you will realise that there's really very few things you can actually say about anything at all. This is a problem when it comes to day to day dealings. On the one hand, average population do not agree on what can be construed as "self-evident". On the other hand, what seems self-evident within our…
> you will realise that there's really very few things you can actually say about anything at all This really only applies if you require absolute certainty. But most of the time being reasonably certain is enough to operate in the world. And you can be reasonably certain about lots of stuff.
Ask each side to give a probability. If both sides have a similar estimate, then you move on to the next logic step(s). Don't bother debating things you already agree on. We don't have to dissect everything.
If it varies too much, then explore the reasons for the different estimates. Often times it comes down to different past experience, which is obviously going to vary per individual. (Ex: "when users see X on UI screens, they usually do Y, in my experience".) But at least one can narrow down recommended decision logic to observed patterns of history. Narrowing down the point of disagreement is often still helpful even if both sides still disagree.
Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re: but logic says nothing about whether your premises/givens are true this is the difference between sound and valid arguments. As I mentioned nearby, finding each side's "givens" is part of the process of narrowing down the points of disagreements. For example, after long debates with die-hard conservatives I've discovered that they are not necessarily against social safety nets, but rather they feel the more socie…
> As I mentioned nearby, finding each side's "givens" is part of the process of narrowing down the points of disagreements. I think this is a very good way to look at it. If you can find each others givens you can know how you differ. But, not always is one given more correct than another, but instead sometimes just shows a different perspective. For example in euclidean geometry by changing certain axioms you can cr…
Re: but sometimes what I've heard is that they disincentivize work for those who are able
I agree it can be hard to distinguish between the truly needy and intentional slackers. But, it would cost even more tax money to inspect harder to find out. Inspectors ain't cheap. It may be counter-intuitive, but it's sometimes cheaper to let some degree of riff-raff slip thru the cracks. The third alternative is that nobody gets anything.
Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That is interesting, because there are plenty of logical proofs of the opposite. There are, also, plenty logical proofs of how Schiff conducted a biased investigation. It is easy to prove any point by selecting your evidences.
There isn't proof of either of those things you said.
Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As I mentioned nearby, finding each side's "givens" is part of the process of narrowing down the points of disagreements. I think this is a very good way to look at it. If you can find each others givens you can know how you differ. But, not always is one given more correct than another, but instead sometimes just shows a different perspective. For example in euclidean geometry by changing certain axioms you can cr…
Re: but sometimes what I've heard is that they disincentivize work for those who are able I agree it can be hard to distinguish between the truly needy and intentional slackers. But, it would cost even more tax money to inspect harder to find out. Inspectors ain't cheap. It may be counter-intuitive, but it's sometimes cheaper to let some degree of riff-raff slip thru the cracks. The third alternative is that nobody g…
> I agree it can be hard to distinguish between the truly needy and intentional slackers. But, it would cost even more tax money to inspect harder to find out. Inspectors ain't cheap. It may be counter-intuitive, but it's sometimes cheaper to let some degree of riff-raff slip thru the cracks. The third alternative is that nobody gets anything.
That is exactly what I’ve heard and I completely agree with your statement. Although I never really meant to imply that we should have investigators follow people around and kick them off welfare.
Again, I’m not against welfare for the disabled, poor and destitute, but I also thinks it disincentivizes work to those that want to and I think though that people are disincentivized to work for economic reasons and not just social reasons. The economic reasons we can fix and the social disincentives might be able to be fixed too, but I wouldn’t think hiring inspectors is the right way to do that. For an example of economic disincentives for work in the US welfare system, if someone makes just enough money to get off of particular kinds of welfare because they got a job or even a better paying job they may end up making less which could disincentivize them from working or holding a better job. The answer as pointed out here is to ween people off of benefits in a way that would make financial sense to the individuals themselves [1].
Basically my thought with saying previously that these bad incentives can be bad for the person on welfare themselves is if we disincentivize people from climbing the job ladder above a certain rung they may feel inclined to always stay below that rung due to that incentive. Thus leading to their own poverty and thus hurting the economy as well, and this is because not only we have to continue paying their welfare, but also because they don’t contribute as much to our workforce.
I understand that for the large part of people on welfare their personal intention is to get off of it and pass that barrier/rung and get off welfare, but they still have some amount of disincentive to not do so which if the welfare program were better maybe it would have better incentives.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/32rr5p...
Re: Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah our gut/brain is like a machine learning tool. It will reach to a conclusion due to how experience has structured our brain to be however we always do not know the reason why. For simplistic and every day things it is very often right, but the more unusual and complex the scenario the more likely it is to misjudge. And it is also rather often that when we get that gut feeling we start to search for logical argum…
One should strive to avoid reliance on their "gut". First, guts are often biased; second, it's hard to communicate gut feelings. Consider it a bad habit that should be corrected or reduced for things that impact others.
I completely disagree with this; gut feeling is how we are scared of unusually silent alleys, gut feeling is how some people just have the wrong smile and look scary, gut feeling is how we perceive the infinite complexity of the human experience.
It is wrong to codify gut feelings into objective rules ("smiling too much is now a crime" obviously does not work). We should also strive not to be dominated by our gut feeling and to be self critical of how appropriate they are in any given situation.
Sometimes the rational position is to realize that strict rationality is not the perfect solution to every problem.