Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
newyorker.com
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
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Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#2Is that actually a fact?
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#3Is that actually a fact?
No, all this evidence is made up. So: how likely do you think it is that humans really behave like this?
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#4First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated?
Part of the reason, “facts” don’t change our mind is that a lot of “facts” aren’t really facts like physics, but are rather the result of statistical games.
Finally, and I think the biggest issue is that a lot of facts rely on trust, since they are practically impossible for the average person to fully verify. And I think, for a variety of reasons, trust has been lost. Think about vaccines. Say back in the 1950’s, you probably knew or heard of someone who died from polio. You mom, might have had a sibling that died from one of the other vaccine related illnesses. The doctor recommending the vaccines, was seen as a trusted friend. He(it was usually a he back then) probably spent his whole life in your town. He knew your grandparents. Maybe he delivered your parents. He would spend hours at the bedside of a sick child or a dying grandparent. Maybe he was the one who delivered your children as well. Now when he says that he recommends you give your child this vaccine, you are going to listen.
Now forward to modern times. You book your appointment. You go to the office where you wait for hours. The pediatrician comes in and rushes through a 15 minute visit. Says your kid should get vaccinated. On the way home you listen to an investigative report of how doctors are paid by big pharma to prescribe drugs. By the way, you have never heard of anyone you know getting one of these vaccine preventable illnesses.
Now the gap between the educated elites and regular people in this country is widening. They do t interact much socially. They do t even live together. In the United States, the non-college educated have seen a steady decline in their real wages and well-being. Of course they are going to distrust “facts” put out by the elite who are seen as out of touch.
I say this as someone who totally believes in vaccines and have persuaded many of my friends that they should have their children vaccinated. The growing gap between the rich and poor in this country is at the root of many issues.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#5First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated? Part of the reason, “facts” don’t change our mind is that a lot of “facts” aren’t really facts like physics, but are rather the result of statistical games. Finally, and I think the biggest issue is that a lot of facts rely on trust, since they are practically impossible for the average person to fully verify. And I think, for a variety of reasons, tr…
Trust is a big part of it.
Facts are closely related to statistics. It’s possible to be both true and a complete lie at the same time.
Abusive people will often use “facts” to control victims. You learn to be very mistrustful after awhile.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#6Related: Epistemic Learned Helplessness: https://web.archive.org/web/20180406150429/https://squid314....
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#7I see quite a big problem with those studies: the facts where made up and the truth was contingent, not necessary.
So why was it expected of the participants to change their minds? Nothing they could verify disproved their initial position.
For me all this proves is what I already knew: "garbage in, garbage out".
edit: as below comment pointed out this might not be the problem of the studies but of how the article tries to use them to prove its point.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#8Is that actually a fact?
I don't mean to be paranoid, but do you think the article might be misinformation in some study of the collective gullibility of the HN crowd?
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#9First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated? Part of the reason, “facts” don’t change our mind is that a lot of “facts” aren’t really facts like physics, but are rather the result of statistical games. Finally, and I think the biggest issue is that a lot of facts rely on trust, since they are practically impossible for the average person to fully verify. And I think, for a variety of reasons, tr…
>First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated?
According to the article they have many times, yes, it describes many examples of similar experiments along these lines.
This evolutionary function of reason, and it's resulting flaws in our implementation of it supports my belief that in the grand scheme of things we are actually only just barely sentient. That is, we're at the very lowermost bound of the set of possible intelligences that are capable of technological civilisation. I think this because, well, we only just recently evolved enough intelligence to actually do it. If we'd become intelligent enough earlier, we'd have done it earlier.
If that's true then sure, it would be natural to expect that our reasoning powers are still impaired by flaws and fallacious tendencies. The scientific method then is a procedural set of rules we've invented to prevent our naturally somewhat irrational tendencies to mess up our ability to determine accurate actionable information. Yay us!
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#10First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated? Part of the reason, “facts” don’t change our mind is that a lot of “facts” aren’t really facts like physics, but are rather the result of statistical games. Finally, and I think the biggest issue is that a lot of facts rely on trust, since they are practically impossible for the average person to fully verify. And I think, for a variety of reasons, tr…
> First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated?
> Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding.