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Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

pnas.org

11–20 of 175 posts

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#11

Key point: "The problem is that facts—at least today—are themselves subject to doubt, especially when they conflict with our political beliefs (21). In the past decades, America has seen a decentralization of news and information (22) that has allowed people to gather their “own facts” (i.e., alternative facts; ref. 23). Most recently, claims of “fake news” allow people to distrust any information that fails to align…

In 1980 newspapers were where >50% of advertising dollars were spent, now it's going to nothing - and - they have to fight for every little click using click bait.

You can see the natural progression towards hyper bifurcated viewpoints.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#13
post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

> [0] For example (and this is just one example), I remember last year stories about how covid-19 victims were going into mass graves in New York City. And while that was a true and an objective fact, important context was left out. The context that was missing was that they were being buried on Hart Island, which is literally a mass grave site designated for unidentifiable persons dying of any cause, not just covid. But if you leave that part out it seems like the bodies are piling up so fast and so high the authorities had no choice but to dump the corpses in mass graves. Whereas in truth only unidentifiable/unclaimed covid victims were buried on Hart Island, and the same fate happens to any of NYC's homeless when they die for any reason and nobody claims the body.

Except even your "objective fact" lacks the context.

Hart island is and was a mass grave for unidentified/unclaimed bodies... however the number of dead going to that island was way way higher than years before during normal times. Hell even in october of last year at a time where the virus was more under control there was still 4 times(360 vs 90) the number normally going to that island. the number buried there through october was over 2 times the total buried there from the previous year with two more months to go in the year.

even people who discount covid as a bad, made up thing also can't escape the fact that the year is far more deadly from deaths of any cause than prior years:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

So either people are dying from something else at an alarming rate that defies predictions or covid is something worth taking seriously(also, the fact that death is not the only outcome and there are people with serious long term negative effects).

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#14
post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

> [0] For example (and this is just one example), I remember last year stories about how covid-19 victims were going into mass graves in New York City. And while that was a true and an objective fact, important context was left out. The context that was missing was that they were being buried on Hart Island, which is literally a mass grave site designated for unidentifiable persons dying of any cause, not just covid.…

I ended up deleting that example because I knew someone was going to quibble about it. More people were buried on Hart Island in 2020 than previous years but more people were buried everywhere in 2020. That doesn't change the fact that Hart Island existed pre-covid and will continue to exist post-covid and that the "mass graves" stories were based on carefully selected out-of-context facts in order to paint covid in a deadlier light.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#15

The upshot of these experiments appears to be: communicating a "relevant, harm-based, and personal experience" leads people to rate you as more rational and respect you more. Maybe because it reframes the interaction from "who will win this fight, you or me ?" to "gosh, I'm a vulnerable human, and here's part of how I got that way", which makes beating them at this game or demonizing them...somewhat less appealing.

So we politely validate the other person's personal experience and go on our way, forgetting about the whole thing and cleaving back to our original ideas within a few hours.

That is to say, maybe neither of the interventions in this study has any long-term impact.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#16

It's interesting to me that this delineates between facts and personal experience as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts. Perhaps a more useful way to think about people's relation to truth is one of proximity. For a given individual, their personal experience is entirely factual, and because it is also most proximate to them, it is weighted the most highly. Intuitively, I think we understan…

> as if personal experience doesn't occupy the same space as facts

There is some overlap but it is not the same space. Humans tend to extrapolate and generalize. For example based on your personal experience with one (or a few) persons of ethnicity1 you may generalize that all persons of ethnicity1 have attribute2. But this is not a fact.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#17
What bridges divides the best is unfortunately a common enemy that has agency, which unites previously warring factions against a common outgroup. This is the unfortunate reality of our tribal brains. Just look at how this whole GME episode (common villain - hedge funds) has brought the US left and right closer together (even though the gulf remains large) than they've been in years. COVID was a missed opportunity, we had an opportunity to cleverly frame as an outgroup threat (which lacked agency, so it's not an ideal driver of group cohesion), which we didn't do.

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#18
This paper just validates as “fact” something that I strongly believed by “personal experience” :-D

As humans (evolutionarily social creatures), we have a natural empathy that’s hard to circumvent unless the discussion turns into very abstract statements about belief & facts & rationality. IME, all but a narrow segment of people are typically very receptive to hearing about and empathizing with other’s experiences. Over time, this might also significantly change perspectives through osmosis.

Very rarely do perspectives change in any significant manner before and after a “logical argument” — and for good reason https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...

Re: Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts

#20
post #5

The problem with "objective facts" is that they are often carefully selected or pulled out of context to bolster the arguer's position. I'm sure everyone can think of objective facts related to covid that both make the disease seem more deadly, and also objective facts that make it seem less deadly. Appeals to emotion with subjective experiences have the same problem. You can use them to bolster support for the argue…

Or as the late great Mark Twain put it: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

A good example of FUD spreading using 'facts' is the current war on vaping. More contentiously, there is also the war against glycophosphate.

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