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Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

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Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#111

Post by gmadsen »

Lendal wrote: post #54
im3w1l wrote: post #11

I really dislike this narrative that facts don't change our minds and we are all irrational. The thing is, truth does exert a pull on our beliefs. It's a slow force. It may take years for people to come around to it. Sometimes it even happens on a generational scale. But we are approaching the truth. Everything in history, and everything in our daily experience tells us this. A couple of experiments where researchers…

The article doesn't say facts never change minds. Clearly, facts do change minds. Just not always. The article simply focuses on the latter case, because that's a more interesting thing to read about. It's like boring headlines don't get voted up in Hacker News. It has to be something interesting. Facts change peoples' minds. Facts don't change people's minds. Both are true. But only one is interesting.

its not that its just boring, but it doesn't provide any insight. We all have experienced changing our minds due to facts , there is nothing to write about that statement. What is interesting is that despite thinking that we are very logical with what we believe, study after study show that to be not the case on average. Confirmation bias is pervasive

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#112

Post by iconjack »

The fundamental problem is that our beliefs become part of our identity, and thus most of the time we're not actually seeking the "truth". This is obviously true when it comes to religion, and almost as bad when it comes to politics. And these days, a lot of "science" has become hyper political: race, climate, gender, evolution. Forget changing anyone's mind on those topics, no matter what facts you have in your arsenal.

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#113

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

simonh wrote: post #36
im3w1l wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presented with evidence of something you find unpalatable you simply reject it outright purely on the basis you don't like it. I presented a case for why I think it is wrong. And I presented a case for why people have reason to push it despite it being wrong: it gives them more power. Considering peoples motivations is important, and when someone stands to gain we should be suspicious and have to go over everything…

I suppose I was a bit antagonistic in my post sorry, but if anything your observation supports the article's position. Why should facts exert only a slow, painstaking generational force on belief if people are actually rational? Surely it should have immediate effect? I really don't see what these researchers or journalists have to gain, beyond what they would gain from doing any research or journalism. I'm just not…

> Why should facts exert only a slow, painstaking generational force on belief if people are actually rational? Surely it should have immediate effect?

Kind of like Bayesian inference. You have a prior and the different evidence moves the probability.

And it works a lot. For example, if you see a magician levitating, the evidence of your eyes seems to suggest that they are actually levititating. However, your priors tell you that the chance of that is still pretty low even with the new evidence. So this way, you don’t go run across a street magician and suddenly believe humans can levitate.

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#115

Post by dennis_jeeves »

dragonwriter wrote: post #71
ghthor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that the vaccines contain mercury and aluminum and that those metals are causing problems in people who take that vaccines? Because that's a fact they contain those metals and they hurt people. I have a daughter who went from speaking to requiring 5 years of therapy to start speaking again. I not allowed to sue about that and no one in the medical establishment would acknowledge that the only cause of…

> Do you believe that the vaccines contain mercury and aluminum and that those metals are causing problems in people who take that vaccines? That’s a lot to unpack. Yes, vaccines have very low concentration of compounds of those metals. Yes, those metals at the concentrations in vaccines can cause minor side effects, though there is no evidence of serious side effects. But, more to the point, vaccines more broadly th…

>Yes, those metals at the concentrations in vaccines can cause minor side effects, though there is no evidence of serious side effects.

How about this to ensure safety: demonstrate that they are safe at say 100 times the amount used in vaccines. Has this been done? No, is what I understand. ( if you do find a study to that effect please put it here or email me).If that can be demonstrated then we can be reasonably sure that 1/100 the massive dose will be relatively harmless.

The way it is normally put : that is no evidence of serious side effects is disingenuous. It's the other way round, it has to be demonstrated that it has no serious side effects.

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#116

Post by [deleted] »

bumby wrote: post #90
jbotz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really dislike this narrative that facts don't change our minds and we are all irrational. I don't think that is the real "narrative" here, although reading this article may make it seem like that. The "narrative", or rather the modern scientific understanding which this article tries to present to a lay audience, is that real rational thinking is not our default, even though it seems to us that way. But we can t…

> Study cognitive biases to become more aware of their effects on our thinking and hopefully "immunize" our mind against some of their effects. I’m not sure this works. In fact, Daniel Khaneman has said in the into to “Thinking: Fast and Slow” that all his study into cognitive biases has led him to believe he’s powerless to stop them in himself, and still only able to recognize them in others

[deleted]

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#117

Post by aeternum »

Lendal wrote: post #54
im3w1l wrote: post #11

I really dislike this narrative that facts don't change our minds and we are all irrational. The thing is, truth does exert a pull on our beliefs. It's a slow force. It may take years for people to come around to it. Sometimes it even happens on a generational scale. But we are approaching the truth. Everything in history, and everything in our daily experience tells us this. A couple of experiments where researchers…

The article doesn't say facts never change minds. Clearly, facts do change minds. Just not always. The article simply focuses on the latter case, because that's a more interesting thing to read about. It's like boring headlines don't get voted up in Hacker News. It has to be something interesting. Facts change peoples' minds. Facts don't change people's minds. Both are true. But only one is interesting.

It also makes sense for humans to have some amount of hysteresis. Evidence or 'facts' can be misleading, data can be cherry-picked. It takes some time to sort it out.

I do think too many people get blinded by that hysteresis and the want to be 'right'.

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#118

Post by mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE »

Truth is only important to us as long as it contributes positively to our well-being. This sort of mushrooms is edible and this one is poisonous - everyone would agree on that. As far as more abstract truths are concerned: people believed for centuries that the Earth is flat. Many still do. If you said otherwise, society would probably burn you for heresy, so the cost of truth was hugely negative.

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#119

Post by simonh »

rbecker wrote: post #94
simonh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about studies, not individuals. At the study level, they are pretty much universal. The effect is so strong that at this point demonstrating it is a routine entry level task for first year psychology students (my mother did a degree in child psychology when I was a teenager so none of this is new to me). I'm surprised at your last statement, my experience is very much in line with the article. Presumab…

> Presumably you think you have rational, logical evidence based reasons for many of your opinions right? So how come so many people with opposing views are completely intractable to your arguments? You must have noticed this. I have noticed this. I've also noticed many areas where I agree with the vast majority (e.g. "smoking is unhealthy"). If you'll look carefully, you've committed a subtle form of selection bias.…

Thanks for the considered response, it was a good read. As you say we're not that far apart really.

I agree the studies are very narrow, but that's really a requirement, in a study like this you have to narrow things down very tightly to eliminate extraneous factors. I know it's hard to believe now, but these findings in the 70s really were shocking, many psychologists and philosophers thought the results were impossible. I think it's hard for people nowadays to put themselves back into that context.

On the reasoning problem, I don't think it's fair to include the people that spotted the trick in the final analysis. The fact that 60% of people that didn't know they were contradicting themselves did so perfectly happily just in order to feel consistent despite evidence to the contrary is pretty shocking.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)

#120

Post by rbecker »

simonh wrote: post #119
rbecker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably you think you have rational, logical evidence based reasons for many of your opinions right? So how come so many people with opposing views are completely intractable to your arguments? You must have noticed this. I have noticed this. I've also noticed many areas where I agree with the vast majority (e.g. "smoking is unhealthy"). If you'll look carefully, you've committed a subtle form of selection bias.…

Thanks for the considered response, it was a good read. As you say we're not that far apart really. I agree the studies are very narrow, but that's really a requirement, in a study like this you have to narrow things down very tightly to eliminate extraneous factors. I know it's hard to believe now, but these findings in the 70s really were shocking, many psychologists and philosophers thought the results were imposs…

> I know it's hard to believe now, but these findings in the 70s really were shocking, many psychologists and philosophers thought the results were impossible.

I completely forgot to consider that/am only vaguely familiar with the beliefs at the time. It casts the experimenters in a completely different light, and makes me think I should not have been so negative of them. They must have tried many different increasingly sophisticated setups before they were able to tease out these effects, that they only suspected existed. It's always fascinating to see someone intuit some truth long before they have experimental data to confirm it. I imagine reading about their early failures and how they slowly arrived at their findings would be very interesting.

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