What politicians know that the authors of this study don't seem to realize, is that if we are told the same story repeatedly for long enough, no matter how absurd, we'll start believing it. If you throw in some scary outcome if we don't believe the story, we'll come around sooner. It seems that fear will cause us to re-examine our beliefs and values.
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
21–30 of 126 posts
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#22First 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.
Facts is a loaded term here. Facts cannot rely on trust, those are called authoritative opinions, not facts. And opinions about vaccination are still just opinions, not facts. If you say, for example, that it's hazardous not to vaccinate, like the article does, it's not a fact, it's a judgement and advertising judgements is the essence of propaganda, it's basically the opposite of a fact, dystopian use of the word fact. But actual decent factual picture about vaccines is complicated, it's about balancing many big and small risks: catching the virus while you live your life, catching something at the clinic while getting vaccinated, having complications from vaccination, being subjected to unnecessary treatments and drugs because doctors want to profit from you that may also cause complications, or just being able to afford it vaccination, and so on. Not to mention all the unknown unknowns and not knowing how to evaluate the risks involved. And poor but still factual picture would at least not advertise any judgement and would present the reasoning for everyone to make their own conclusions.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#23I 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 thing is, truth does exert a pull on our beliefs. It's a slow force.
What is the nature of this force? Where does it come from and how does it influence our minds?
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#24The New Yorker can't help itself, can it? Reasonably fair article, but then suddenly veers into:
"When I talk to Tom and he decides he agrees with me, his opinion is also baseless, but now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug about our views. If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration."
And:
"(They can now count on their side—sort of—Donald Trump, who has said that, although he and his wife had their son, Barron, vaccinated, they refused to do so on the timetable recommended by pediatricians.)"
The thing is with studies like this is it's used by people on the losing side of elections to start complaining about "low information voters" with the subtext being "If only everyone was as clever as me and all my friends that think the same then [thing I disagree with] would never win elections." Ironically this also lets them avoid any introspection as to whether they may lose because there are defects with their policy positions.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#25I 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…
Maybe part of it is expectation of instant gratification. But given how things change over time, slow adoption may not be worse than quick disruptive adoption that needs recalibration.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#26"Why some facts, on some topics, don't change our minds as much as they maybe should" would better reflect the article content.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#27I 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…
Maybe part of it is expectation of instant gratification. But given how things change over time, slow adoption may not be worse than quick disruptive adoption that needs recalibration.
Agreed. One mental example I use is that imagine someone brought you proof of a ghost. Maybe it's a testimony from someone who is rational and wouldn't ever lie, maybe it's some unexplainable photograph or phenomenon.
If you didn't believe in ghosts before and then suddenly switched to believing in them, then your entire worldview changes - the soul exists and can exert itself into reality, the afterlife is real, maybe emotions exert some real phenomenon too, and so maybe wishing makes things happen too!
That, in and of itself, would be irrational, to change your entire worldview based on single pieces of evidence, even if they do appear to be true
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#28[deleted]
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#29First 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…
I am wondering why it is so hard for the article to properly reference the study. Then one could easily check through the citiations on google scholar for example. Probably it is
Ross, L, Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 880–892.
Re: Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds (2017)
#30I 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…
Whether you like it or not has no bearing on whether it's true. In fact that's a confirmation bias right there. Presented with evidence of something you find unpalatable you simply reject it outright purely on the basis you don't like it. Personally I'd rather know. The point isn't that evidence has no power, it's that it has dramatically less power than most people think. However there are strategies for getting us…
> 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 extra carefully.