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There are facts, and there are beliefs, and there are things you want so badly to believe that they become as facts to you.
The theory of cognitive dissonance—the extreme discomfort of simultaneously holding two thoughts that are in conflict—was developed by the social psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s. In a famous study, Festinger and his colleagues embedded themselves with a doomsday prophet named Dorothy Martin and her cult of followers who believed that spacemen called the Guardians were coming to collect them in flying saucers, to save them from a coming flood. Needless to say, no spacemen (and no flood) ever came, but Martin just kept revising her predictions. Sure, the spacemen didn't show up today, but they were sure to come tomorrow, and so on. The researchers watched with fascination as the believers kept on believing, despite all the evidence that they were wrong.
This doubling down in the face of conflicting evidence is a way of reducing the discomfort of dissonance, and is part of a set of behaviors known in the psychology literature as "motivated reasoning." Motivated reasoning is how people convince themselves or remain convinced of what they want to believe—they seek out agreeable information and learn it more easily; and they avoid, ignore, devalue, forget, or argue against information that contradicts their beliefs.
[...] People see evidence that disagrees with them as weaker, because ultimately, they're asking themselves fundamentally different questions when evaluating that evidence, depending on whether they want to believe what it suggests or not, according to psychologist Tom Gilovich.
[...] In 1877, the philosopher William Kingdon Clifford wrote an essay titled "The Ethics of Belief" [PDF], in which he argued: "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence."
[...] All manner of falsehoods—conspiracy theories, hoaxes, propaganda, and plain old mistakes—do pose a threat to truth when they spread like fungus through communities and take root in people's minds. But the inherent contradiction of false knowledge is that only those on the outside can tell that it's false. It's hard for facts to fight it because to the person who holds it, it feels like truth.
[...] In a New York Times article called "The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship", Amanda Taub writes that sharing fake news stories on social media that denigrate the candidate you oppose "is a way to show public support for one's partisan team—roughly the equivalent of painting your face with team colors on game day."
This sort of information tribalism isn't a consequence of people lacking intelligence or of an inability to comprehend evidence. Kahan has previously written that whether people "believe" in evolution or not has nothing to do with whether they understand the theory of it—saying you don't believe in evolution is just another way of saying you're religious. Similarly, a recent Pew study found that a high level of science knowledge didn't make Republicans any more likely to say they believed in climate change, though it did for Democrats.
[...] People also learn selectively—they're better at learning facts that confirm their worldview than facts that challenge it. And media coverage makes that worse. While more news coverage of a topic seems to generally increase people's knowledge of it, one paper, "Partisan Perceptual Bias and the Information Environment," showed that when the coverage has implications for a person's political party, then selective learning kicks into high gear.
[...] Fact-checking erroneous statements made by politicians or cranks may also be ineffective. Nyhan's work has shown that correcting people's misperceptions often doesn't work, and worse, sometimes it creates a backfire effect, making people endorse their misperceptions even more strongly.
[...] So much of how people view the world has nothing to do with facts. That doesn't mean truth is doomed, or even that people can't change their minds. But what all this does seem to suggest is that, no matter how strong the evidence is, there's little chance of it changing someone's mind if they really don't want to believe what it says. They have to change their own.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-article-wont-change-your-mind/519093/
[Related]:
The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: [PDF]
THE POLITICS OF MOTIVATION [PDF]
Behavioral receptivity to dissonant information
"A man with a conviction is a hard man to change" [PDF]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @07:15AM (4 children)
4 out of 5 can be fixed. The situation with wikileaks is complicated, so not really fixable.
There is no evidence that Trump is unusually involved with Russia. On the other hand, Bill Clinton got a 1/3 of a $million for a speech to a Russian bank that was financing the purchase of 20% of our Uranium assets, and then later "donations" from related entities to the Clinton Foundation topped 100 million. Hillary Clinton's supposed hostility to Russia is interesting for sure. Did a deal go bad, perhaps involving a silly "reset button" with the ambassador followed by an embarrassing invasion, or is she just trying to pretend she isn't influenced by a 9-figure "donation", or is she really just itching for nuclear war?
The gender wage gap goes away if you consider lifetime hours worked (accounting for overtime and leave) and what jobs people do. Choosing to major in "Early Childhood Development" hurts your earnings. Taking a decade off to have kids hurts your earnings -- your experience becomes obsolete and your professional network forgets who you are. Avoiding overtime hurts your earnings. If you want higher earnings, suck it up.
As for the IQ... we've all seen the graph. It's even on Wikipedia. Go back to school if you can't read graphs. While the exact meaning of intelligence might be difficult to pin down, we all know what the word means and it is pretty damn obvious that IQ tests measure it more or less correctly.
Immigration didn't work out for the natives of the Americas. Immigration didn't work out for Lebanon, which used to be a lovely Christian country without horrific violence. Immigration didn't work out for Sweden, which now has weekly grenade attacks (seriously, OMG WTF!!!) and has seen skyrocketing rape. A nation isn't just land and laws. It is a people; a culture that generates those laws and claims that land. If the third world moves here, then they will act in third-world ways and vote for third-world laws. They come to our nice home, but they act to make it their home and by doing so make it third-world.
Of course, these facts won't change your mind. You don't have a clue about fascism, but it makes a nice label for the other team. You can also call them sexist and racist. Read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" some time. Here, I'll label you: you are a fake American. Why do you hate America?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @01:07PM (1 child)
There is no evidence that Trump is unusually involved with Russia
Your failure to look [soylentnews.org] does not mean there is nothing to see.
That principle applies to pretty much every thing else you wrote.
Of course, these facts won't change your mind. You don't have a clue about fascism, but it makes a nice label for the other team.
And that, right there, is proof you have your eyes closed.
Those words I wrote are not mine. They are the words of one of the foremost experts on the rise of fascism in pre-WWII Europe. [alternet.org] If there is anyone who has clue about fascism, he is it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @08:48PM
I looked. The evidence is piss-poor for Trump being unusually involved with Russia. (never said "zero") The evidence shows that Trump is, oddly, less involved than Clinton. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Your "expert" is Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor being interviewed for Alternet. I'll accept that as much as you'd accept David Duke being interviewed for Breitbart or Infowars. The week after the election, Timothy Snyder cranks out a book that preaches to the choir, a rather blatant way to make money. He's laughing all the way to the bank, and so here he is pushing his book. It personally benefits him to get you worried about Trump.
I don't know why you aren't happy to see a president put America first. Why do you hate America and Americans? I find it sad that you are a fake American, but Trump is still your president.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @04:14PM (1 child)
Hey, Buzzard, why are you posting as AC? We all know this has to be you. And who the hell modded this shit up as "Insightful", of all things? Would somebody care to step forward and defend that upmod? Anybody?!?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 18 2017, @12:05AM
That doesn't look like Uzzard's usual tracheal diarrhea to me. It's written at a slightly higher grade level and doesn't seem to have that same undercurrent of vengeful, aggrieved persecution complex layered with entitlement and disdain.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...