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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) by tangomargarine on Friday March 17 2017, @03:43PM (9 children)
It doesn't matter if "facts" are real or not, all that matters is what enforces "the way I view the world." This is extremely elementary.
Yet, this is why people STILL think Trump isn't involved with Russia, and why Wikileaks is somehow still defensible, why people deny the gender wage gap, why race is indicative of IQ (or for that matter is scientifically determinable in any means whatsoever (HINT: IT'S NOT)), why immigration is somehow bad whatsoever, and so on and so forth. It's because people seek out information that backs up their preconceived notions of the world
I liked the part where you complained about people setting up absolutes and not listening to contrary opinions, then you listed a bunch of your own absolutes and said you wouldn't listen to contrary opinions.
why immigration is somehow bad whatsoever
You're seriously going to say there's no conceivable circumstance where immigration could be a problem whatsoever? Wow. I'm sure I could lay my hands on about 2 or 3 bombings in the last decade carried out by immigrants which would have demonstrably been prevented if the U.S. had a closed border policy.
2006 UNC SUV attack:
Mohammed Reza Taheri-aza intentionally rammed into people on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. Nine people were injured, none seriously. Taheri-aza was reportedly an Iranian-born U.S. citizen.
2013 Boston marathon bombing:
Double bombings near the finish line of the Boston marathon killed three people and injured at least 264. The perpetrators were brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. According to FBI interrogators, the two were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs, but were not connected to any known terrorist groups. Tamerlan was born in Russia but was a permanent resident of the U.S., while Dzhokhar was born in Kyrgyzstan and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2012. Both were ethnically Chechen.
2016 Minnesota mall stabbing:
Dahir A. Adan committed a mass stabbing at the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, injuring 10 people. Adan was born in Kenya and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008.
2016 New York and New Jersey bombings:
Over the course of three days in September, three bombs exploded and several explosive devices were found in New Jersey and New York City, injuring at least 30 people. The alleged perpetrator was Ahmad Khan Rahimi, an Afghan-born U.S. citizen.
2016 Ohio State university attack:
Abdul Razal Ali Artan carried out an attack on the Ohio State University campus, injuring 13. Artan, a student of the university, was a Muslim Somali immigrant.
http://people.com/politics/donald-trump-refugee-muslim-ban-terrorist-attack-us-statistics/ [people.com]
I'm not saying we should close the borders, but it is a thing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @03:50PM (8 children)
You're seriously going to say there's no conceivable circumstance where immigration could be a problem whatsoever?
Yes, if only one child is saved, then it is better to leave hundreds of children to die [npr.org] in syria and millions to live in temporaryily permanent campsites wasting their lives away.
Because that's what makes America great!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 17 2017, @04:02PM (3 children)
Making it a numbers game does not disprove "somehow bad whatsoever." What you mean is "not worth the effort," which is a totally different argument.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @04:11PM (2 children)
> Making it a numbers game does not disprove "somehow bad whatsoever."
So your entire problem with the OP's statement boils down to their use of hyperbole.
That's about as shallow and empty a criticism as you can make because it completely sidesteps the intent of the statement.
Its one step up from a grammar flame. Why even bother? -- rhetorical question, just in case that was not obvious
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday March 17 2017, @05:08PM (1 child)
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Somebody making a bold claim and then, when called on it, immediately backing off, is rather disappointing. But if nobody calls them on it, people incorrectly take it at face value.
Their entire argument revolves around the claim that the issue is easily and obviously decided. In point of fact, it's not so cut-and-dried. QED
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @05:17PM
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Except it was not an extraordinary claim. It was hyperbole abbreviating an entire argument into a single, grammatically incorrect sentence.
You made the choice to interpret it that way despite all of the contextual clues that you should not.
people incorrectly take it at face value.
People are not computers, most of us can recognize a passionate argument as being passionate and not mistake it for a cold recital of bare facts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @06:00PM (3 children)
Syria can fix Syria.
We have our own problems. Our problems may be less awful, but they are more relevant to us.
We get Syria's problems too if we invite them to live here. You can take the humans out of Syria, but you can't take the Syria out of the humans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @07:31PM (2 children)
While the Syrian people obviously played a major role in breaking their own country, the USA also had a hand in it too. The US invasion of Iraq played an important role in destabilizing the entire region which allowed Islamist groups like al Qaeda and Daesh to get a foot hold there. There is a lot of blame to go around. In that light, it is not completely unreasonable for Syrians to feel that we owe them some consideration.
I got mine, to hell with all the rest of you? This attitude, right here, is why Americans are often despised around the world.
Let me guess: you are a Trump supporter, right? So, tell me: when should we rip that plaque with Emma Lazarus' poem off the pedestal that the Statue of Liberty stands on? You know, the one that says "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"? I think I would much rather have Syrians as my neighbours than Trump and his supporters. While there is the possibility that some would-be jihadis may have slipped in with the refugees, on the other hand, I am quite certain that Trump will screw me over first chance he gets. Frankly, I like my odds better with the refugees than with Trump and his supporters. More and more, the Trumpettes just plain scare me. Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @10:52PM
Am I supposed to care if non-Americans despise Americans? The goal is to win.
The leaders of most countries don't give a shit about Americans, and that is OK. It's expected. They do their job, or not, and the American president does his job.
Emma Lazarus' poem is pretty offensive. Put the Declaration of Independence there instead.
Not that he isn't bad, but our standards for presidents are low enough that Trump is the best we've had in at least a century. Most didn't put America first (most important job qualification) and many were awful in other ways. So far, my only complaints about Trump are issues with the rule of law (failed to prosecute Hillary for her felonies) and the loss of net neutrality. I suspected both when I voted.
Unlike the hateful left, Trump supporters aren't out hurting people for their beliefs. You know who you'd be safe with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @02:07AM
Personally I have no problem with that, especially the bit about yearning to be free.
What I object to is immigrants who come here and want to impose their antiquated religious and authoritarian beliefs on the rest of the population.