Researchers Finding that Even When Faced with Facts, People Won't Change. How should we respond?

Elrox · 3 months

Most of the population of the world has been raised to believe that blind faith is a GOOD thing. How is this surprising news?

antipoet · 3 months

I think there's a lack of basic training in skills of critical thinking. I think the only thing to do is instill these skills early because I think at a certain age people only change at their own desire and at great personal effort.

Even then I wonder, can people learn healthy rationalization and critical thinking skills or is it a skill reserved for a certain level of intelligence?

Brian · 3 months

Well, despite the study, I still think they will change, so we should keep on doing the same thing.

NoahFect · 3 months

Laugh at them.

No, really. That works. Nobody wants to be laughed at.

rerb · 3 months

I used to think that beliefs were reasonable conclusions, valuable insofar as they corresponded to truthful reality. Not so much anymore. I see all around me folks who believe nutty stuff, but derive much utility from these outrageous and objectively false beliefs.

If you want to win an argument or change someone's mind, clobbering them with facts doesn't always (often?) work -- providing them with a replacement belief that makes them feel good, makes them feel better than the belief they held at the start of the argument, works better.

Is this how the right has captured so many of the nascent proletariat? Is this how Madison Avenue keeps us buying satisfaction after satisfaction, while keeping us endlessly dissatisfied?

woodrail · 3 months

Nobody's reasonable. We use reason to serve our desires. Reason is derived from desire. So if you want to change somebody's reasoned views then change their desires.

A desire can be changed 3 obvious ways that I see.

Satisfy it : Feed the desire. (Can desires really be fed? I dunno.)

Sublimate it : Use the desire as leverage, redirect the frustration. This isn't really a change, more of a mask. It's good manipulation psychology. Observe how religions and the military handle recruits. Observe how advertisers manipulate their audience. Get a handle on a person's desire and you can convince them of anything.

Transcend it : Get them high and let them see things from a new point of view. It can shake up the whole desire-complex, maybe resolve it into something more intelligent, maybe not.

EDIT

pardon me, I've been reading a bunch of Dune books. This is how they all talk.

YYYY · 3 months

the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic

..a great way to sink a ship, or destroy a country.

jeezfrk · 3 months

I think this changes over times in history and over various cultures.

Calmer times with more social and institutional trust can lead to more consistent interest in "factual authority".

Not so much now. The only surprise is that it isn't worse with poor education now.

VodkaGimlet · 3 months

We should keep funding research like this.

thepodgod · 3 months

"We need a new chicken." -Slavoj Zizek.

StagPartyGames · 3 months

The Debunking Handbook is a good place to start, but realize that some percentage of people will never get it.

Pokemansparty · 2 months

The best course of action I believe would be discussing this openly, in person in front of people.

A good read, although long, is John Stuart Mill's On Liberty: Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion (http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html)

Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man's want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibility of "the world" in general.

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