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It's really hard to argue against consensus reality. If enough people are all convinced that Alicia Keys is born in 1981, they will all keep repeating it until

by jordigh 11y ago

It's really hard to argue against consensus reality. If enough people are all convinced that Alicia Keys is born in 1981, they will all keep repeating it until it's true. My own pet battle in this war for truth is that "open source" was coined as a synonym for "free software" in 1998 and nobody called free software "open source" before then. There are so many people who argue so vehemently that "open source" was a term that people used naturally for software before 1998, and this gets repeated so often as to become consensus reality.

scholia 11y ago
It's worse that that: telling people the facts doesn't necessarily change their minds, often it just hardens their existing beliefs. See, for example, The Backfire Effect http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/ http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/ In cases where people have very strong beliefs, they would rather abandon reality than change them. It's quite common in tech, but is it worth worrying about? US society survives despite all the birthers, con-trail conspiracists, creationists, anti-vaxxers, Holocaust deniers, people who think the moon landings were staged in Arizona, and so on. In that context, I think Wikipedia is doing pretty well....
- jordigh 11y ago
  It's so scary when I think about myself and how often do I do that. I want my beliefs to reflect reality, but how well can I do it? How is anyone aware of this bias not afraid that they believe nothing but lies?
  - scholia 11y ago
    Do most people care that much about particular beliefs? Most of us recognize that the world changes, and more information becomes available, and we update our brains on an hourly basis. It's only really a problem for "single-issue fanatics" or extremists or whatever: those people who stake so much of their intellectual, emotional and sometimes financial capital on a particular point of view that they have to defend it regardless of the facts. Creationists, for example.

by jordigh 11y ago

scholia 11y ago

It's worse that that: telling people the facts doesn't necessarily change their minds, often it just hardens their existing beliefs. See, for example, The Backfire Effect http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/ http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/ In cases where people have very strong beliefs, they would rather abandon reality than change them. It's quite common in tech, but is it worth worrying about? US society survives despite all the birthers, con-trail conspiracists, creationists, anti-vaxxers, Holocaust deniers, people who think the moon landings were staged in Arizona, and so on. In that context, I think Wikipedia is doing pretty well....

jordigh 11y ago
It's so scary when I think about myself and how often do I do that. I want my beliefs to reflect reality, but how well can I do it? How is anyone aware of this bias not afraid that they believe nothing but lies?
- scholia 11y ago
  Do most people care that much about particular beliefs? Most of us recognize that the world changes, and more information becomes available, and we update our brains on an hourly basis. It's only really a problem for "single-issue fanatics" or extremists or whatever: those people who stake so much of their intellectual, emotional and sometimes financial capital on a particular point of view that they have to defend it regardless of the facts. Creationists, for example.