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We have this weird fetish these last few years with asserting in broad language that people don't change their minds, don't respond to evidence, dig their heels

We have this weird fetish these last few years with asserting in broad language that people don't change their minds, don't respond to evidence, dig their heels in further when presented with evidence that contradicts their preconceived opinions, etc. It's all over pop psychology and the headlines. Bugs the heck out of me, because if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do. It's true that perhaps some or many people never change their minds, or that all people might be apt to behave that way when they're not focusing their attention, but that's wildly different language then the headlines use. This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember. Even some of the content is probably guilty. In the Stanford capital punishment study, is it really true that each and every individual in the study responded as they describe? Because that's how the article is written. And the problem is it gives people more excuse to give up - to not engage with someone who is wrong, or to dismiss someone who is right (that they think is wrong). Because, studies! The real lesson is the opposite - that we have to study and learn critical thinking, and practice, as a discipline, changing our minds when the evidence or reasoning warrants it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible, and in fact the ability to do so is part of what makes us an evolved species - or more generally, our ability to surpass our instincts and evolved traits. Show me some experiments that demonstrate what conditions need to be in place, in order for people to change their minds after they've proven to be resistant. (Hint: psychological safety and lack of time pressure.) That's what'll be valuable. I'm tired of all these other studies that just say we don't.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
My observation is that when the real point of the argument is social pecking order bullshit where proving you got X fact wrong means you are evil (stupid, etc) and now deserve to be treated really terribly, people dig their heels in as the only possible defense against "agreeing" to be crapped on. If that's not what is at stake, people are vastly more willing to learn and grow. Some social settings are better than others in that regard.
raverbashing 8y ago
Agreed "Facts don't change people's mind" forget about the presentation of the facts, usually in a condescending and over authoritarian way. No fact is an absolute truth that shouldn't be open to discussion, facts help, but when people get "holier than thou" about them, that's usually when the pushback happens (not only on those occasions, though)
- geezerjay 8y ago
  I would also add that the word "fact" is often abused to refer actually to strongly-held beliefs instead of actual substantiated and well-accepted info. Thus when those feeling empowered by holding facts criticise others for not changing their mind when faced with their facts, they are actually attacking others for not succumbing to their personal beliefs.
n4r9 8y ago
> if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. Not sure how you've made this leap. The point is not that people never change their minds, just that the way they do so is less evidence-based than one would hope. It even says later in the article: > Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science.
- candiodari 8y ago
  > antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science That's perhaps an argument for the sciences directly built on positivism (the philosophical positivism), but that list ends quickly. Everything else is based on at the very least odds, but mostly consensus, and convincing based on those is required for anything beyond a few basic sciences. And positivism only covers math, large parts of physics and chemistry (but not all), and ... that's mostly it. I mean, you could argue small portions of economics, biology also qualify, but only small portions. Consensus itself, like presented in climate science and medicine, is an argument by authority. So if you convince someone of the truth of, say, global warming, you have in fact convinced them mostly of a social fact: that lots of people studying this problem seriously come to this conclusion. You have not convinced them that "because X leads to Y, here's the proof, Y leads to Z, here's the proof, this will now happen". You can't do that. These sciences don't work like that. Things like climate science, medicine, psychology itself, ... just aren't made up of rational argument but from tying anecdotes into a larger framework and some amount of statistical inference. For all those sciences any positivist would say that 1) there are (very small) odds that the science is entirely wrong 2) the odds that significant parts or specific studies, even when executed entirely correctly and with integrity, is quit large: obviously 1 in 20 should be outright wrong at 95% confidence
  - n4r9 8y ago
    I can't understand what you're saying. As far as I can tell, climate science and medicine and to some extent psychology depend on genuine, evidence based reasoning. It's not pure guesswork. Either way this is very tangential to my point.
sergiosgc 8y ago
I tend to model people changing opinion as ships with different inertia changing course: If you formed your opinion yesterday, it has low inertia, and it is easy to change course. If you formed your opinion a decade ago, it is high inertia, and the best I can do in a conversation is a little nudge in the right direction, hoping it will have some effect later on. The causes for opinion inertia are known. Long held opinions are part of people's identity (think religion, for example). People actively filter for supporting evidence, eschewing opposing views. It takes a while to breach both barriers. If you test high inertia opinion change in one sitting, like studies do, it looks immutable. (don't ever think you are immune to these inertia effects. Everyone is affected)
- ams6110 8y ago
  Another cause is that changing your opinion means admitting to yourself (and others) that you were wrong. And that's hard for many people to do, especially with long-held beliefs.
titanix2 8y ago
Well, most of the time the "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" question could actually be rephrased as "Why Don't Everybody Agree with the Left?" I just skimmed the article, but the mention of Steve Bannon at end is an indication that the article probably belongs to that trend. This turns the issue into the political ground, not the scientific one. Thus, the word "fact" is used as an appeal to authority when its actually an ideological discussion that is at stake. Some facts are carefully ignored or dismissed when not fitting the narrator world's view (in either sides), so it would be better to acknowledge that it's opinions that are discussed, and that their are not absolutely right.
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  The thing is, slim majorities of conservatives will answer phone surveys with things like "yes, Obama was born in Kenya" or "no, global temperature isn't rising". Specious argument can come from anybody, but the "la la can't hear you" portion of the left is measurably smaller compared to the right.
  - catawbasam 8y ago
    Source?
    - learc83 8y ago
      There really was a scientific poll were 51% of Republican voters said the believe that Obama was born in Kenya. https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/51-of-gop-voters-obama-foreign-049554 https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/51-of-gop-voters-obam...
      - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
        Did you really mean to use the word "scientific" here? If so, I'm not sure what you mean for a poll to be scientific.
        8y ago
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Yes. It would help to test how rational the study subjects are to begin with, why / why not they are so, etc. And then, what can / cannot be done to increase flexibility. That said, be careful that we with for. There is certainly unforeseen consequences here.
brightball 8y ago
A few years ago I really enjoyed arguing politics on the internet. Not trolling, but legitimately arguing. I ran into several people who would just link-bomb the conversation. So one day, when I had a couple of hours free I sat down and read every single link. All of them. The lack of substance beyond an opening paragraph that claimed a point was appalling. When it was brought to the attention of those link-bombers, they actually agreed that there was no substance and that they hadn't read those links at all. I was really proud of my friend and thought we had actually resolved a political disagreement on Facebook. Then I saw them dropping the exact same links in another conversation within a couple of days. Facts without context don't prove anything. Some of the facts but not all of them just frame the story in a particular light. After years of this stuff, it becomes clear that nobody has time to become an expert on every subject just to be able to identify the critical details that people are leaving out. Eventually, you just research your positions on the subjects that matter to you and vote accordingly. Now, if something doesn't make logical or mathematical sense, I oppose it. If there's no logic or math involved, I generally take no position at all.
- casefields 8y ago
  That's called the Gish Gallop and for whatever reason is the mode de jure for winning an Internet argument now. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    > winning an Internet argument now. and before! The prevalence of dumb things to link and dumb people to link them is a bit higher now but the Gish Gallop isn't new on the internet.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  I am really souring on such conversations because of the tremendous number of bad-faith arguing tactics people use -- willfully misconstruing your point, racing as quickly as possible to a glib dismissal without really understanding what you said, or, like you said, link-bombing. Another failure mode I find extremely frustrating is failure to understand analogies. For instance, if I were having a discussion about whether potatoes are healthy it might go like this: A: Of course potatoes are healthy! They're natural! B: If everything natural were healthy it'd be healthy to eat hemlock. A: Potatoes aren't hemlock and it's really offensive you'd make that comparison.
7952 8y ago
I agree that people do change their minds, but it is not neccessarily a direct result of facts. Things like emotion, social pressure, and moral arguments are far more persuasive. People just get angry when their facts arn't enough to pursuade someone. But sometimes you need to engage people at a more personal level than just science and statistics.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >But sometimes you need to engage people at a more personal level than just science and statistics... Now I don't know if I would write this off as simple "emotion". Obviously, "emotion" is probably part of it, but so is "social pressure", etc as you point out. I'd probably summarize that collection of factors as "Ideology". Convincing people to change their minds is likely one reason that ideology is actually useful to humans, even though oftentimes it bears little resemblance to the underlying reality we live in. It allows us to understand and interpret the world in ways that are comfortable and intuitive. Being "comfortable" matters.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Traditionally ideology is more often cast as a reason people cannot understand the implications of facts staring them in the face.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      It's both. It's the reason people ignore facts. And the reason people change their minds. Just to sharpen the point, think of it this way, ideology can make you "change your mind" and start believing things that have absolutely no basis in fact.
      - 7952 8y ago
        A good example of this is the history of medecine. Perfectly intelligent and educated people believed some really wild things about how infection occurred. It took a long time to convince people that hygiene was neccessary, and that hospitals should prevent contamination between patients. Nowadays we all believe in bacteria and viruses without question, but most of us have never seen either with our own eyes. But over the years our basic ideology has changed.
discreteevent 8y ago
I remember reading some article with a former head of Goldman Sachs. He was saying that the best traders aren't necessarily the smartest ones. The best traders are those who don't get attached to a position. So from that example, it would seem that some people are able to change their minds in response to feedback (and do well because of it).
mmsimanga 8y ago
All facts (those that are not lies) are true under specific circumstances/environment. Capitalism is bad. This statement is not always correct and neither is it always wrong. When unchecked, capitalism is bad. Capitalism also gave rise to SpaceX, Apple ...
- MrFantastic 8y ago
  Apple, SpaceX exists because of Free Markets. There is no reason to think they required our current flavor of Capitalism to come to fruition.
  - mmsimanga 8y ago
    I am not sure I follow the point you are making. The point I was trying to make is that there are good and bad things about capitalism. Often people are always against capitalism or always pro-capitalism but it isn't as simple as that. When you start delving into details you will find some things about capitalism are good and some aren't so great. I for one tink capitalism is the best of the worst lot. I don't think much of the banking and finance systems that are part of capitalism today. As far as I know and I am not economics professor, Free Market is a component of capitalism. Once you produce the goods the market will decide on the price.
technofiend 8y ago
>And the problem is it gives people more excuse to give up - to not engage with someone who is wrong, or to dismiss someone who is right (that they think is wrong). Because, studies! I know someone who is the victim of a professional conspiracy theorist. This guy has figured out how to pull people in with explanations of why your typical conspiracy theory is wrong. He'll happily refute that 9/11 was an inside job in public. So his marks think "Great, rational guy! Let's learn more!" But that's when you have to pay. All "hidden secrets" are on Patreon of course. But now his marks are literally and emotionally invested. I read once some conspiracy theorists feel like they have a special position because they know something the public doesn't. Between that (if it's true) and the fact you've literally paid for whatever hogwash this guy is selling you'll soon find yourself (as my friend did) explaining that every study quoted by The World Health Organization is flawed because they profit from vilification of Monsanto. How does he know? Studies that refute the studies! Written by whom, you may ask? In which case you'll be challenged for challenging "the true skeptics" who totally have it figured out. And the burden of proof is left to you: if you can't refute the studies that refute the studies well you must be wrong and now must accept The True Facts. It feels very much like a conversation with my friends in cyber security who see a boogie man behind every tree. I am willing to entertain rational fears. But when you don't like something new and reject it for an undefinable reason, or even worse because then it could reveal secret squirrel knowledge only cyber may know then don't be surprised if I too am a skeptic.
emodendroket 8y ago
> This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember. To me the obvious implication of the title is not that they never change our minds (we all know this is not true), but that they very rarely do -- at least much more rarely than one would expect. At any rate, this is an article from a weekly magazine; I'd expect somewhat more careful reading than occurs in a newspaper to be the norm.
criddell 8y ago
> This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember. I think these days most readers, especially of publications like the New Yorker, are more media savvy than you give them credit for. When you read the headline, did you really think it would be an article espousing the view that nobody anywhere has ever had their point of view altered by learning something new?
akvadrako 8y ago
> Bugs the heck out of me, because if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do. This is the wrong conclusion to draw from the discussion. People do change their minds, but rarely all at once. What they want is to be consistent, so you have to move the needle a little bit at a time. One technique to convince somebody of something: first you have to show you understand their position better than they do and are on their side. Then you can lead them towards the correct solution. It's called "pacing and leading".
sephware 8y ago
One of my favorite phrases is “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still” because it reminds me of the ever-useful principle that if someone has personal (and maybe even irrational) reasons to keep believing something they shouldn’t, like that they have a good chance at winning the lottery this time (no they don’t) and finally get out of the poverty that’s haunted them for decades, or that bitcoin is finally their ticket to entrepreneurial independence (probably not), or that the foreign prince really does want to send them money and all they need to do is buy iTunes gift cards and send him the numbers over the phone, no amount of facts are going to change their minds.
commandlinefan 8y ago
> no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do. "I've never seen anybody change their behavior as the result of a well-reasoned, rational argument. I have seen people change their behavior to avoid ridicule." -- Scott Adams
- tunesmith 8y ago
  I've seen plenty of people change their behavior as the result of a well-reasoned, rational argument. I'm not sure what Scott Adams' problem is.
dionidium 8y ago
It stems from a misunderstanding of what it means to say that you've changed somebody's mind. Hardly anybody ever changes their mind in the moment. That's not how opinions or the stubborn humans who hold them work. People change their mind on issues over time, in response to multiple inputs. If you expect to see evidence of changing minds literally represented in comment threads or at the end of dinner-table arguments, then you've totally failed to understand the value of those discussions. Intense discussions routinely change minds, but they rarely end with any evidence that a change has taken place. The notion that contentious discussions on broad cultural disagreements are valueless is, I think, mistaken and the meme is, in general, profoundly damaging.
liftbigweights 8y ago
What do you expect from a publication that hired people like Talia Lavin. https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/new-yorker-fact-checker-ice-tweet-resignation.html https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/new-yorker-fact-checker-ice-t... Both sides of the political extreme are guilty of claiming their "facts" are real and others are ignorant for not believing them. It's the modern day equivalent is "our god is the one true god" nonsense. But the left just has a much bigger and louder megaphone to shout at people. It's obvious to anyone paying attention that the New Yorker nor any other publication cares about facts. They care about their own agenda. The New Yorker isn't an objective publication. They are an advocacy group. Essentially it's the Ministry of Truth attacking people for wrongthink.
Brockenstein 8y ago
I agree. It might be better to say, "People don't change their minds when we want them too. But people do change their minds when they come to their own realizations about the information they have. And sometimes that sucks because it can takes days, months, years, a lifetime." For example, I'm an ex-Jehovah's Witness and over on the r/exjw subreddit a common thing you see is a person starts posting. They've just realized their long held sacred beliefs are nonsense, but all their friends and family are JWs (which is a problem because JW culture is such that losing your faith makes you a pariah, and possibly shunned by those friends and family) so they want to know how to wake up their friends and family to the fact that JW beliefs are nonsense. But you just can't. Believers have strong faith and ignore contrary evidence and apostate arguments while under the spell of their faith. The believer has to make a lot of decisions for themselves to be able to read a bunch of facts, apply them rationally and decide that their faith doesn't stand on it's own two feet. And depending on how or what you believe in, not just religion, but any subject, if you have pre-established or long held beliefs about it, information that runs contrary becomes suspect. After all people will argue until they use up all the oxygen in the room over evolution (because of the perceived implications to their religious faith or other beliefs). But not a goddamn person you've ever met is going to pick the atomic weight ceiling of the heaviest possible atom as the hill they want to die on.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

My observation is that when the real point of the argument is social pecking order bullshit where proving you got X fact wrong means you are evil (stupid, etc) and now deserve to be treated really terribly, people dig their heels in as the only possible defense against "agreeing" to be crapped on. If that's not what is at stake, people are vastly more willing to learn and grow. Some social settings are better than others in that regard.

raverbashing 8y ago

Agreed "Facts don't change people's mind" forget about the presentation of the facts, usually in a condescending and over authoritarian way. No fact is an absolute truth that shouldn't be open to discussion, facts help, but when people get "holier than thou" about them, that's usually when the pushback happens (not only on those occasions, though)

geezerjay 8y ago
I would also add that the word "fact" is often abused to refer actually to strongly-held beliefs instead of actual substantiated and well-accepted info. Thus when those feeling empowered by holding facts criticise others for not changing their mind when faced with their facts, they are actually attacking others for not succumbing to their personal beliefs.

n4r9 8y ago

> if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. Not sure how you've made this leap. The point is not that people never change their minds, just that the way they do so is less evidence-based than one would hope. It even says later in the article: > Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science.

candiodari 8y ago
> antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science That's perhaps an argument for the sciences directly built on positivism (the philosophical positivism), but that list ends quickly. Everything else is based on at the very least odds, but mostly consensus, and convincing based on those is required for anything beyond a few basic sciences. And positivism only covers math, large parts of physics and chemistry (but not all), and ... that's mostly it. I mean, you could argue small portions of economics, biology also qualify, but only small portions. Consensus itself, like presented in climate science and medicine, is an argument by authority. So if you convince someone of the truth of, say, global warming, you have in fact convinced them mostly of a social fact: that lots of people studying this problem seriously come to this conclusion. You have not convinced them that "because X leads to Y, here's the proof, Y leads to Z, here's the proof, this will now happen". You can't do that. These sciences don't work like that. Things like climate science, medicine, psychology itself, ... just aren't made up of rational argument but from tying anecdotes into a larger framework and some amount of statistical inference. For all those sciences any positivist would say that 1) there are (very small) odds that the science is entirely wrong 2) the odds that significant parts or specific studies, even when executed entirely correctly and with integrity, is quit large: obviously 1 in 20 should be outright wrong at 95% confidence
- n4r9 8y ago
  I can't understand what you're saying. As far as I can tell, climate science and medicine and to some extent psychology depend on genuine, evidence based reasoning. It's not pure guesswork. Either way this is very tangential to my point.

sergiosgc 8y ago

I tend to model people changing opinion as ships with different inertia changing course: If you formed your opinion yesterday, it has low inertia, and it is easy to change course. If you formed your opinion a decade ago, it is high inertia, and the best I can do in a conversation is a little nudge in the right direction, hoping it will have some effect later on. The causes for opinion inertia are known. Long held opinions are part of people's identity (think religion, for example). People actively filter for supporting evidence, eschewing opposing views. It takes a while to breach both barriers. If you test high inertia opinion change in one sitting, like studies do, it looks immutable. (don't ever think you are immune to these inertia effects. Everyone is affected)

ams6110 8y ago
Another cause is that changing your opinion means admitting to yourself (and others) that you were wrong. And that's hard for many people to do, especially with long-held beliefs.

titanix2 8y ago

Well, most of the time the "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" question could actually be rephrased as "Why Don't Everybody Agree with the Left?" I just skimmed the article, but the mention of Steve Bannon at end is an indication that the article probably belongs to that trend. This turns the issue into the political ground, not the scientific one. Thus, the word "fact" is used as an appeal to authority when its actually an ideological discussion that is at stake. Some facts are carefully ignored or dismissed when not fitting the narrator world's view (in either sides), so it would be better to acknowledge that it's opinions that are discussed, and that their are not absolutely right.

yourbandsucks 8y ago
The thing is, slim majorities of conservatives will answer phone surveys with things like "yes, Obama was born in Kenya" or "no, global temperature isn't rising". Specious argument can come from anybody, but the "la la can't hear you" portion of the left is measurably smaller compared to the right.
- catawbasam 8y ago
  Source?
  - learc83 8y ago
    There really was a scientific poll were 51% of Republican voters said the believe that Obama was born in Kenya. https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/51-of-gop-voters-obama-foreign-049554 https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/51-of-gop-voters-obam...
    - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
      Did you really mean to use the word "scientific" here? If so, I'm not sure what you mean for a poll to be scientific.
      - 8y ago

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Yes. It would help to test how rational the study subjects are to begin with, why / why not they are so, etc. And then, what can / cannot be done to increase flexibility. That said, be careful that we with for. There is certainly unforeseen consequences here.

brightball 8y ago

A few years ago I really enjoyed arguing politics on the internet. Not trolling, but legitimately arguing. I ran into several people who would just link-bomb the conversation. So one day, when I had a couple of hours free I sat down and read every single link. All of them. The lack of substance beyond an opening paragraph that claimed a point was appalling. When it was brought to the attention of those link-bombers, they actually agreed that there was no substance and that they hadn't read those links at all. I was really proud of my friend and thought we had actually resolved a political disagreement on Facebook. Then I saw them dropping the exact same links in another conversation within a couple of days. Facts without context don't prove anything. Some of the facts but not all of them just frame the story in a particular light. After years of this stuff, it becomes clear that nobody has time to become an expert on every subject just to be able to identify the critical details that people are leaving out. Eventually, you just research your positions on the subjects that matter to you and vote accordingly. Now, if something doesn't make logical or mathematical sense, I oppose it. If there's no logic or math involved, I generally take no position at all.

casefields 8y ago
That's called the Gish Gallop and for whatever reason is the mode de jure for winning an Internet argument now. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  > winning an Internet argument now. and before! The prevalence of dumb things to link and dumb people to link them is a bit higher now but the Gish Gallop isn't new on the internet.
emodendroket 8y ago
I am really souring on such conversations because of the tremendous number of bad-faith arguing tactics people use -- willfully misconstruing your point, racing as quickly as possible to a glib dismissal without really understanding what you said, or, like you said, link-bombing. Another failure mode I find extremely frustrating is failure to understand analogies. For instance, if I were having a discussion about whether potatoes are healthy it might go like this: A: Of course potatoes are healthy! They're natural! B: If everything natural were healthy it'd be healthy to eat hemlock. A: Potatoes aren't hemlock and it's really offensive you'd make that comparison.

7952 8y ago

I agree that people do change their minds, but it is not neccessarily a direct result of facts. Things like emotion, social pressure, and moral arguments are far more persuasive. People just get angry when their facts arn't enough to pursuade someone. But sometimes you need to engage people at a more personal level than just science and statistics.

bilbo0s 8y ago
>But sometimes you need to engage people at a more personal level than just science and statistics... Now I don't know if I would write this off as simple "emotion". Obviously, "emotion" is probably part of it, but so is "social pressure", etc as you point out. I'd probably summarize that collection of factors as "Ideology". Convincing people to change their minds is likely one reason that ideology is actually useful to humans, even though oftentimes it bears little resemblance to the underlying reality we live in. It allows us to understand and interpret the world in ways that are comfortable and intuitive. Being "comfortable" matters.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Traditionally ideology is more often cast as a reason people cannot understand the implications of facts staring them in the face.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    It's both. It's the reason people ignore facts. And the reason people change their minds. Just to sharpen the point, think of it this way, ideology can make you "change your mind" and start believing things that have absolutely no basis in fact.
    - 7952 8y ago
      A good example of this is the history of medecine. Perfectly intelligent and educated people believed some really wild things about how infection occurred. It took a long time to convince people that hygiene was neccessary, and that hospitals should prevent contamination between patients. Nowadays we all believe in bacteria and viruses without question, but most of us have never seen either with our own eyes. But over the years our basic ideology has changed.

discreteevent 8y ago

I remember reading some article with a former head of Goldman Sachs. He was saying that the best traders aren't necessarily the smartest ones. The best traders are those who don't get attached to a position. So from that example, it would seem that some people are able to change their minds in response to feedback (and do well because of it).

mmsimanga 8y ago

All facts (those that are not lies) are true under specific circumstances/environment. Capitalism is bad. This statement is not always correct and neither is it always wrong. When unchecked, capitalism is bad. Capitalism also gave rise to SpaceX, Apple ...

MrFantastic 8y ago
Apple, SpaceX exists because of Free Markets. There is no reason to think they required our current flavor of Capitalism to come to fruition.
- mmsimanga 8y ago
  I am not sure I follow the point you are making. The point I was trying to make is that there are good and bad things about capitalism. Often people are always against capitalism or always pro-capitalism but it isn't as simple as that. When you start delving into details you will find some things about capitalism are good and some aren't so great. I for one tink capitalism is the best of the worst lot. I don't think much of the banking and finance systems that are part of capitalism today. As far as I know and I am not economics professor, Free Market is a component of capitalism. Once you produce the goods the market will decide on the price.

technofiend 8y ago

>And the problem is it gives people more excuse to give up - to not engage with someone who is wrong, or to dismiss someone who is right (that they think is wrong). Because, studies! I know someone who is the victim of a professional conspiracy theorist. This guy has figured out how to pull people in with explanations of why your typical conspiracy theory is wrong. He'll happily refute that 9/11 was an inside job in public. So his marks think "Great, rational guy! Let's learn more!" But that's when you have to pay. All "hidden secrets" are on Patreon of course. But now his marks are literally and emotionally invested. I read once some conspiracy theorists feel like they have a special position because they know something the public doesn't. Between that (if it's true) and the fact you've literally paid for whatever hogwash this guy is selling you'll soon find yourself (as my friend did) explaining that every study quoted by The World Health Organization is flawed because they profit from vilification of Monsanto. How does he know? Studies that refute the studies! Written by whom, you may ask? In which case you'll be challenged for challenging "the true skeptics" who totally have it figured out. And the burden of proof is left to you: if you can't refute the studies that refute the studies well you must be wrong and now must accept The True Facts. It feels very much like a conversation with my friends in cyber security who see a boogie man behind every tree. I am willing to entertain rational fears. But when you don't like something new and reject it for an undefinable reason, or even worse because then it could reveal secret squirrel knowledge only cyber may know then don't be surprised if I too am a skeptic.

emodendroket 8y ago

> This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember. To me the obvious implication of the title is not that they never change our minds (we all know this is not true), but that they very rarely do -- at least much more rarely than one would expect. At any rate, this is an article from a weekly magazine; I'd expect somewhat more careful reading than occurs in a newspaper to be the norm.

criddell 8y ago

> This article is obviously guilty as well - "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds". Like, ever? The content of the article doesn't back up the headline, but the headline is what people remember. I think these days most readers, especially of publications like the New Yorker, are more media savvy than you give them credit for. When you read the headline, did you really think it would be an article espousing the view that nobody anywhere has ever had their point of view altered by learning something new?

akvadrako 8y ago

> Bugs the heck out of me, because if the language they use is literally true, then no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do. This is the wrong conclusion to draw from the discussion. People do change their minds, but rarely all at once. What they want is to be consistent, so you have to move the needle a little bit at a time. One technique to convince somebody of something: first you have to show you understand their position better than they do and are on their side. Then you can lead them towards the correct solution. It's called "pacing and leading".

sephware 8y ago

One of my favorite phrases is “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still” because it reminds me of the ever-useful principle that if someone has personal (and maybe even irrational) reasons to keep believing something they shouldn’t, like that they have a good chance at winning the lottery this time (no they don’t) and finally get out of the poverty that’s haunted them for decades, or that bitcoin is finally their ticket to entrepreneurial independence (probably not), or that the foreign prince really does want to send them money and all they need to do is buy iTunes gift cards and send him the numbers over the phone, no amount of facts are going to change their minds.

commandlinefan 8y ago

> no one would ever be convinced to change their minds ever. And yet, we do. "I've never seen anybody change their behavior as the result of a well-reasoned, rational argument. I have seen people change their behavior to avoid ridicule." -- Scott Adams

tunesmith 8y ago
I've seen plenty of people change their behavior as the result of a well-reasoned, rational argument. I'm not sure what Scott Adams' problem is.

dionidium 8y ago

It stems from a misunderstanding of what it means to say that you've changed somebody's mind. Hardly anybody ever changes their mind in the moment. That's not how opinions or the stubborn humans who hold them work. People change their mind on issues over time, in response to multiple inputs. If you expect to see evidence of changing minds literally represented in comment threads or at the end of dinner-table arguments, then you've totally failed to understand the value of those discussions. Intense discussions routinely change minds, but they rarely end with any evidence that a change has taken place. The notion that contentious discussions on broad cultural disagreements are valueless is, I think, mistaken and the meme is, in general, profoundly damaging.

liftbigweights 8y ago

What do you expect from a publication that hired people like Talia Lavin. https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/new-yorker-fact-checker-ice-tweet-resignation.html https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/new-yorker-fact-checker-ice-t... Both sides of the political extreme are guilty of claiming their "facts" are real and others are ignorant for not believing them. It's the modern day equivalent is "our god is the one true god" nonsense. But the left just has a much bigger and louder megaphone to shout at people. It's obvious to anyone paying attention that the New Yorker nor any other publication cares about facts. They care about their own agenda. The New Yorker isn't an objective publication. They are an advocacy group. Essentially it's the Ministry of Truth attacking people for wrongthink.

Brockenstein 8y ago

I agree. It might be better to say, "People don't change their minds when we want them too. But people do change their minds when they come to their own realizations about the information they have. And sometimes that sucks because it can takes days, months, years, a lifetime." For example, I'm an ex-Jehovah's Witness and over on the r/exjw subreddit a common thing you see is a person starts posting. They've just realized their long held sacred beliefs are nonsense, but all their friends and family are JWs (which is a problem because JW culture is such that losing your faith makes you a pariah, and possibly shunned by those friends and family) so they want to know how to wake up their friends and family to the fact that JW beliefs are nonsense. But you just can't. Believers have strong faith and ignore contrary evidence and apostate arguments while under the spell of their faith. The believer has to make a lot of decisions for themselves to be able to read a bunch of facts, apply them rationally and decide that their faith doesn't stand on it's own two feet. And depending on how or what you believe in, not just religion, but any subject, if you have pre-established or long held beliefs about it, information that runs contrary becomes suspect. After all people will argue until they use up all the oxygen in the room over evolution (because of the perceived implications to their religious faith or other beliefs). But not a goddamn person you've ever met is going to pick the atomic weight ceiling of the heaviest possible atom as the hill they want to die on.