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This is like one of those Knights and Knaves logic puzzles we used to do at school: Amy believes the backfire effect is real, whereas Ben believes it is fake.

This is like one of those Knights and Knaves logic puzzles we used to do at school: Amy believes the backfire effect is real, whereas Ben believes it is fake. Amy reads an article saying the backfire effect has been disproven, then passes her new opinion on to Ben. What will be Ben's revised opinion of the backfire effect be if 1) the backfire effect actually exists, 2) the backfire effect doesn't exist.

scarejunba 7y ago
The right answer is that Ben doesn’t change his position, right? The backfire effect only applies when the claim ideologically aligns. I know you’re joking, just indulging the idea.
- stupidcar 7y ago
  That was my conclusion, yes. Presuming Amy and Ben are ideologically wedded to their respective backfire beliefs: If the effect doesn't exist, Amy changes her mind, so won't try to Ben out of his disbelief. If the effect exists, the negative article will reinforce Amy's belief in it, but her positive argument will in turn only reinforce Ben's negative belief.
  - vbuwivbiu 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem
balabaster 7y ago
I find this premise amusing... I find it amusing because my ex (whose name really is Aimee) often had opinions that my life experiences and education suggested to me were suspect. Aimee used to do a bunch of reading, but the material she read was often from sources or authors I didn't find credible and thus while their arguments seemed plausible, they weren't enough to invalidate my original opinion. My name really is Ben. My thoughts and opinions on such matters were largely unaffected by hers in many cases, unless she presented credible evidence that led me to re-evaluate my opinion, which did occasionally happy. Often though, it was just "someone else agrees with me, thus I'm right," which does nothing to sway my opinion. Two people having the same opinion doesn't make them right and doesn't negate my opinion. It just means they both disagree with me. Humanity also believed in the geocentric model of the universe at one point. That doesn't make it right. It took one person to change the entire opinion of the world to the heliocentric model. Now admittedly, I'm not Copernicus, but we're all capable of finding evidence to support or refute our opinions on the world. It's just that very often people use the opinions of others as support for their own instead of exercising critical thinking and forming their own opinions.
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  The thing is, forming your own oppinion is _hard_ and you need a great deal of insight to reach some form of truth. I, for example, if I lived a couple of hundred years back, would have probably believed the world is flat, since, well, it's the easiest oppinion to have by just looking around. The model we have now is incredibly sophisticated and not at all intuitive, we just think it is because we're used to it. Things that we are used to seem the most obvious and simple in the world. We are limited with how much we can dig deep into stuff. So many times we have to reffer to other people that know what they are doing. I, sometimes, even reffer to myself at some different point in time. If I know at some time I looked deeply at some problem and reached a conclusion then, I will just take it for granted and not always retrace my thought process. It's a useful mental shortcut, but one that can leave me making oppinions on old or incomplete facts.
  - Retric 7y ago
    People did not really believe the world was flat hundreds of years ago. Similarly the “new” world was in regular contact with the old for the last several thousand years. It’s only 53 miles from North America to Asia, even less if you include the two islands between them. PS: We have a lot of ideas about how wrong people used to be. But, I suspect most people never really formed an option on most of this stuff because they never really considered the question.
    - phreeza 7y ago
      If they were in regular contact, why did smallpox have such a devastating effect on Americans?
      - Retric 7y ago
        Population density. Smallpox dies out with lot’s of tiny isolated communities with minimal contact to each other.
    - muro 7y ago
      Regular contact here means "there were people who could have made the journey between Asia and Americas, yet we don't have any proof and its effect on both societies is pretty much non-existent"
meowface 7y ago
Could this be considered a kind of self-disproving or meta-falsifiable theory? Not sure if that would be technically correct.

scarejunba 7y ago

The right answer is that Ben doesn’t change his position, right? The backfire effect only applies when the claim ideologically aligns. I know you’re joking, just indulging the idea.

stupidcar 7y ago
That was my conclusion, yes. Presuming Amy and Ben are ideologically wedded to their respective backfire beliefs: If the effect doesn't exist, Amy changes her mind, so won't try to Ben out of his disbelief. If the effect exists, the negative article will reinforce Amy's belief in it, but her positive argument will in turn only reinforce Ben's negative belief.
- vbuwivbiu 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem

balabaster 7y ago

I find this premise amusing... I find it amusing because my ex (whose name really is Aimee) often had opinions that my life experiences and education suggested to me were suspect. Aimee used to do a bunch of reading, but the material she read was often from sources or authors I didn't find credible and thus while their arguments seemed plausible, they weren't enough to invalidate my original opinion. My name really is Ben. My thoughts and opinions on such matters were largely unaffected by hers in many cases, unless she presented credible evidence that led me to re-evaluate my opinion, which did occasionally happy. Often though, it was just "someone else agrees with me, thus I'm right," which does nothing to sway my opinion. Two people having the same opinion doesn't make them right and doesn't negate my opinion. It just means they both disagree with me. Humanity also believed in the geocentric model of the universe at one point. That doesn't make it right. It took one person to change the entire opinion of the world to the heliocentric model. Now admittedly, I'm not Copernicus, but we're all capable of finding evidence to support or refute our opinions on the world. It's just that very often people use the opinions of others as support for their own instead of exercising critical thinking and forming their own opinions.

RealityVoid 7y ago
The thing is, forming your own oppinion is _hard_ and you need a great deal of insight to reach some form of truth. I, for example, if I lived a couple of hundred years back, would have probably believed the world is flat, since, well, it's the easiest oppinion to have by just looking around. The model we have now is incredibly sophisticated and not at all intuitive, we just think it is because we're used to it. Things that we are used to seem the most obvious and simple in the world. We are limited with how much we can dig deep into stuff. So many times we have to reffer to other people that know what they are doing. I, sometimes, even reffer to myself at some different point in time. If I know at some time I looked deeply at some problem and reached a conclusion then, I will just take it for granted and not always retrace my thought process. It's a useful mental shortcut, but one that can leave me making oppinions on old or incomplete facts.
- Retric 7y ago
  People did not really believe the world was flat hundreds of years ago. Similarly the “new” world was in regular contact with the old for the last several thousand years. It’s only 53 miles from North America to Asia, even less if you include the two islands between them. PS: We have a lot of ideas about how wrong people used to be. But, I suspect most people never really formed an option on most of this stuff because they never really considered the question.
  - phreeza 7y ago
    If they were in regular contact, why did smallpox have such a devastating effect on Americans?
    - Retric 7y ago
      Population density. Smallpox dies out with lot’s of tiny isolated communities with minimal contact to each other.
  - muro 7y ago
    Regular contact here means "there were people who could have made the journey between Asia and Americas, yet we don't have any proof and its effect on both societies is pretty much non-existent"

meowface 7y ago

Could this be considered a kind of self-disproving or meta-falsifiable theory? Not sure if that would be technically correct.