9 ms·

Are beliefs like clothes? (2015)

• totetsu 5y ago
  > For subjects where there is little social monitoring and strong personal penalties for incorrect beliefs, we expect the functional role of beliefs to dominate. Beliefs about military missions or engineering projects come to mind. But for subjects with high social interest and little personal penalty for mistakes, we expect the social role of beliefs to dominate. Why are there so many stories about Japan on the front page today?
• hbnnnbx 5y ago
  I can choose my clothes but I can't choose my beliefs
  • marcosdumay 5y ago
    Well, one of "why so you say yo can? or "why do you say you can't" is a good follow-up question to you. You can very clear choose any of both, but you have methodological and societal restrictions on both, on differing ways so you can't choose either one freely.
  • JetAlone 5y ago
    Yeah. Beliefs feel more like skin. And acting as if I believe something I don't feels like putting paste on my skin to avoid discrimination. Our skin doesn't get ripped off easily nor without pain - it does get burned, or healed, maybe. That's what I can liken to the sensation of changing beliefs.
  • jhgb 5y ago
    > but I can't choose my beliefs You couldn't be a scientist then, for example. You wouldn't be able to change your beliefs when faced with new evidence. The ability to choose what you believe is a perfectly ordinary requirement we place even on fairly average people.
    • gowld 5y ago
      A scientist believes what the evidence shows. They have no choice what to believe.
      • 6510 5y ago
        You limit them to wild hypothesis.
      • jhgb 5y ago
        This would only make sense if one and only one belief was supported by any set of evidence.
      • chomp 5y ago
        How do you think hypotheses are created? An educated guess is a belief that something is the case, which you then test and adjust your world view.
      • Supermancho 5y ago
        Science itself is a belief (or religion, depending on your epistemology), that the scientific method and associated tools, like the gold-standard double-blind study*, is the most effective way to form a model for reality. On top of that, experimental results can only inform a subjective model for each individual. For example, children are informed about our solar system in a simple 2d plane, because that's useful enough. We can prove that the solar system has planetary deviation from the generally flat plane (up to 7 degrees) but that more advanced model is something that is generally learned later, out of pragmatism. You can spend a lifetime learning details and data, but you'll still die ignorant because gathering all of human knowledge is impractical at this point. Therefore, relying on science alone, is not enough to inform your personal ideas about reality, even if you believe that it's the most reliable way to do so. eg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/ <-- no double blind for parachutes, where's the evidence?
        • flyingchipmann 5y ago
          I agree with most of what you described but I don't think scientific method should be put together with religion. I think they are orthogonal. For example, the scientists' religion don't really alter the research if they strictly follow the scientific method. In other words what they think won't alter the reality. And imo the most important part is the process of proving itself, rather than the result. Therefore it's perfectly fine to arrive at various conclusions and sometimes 'I don't know' is the best conclusion u can have so far. You don't really have to believe in anything with scientific framework, instead you do best to approximate and emphasize on the process rather than the result. Otherwise it's just magical thinking.
  • Iv 5y ago
    When he was a baby, I had to manually put and remove clothing on my baby boy. Now he is 7 and can dress/undress by himself, I am very proud. He is learning about the world and for now I am manually putting my beliefs over him so that he can make some sense of the world. I am going to be proud the day he manages to remove them and and put beliefs in his mind by himself. In my opinion deconstructing the opinions you were given as a kid is part of the process of growing up. Thing is, it is an optional part and too many people grow up without going through that stage.
    • JetAlone 5y ago
      I think a lot of people deconstruct the ideas they were given as children, and end up reconstructing parts of them into a bit of a patchwork, later in life. I hope your boy keeps giving you reasons to be proud of him, whatever kind of proverbial clothes he decides to end up in.
  • aaron-santos 5y ago
    You have the agency to choose your beliefs. The door is open, you simply have to walk through it.
    • avindroth 5y ago
      Systematically changing your beliefs takes a lot more work than just stepping through a door. I know people like to say this stuff to give hope, but the illusion does more harm than good imho.
  • avindroth 5y ago
    But if you can't choose your beliefs and your beliefs affected your choice of clothes, then ultimately you can't really choose your clothes.
• nayuki 5y ago
  Paul Graham talks about "moral fashions": http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html > Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it. > What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
  • 3grdlurker 5y ago
    I may be starting a longer debate here (and I hope not to), but at least the beauty of moral objectivism is that there would be an independent basis for right/wrong even if the moral “fashions” change. I try to put this objectivism into practice by defining a goal and deciding whether actions are meeting the goal or not (i.e good or bad), but of course that’s a more pragmatic take than what moral objectivism really is.
    • lmm 5y ago
      A belief in moral objectivism makes fashionable beliefs more dangerous, because those within a given fashion would think they were objectively right. It's the "this time is different" of morality.
      • 3grdlurker 5y ago
        > those within a given fashion would think they were objectively right You seem to have just described subjectivism though.
        • netizen-936824 5y ago
          I think the point is that as humans we have limited perspectives and most of us aren't even aware of those limitations. It is likely not possible for us to come up with any moral rules that are in any way objective. Anything that we come up with is influenced by out human perspective and therefore nothing is truly objective.
• xwdv 5y ago
  The scary thing to me is that sometimes someone gets so gripped by a belief, it becomes impossible to imagine you are wrong. It feels like you believe something obvious and those who don’t are just fools or have malicious motives. And that assumption of malice is used as justification for dehumanizing people, while believing that you have some moral high ground.
  • danybittel 5y ago
    The way to change peoples prejudice is by either experience or stories. The east calls it Karma. We could call it re-programming. Just like a computer doesn't change by force or by giving it the desired outcome. Neither does the brain.
  • rytill 5y ago
    Do you have a belief like this? What should be done when one has a belief like this?
• Iv 5y ago
  I disagreed with most of it, and actually I think that the basic premise expresses a very nefarious and misguided opinion, but almost at the end, it gets to an interesting observation: > Just as it seems that teenage smoking can't be reduced much without giving teenagers good substitute ways to show their independence and worldliness, the social costs of mistaken beliefs about politics and UFOs probably can't be reduced much without giving people good substitute ways to show their concern and independence. But it is hard to create substitutes for things before you understand in some detail the functions they now perform. I think it is wrong to accept that beliefs are just fashion or identity facets with no other connection with reality or facts and that this should be fought. That said, the article proposes an angle that can be used to limit the damage of the most insane beliefs. However, I think that fighting propaganda with propaganda is not sustainable nor democratic. The core solution is not in designing warm bikinis but in convincing arctic fashionistas that it is ok to not wear a bikini on the ice-sheet.
• avindroth 5y ago
  A more generalized version is that beliefs can be used by other beliefs as a resource. Thus beliefs, especially persistent ones, are often minimally about their truth value, and more about their role in the mind's structured web of beliefs. There is this weird sense in which people expect beliefs to quickly flip, in themselves but especially in others. Choice is a very hopeful word, but sometimes a weapon for terrible scar. Some beliefs are deeply embedded in people's minds that to forcibly remove them is to, well, leave the person so dysfunctional that it's not worth it. And it's interesting that most beliefs of note are problematic beliefs (e.g. political, philosophical), and these are most difficult to "fix". So when one starts looking into one's own mind in search of some kind of integration of different narratives, the problem that inspired the introspection in the first place may be the last problem that gets solved. So yes, beliefs are like clothes, but not in the bad way. Utility of beliefs beyond their truth value should not be underestimated (at least our mind, in its subconscious, actively utilizes beliefs in this way).
• timoth3y 5y ago
  This article is a very shallow take on an old question. I mean, clearly, yes, authority (and marketing) influence people's beliefs. Beliefs are hard to change in others and in yourself. But the core question of epistemology is very well-trod ground. Going back to Socrates and his distinction between true beliefs and knowledge, the idea that beliefs are things we wear like clothes has been dismissed for millennia.
  • blix 5y ago
    Changing your own beliefs is quite easy. At any moment you can simply choose to believe something else. Changing other people's beliefs is more challenging, but so is changing other people's clothes.
    • goatlover 5y ago
      How do you choose to believe something else? Belief doesn't seem like a conscious choice to me. I can choose to seek out things which might challenge my belief in X, and ultimately this may lead to a belief in Y instead, but I can't go from X to Y from merely willing to do so.
      • blix 5y ago
        Choosing to seek out changing your belief by seeking contrary evidence is a form of choosing to change it. You can also do it while skipping that step, though it takes some practice. If you say something to yourself enough times, eventually you will believe it is true. Ultimately many beliefs are just selective readings of available evidence. Once upon a time, there was a viral meme featureing a striped dress that was either white and gold or blue and black depending on who you asked. People became very attached to their interpretation of the illusion and I saw a lot of very fierce argument. With a bit of practice, however, it isn't actually that hard to hold both interpretations simultaneously and choose between them at will.
    • timoth3y 5y ago
      > Changing your own beliefs is quite easy. At any moment you can simply choose to believe something else. Can you though? Can you easily change your current belief that it is easy to change your belief? Once you changed that could you easily change it back? If you strongly believe that Elon Musk is a genius/fraud, could you simply flip your belief on a whim? No. You really can't. In fact, someone with such a weak belief structure would probably have little sense of self. We all like to image ourselves as rational beings in charge of our own minds while others are adrift on a sea of emotion, but research shows that beliefs change very slowly.
• anticodon 5y ago
  Slightly related: I'm always off-put by American arrogance. North American talk and behave like only they have some universal source of truth, like someone gave them the right to decide what's right and what's wrong. Especially annoying when Americans talk about the rest of the world. E.g. when I read or hear what Americans think they know about history or culture or current events in my country (Russia), it makes my hair stand, because most of the time it's complete bullshit, stupid stereotypes and exaggeration. All generations at least in the last 100 years read from the early years only highly intensive rusophobic propaganda (even when it came directly from Russians, like famous liar Solzhenitsyn). And reading western media, especially social networks (reddit /r/worldnews, for example) I can only see that it intensifies and becomes more and more aggressive and absurd. Also, Americans are highly intolerant to other cultures, despite all the PC craziness. Just a few weeks ago I read that some reader of HN wants to see Disneyland in Iraq. This is so awful. Americans came and destroyed the culture that was several times older than theirs to create fake Disneyland in its place... They would want to put their awful Disneylands everywhere because consider all other nations and cultures inferior. I continue to read few sources in English and mostly look at it with disgust because of the arrogance, ignorance and extreme aggressiveness of Americans.
  • indigochill 5y ago
    While I wouldn't disagree entirely (I've been surprised in more recent years how deeply russophobic ideas have been ingrained in me, and this is after years of working with Russian colleagues), consider that your own perspective is limited as well, apparently mostly to typical media outlets that portray a warped view of the world. When you get off the internet and just go interact with people one-on-one in person, you'll find although these sorts of stereotypes might apply to some portion of the group they apply to, everyone's a lot more nuanced than comes across in various media sources.
    • anticodon 5y ago
      There's a big difference between Americans and me: I can read in English, watch TV news in English, listen to podcasts from USA. Population of the Western world is limited to the distorted view that is presented through the prism of their media (which is considered "unprecedentedly honest", hahaha). In the best case what USA citizen may say is: "My neighbour emigrated from USSR and he says that party bosses ate toddlers!" When I meet westerners face-to-face I'd say that they have all the usual stereotypes. E.g. first thing they'll say to you is "Na zdorovie!" (95% of persons met by me) and will ask you something like "Would you like to drink vodka today?". And it's better not even start talking about politics, although sometimes such conversations are really funny.