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The may/must distinction in belief is a plausible cause for the power of propaganda. Human beings want to believe things they like and want to be skeptical of
by scoofy 2y ago
The may/must distinction in belief is a plausible cause for the power of propaganda.
Human beings want to believe things they like and want to be skeptical of things they don't like. This was so obscenely obvious to me as I was going up with religious extremist parents after studying some epistemology in college. After living with it on my mind, I think it takes a really, really stoic person to avoid this.
When we see a fact we like presented, we often just think that makes sense, and believe it. When we see some study backing it up, it gives us permission to believe it. For things we like, we use the "may believe" threshold for belief.
When we see a fact we don't like presented, we often think it's bullshit. When we see some study backing it up, we immediately dig into the study to find potential methodology problems. Until these issues are dealt with, we can refuse to believe it. With thinks we don't like we use the "must believe" threshold for belief.
Want to believe drinking wine makes us healthier: we accept that we may believe it, until decades later after numerous skeptics finally demonstrate the studies were flawed.
Want to doubt a controversial political: we refuse to believe it unless we must, when it is corroborated by outlets we trust, who may downplay or not dedicate resources to verifying the story.
Until and unless we hold the same level of skepticism for our facts, and unless we have verification services that don't play favorites in the same way, we will suffer greatly from this may/must belief dichotomy. It's why bad faith news sources are so pernicious. I don't think a chatbot has any hope of fixing this for us.
- card_zero 2y agoWhat is the term "things we like" representing here? It's about background theories, isn't it? Inclinations to agree with a theory, or doubt a theory, because of a mess of peripheral theories such as this is our way of life or they're in it for the money. In short, bias. And to be free of bias is rationality. However: * This is not possible. * Or it is possible, but the process is endless. * Rationality is made out of theories, and we can always learn better ones. * Bias is also made out of theories, so it's just inferior rationality. * Some of those theories can be very bad, so bad that they sabotage the process of getting better ones. Then the person has entrenched anti-rational theories, a sticky situation. But generally speaking, bias is expected. To be completely free of it is unimaginable. Even the most rational of us would look extremely biased from the perspective of the distant future. To have no bias is so unrealistic that it's undesirable, akin to solving all problems that there will ever be. The process we're engaged with, our problem situation, includes our biases. Changing our minds reluctantly is how we function, and I kind of like it. This does make propaganda effective, it's true: people pick up a battle cry. If only these people were reasonable, like me! But I think they mostly are.
- scoofy 2y ago>What is the term "things we like" representing here? Generally, things that comport with the (by definition, arbitrary) axioms we've chosen to ground our world view.