Slashdot Mirror
Studies Say Ideology Trumps Facts
Anti-Globalism writes "We like to think that people will be well informed before making important decisions, such as who to vote for, but the truth is that's not always the case. Being uninformed is one thing, but having a population that's actively misinformed presents problems when it comes to participating in the national debate, or the democratic process. If the findings of some political scientists are right, attempting to correct misinformation might do nothing more than reinforce the false belief."
I guess that nothing supports false-facts better than trying to debunk them. It's all a conspiracy after all.
What if your ideology is based around the careful analysis of facts - like a good science education?
Interestingly, an experiment was conducted a few years ago in which a completely incompetent ruler was set up as a head of state of one of the worlds larger nations. After four years of bad rule that included a record deficit, starting two illegal wars, and alienating most of their allies, the people of that nation were asked if they would vote for him again. And they did! So yes, I would say that ideology certainly trumps facts.
In fact I probably shouldn't be talking about this, since the experiment is still ongoing...
Good thing slashdot is here to set the record straight.
I haven't RTF article, but I don't need to-facts don't matter.
This is why we mock conspiracy theorists and computer "hacking" in cinema. Misinformation is what keeps the masses happy. Just like security theatre.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
I think I read a similar article sporting the same statistics quite a while ago. Has ArsTechnia posted a dupe? Besides that, the questions they used to measure 'misinformation' aren't the best: There's quite a bit of different meanings to both of them. Could 'possessing weapons of mass destruction' mean having hundreds of thousands shells loaded and ready to go, or could it mean having no more than a couple of arterially shells with expired nerve-gas that even the Iraqis had forgoten about (I THINK we have found the latter). Does being involved with Al-Quida mean planning and bankrolling every attack and operation together, or does it mean that Saddam tentatively let some Al Quida members into the country? Ars' summery doesn't even agree with the graphic they used: The graphic says the question was "The US has found evidence that Saddam Hussain was working closely with terrorist groups" while the article says that the numbers represent folks who though "there was a credible link between the 9/11 attack and Saddam Hussein". Bit of a difference there.
The American media has a good deal of power, and that power carries a good deal of responsibility. When the media creates false debates, unreasoned arguments, and promotes trivia above important things, they abuse that power. A single newsperson instilling spin into a popular story has done more evil than many purse-snatchers.
I speak of the American media because I don't understand enough of the rest of the world's media to comment.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The cynic in me is beginning to believe that Winston Churchill was wrong in saying that "Democracy was the least worst form of government". After being a part of the American political process for the last 8 years I've seen how ideology has, time and again, trumped reason. Still I'm not completely impressed with other systems, the "meritocratic" technocratic bureaucracy espoused by the Chinese communist party seems flawed as well (don't buy Chinese Milk!). That's despite being described as "the Harvard Alumni Association with an Army".
Maybe the fact is that, as humans (and 98% chimp) we're only slightly beyond our animal forebears. Perhaps we just cannot handle a technologic civilization with complex issues like genetic engineering, nuclear weapons, climate change, nano technology. If Fukuyama is right in saying that Liberal Democracies are "the end of history" maybe it means that that's the end of our progress. - Then again maybe the United States (with its 70% of the population being strongly religious) is an aberration and the future lies with other less religious societies.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=955999&cid=24911097#comment_top_24911097
I'll just leave this here
The real problem is that many Americans don't usually educate themselves about the issues, but rely on misinformation. You would be surprised at how many Americans still think Republicans are in control of Congress, or where Iraq is (even after all these years), or even that Obama is a Muslim.
Also, the other thing is that people tend to make opinions based on emotion, and then use facts to back these opinions up, not the other way around.
Ideology Trumps Facts...if you're a closed minded prejudiced moron who can't face reality.
The ability to learn, grow and change your opinion is something we all possess. If we choose to close our eyes and pray instead of looking at the facts, it's our own fault. It may be easier from an emotional perspective to deal with our limited existence and the hardships life throws at us by subscribing to a belief system handed down to us, or that we've found in a "time of need" but if you actively ignore reality you're doomed to end up destroying yourself.
The trouble with studies like this is that they tell us we can justify our own stupidity. Sure, go ahead, but you'll face the consequences.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
In other news, new studies say that Cookie Monster thinks cookies are more healthy than broccoli!
You just got troll'd!
I'm entirely not surprised.
In my opinion, broadly speaking, there are two kinds of people in the world; those who prefer an internal moral compass and those who prefer an external moral compass. The former tend to analyse things for themselves, look at all the facts and come up with a decision- is this "right/true/a good idea/etc". The latter tend to look to some higher authority- religion, the government, parents, spouse, boss, etc to make the majority of these decisions for them.
This doesn't mean that the former is automatically better than the latter- the latter have a vast pool of opinions to draw upon, while the former only have themselves and can be often actively disregard the opinions of others in the name of "doing what *they* want". Individualism for the sake of individualism, you might say.
Most people, I think, fall somewhere in the middle and lean one way or the other. I tend to lean towards the former, but I recognise the traps that can befall these kind of people and actively seek to avoid them.
ideology trumps facts. ok. so what?
1. this observation is ideologically neutral. that is, it evens out in every ideological direction, such that no particular ideology is favored
2. this observation applies to everyone. this observation applies most of all to those of you who think you are immune to prejudice. that's you, reading these words. yes, you are guilty of this. how passionately you dispute the notion that you have prejudices is directly proportional to how prejudiced you are, blindly. meanwhile, if you start with the assumption that you prejudiced, you are better able to identify your prejudices in your thought processes, and work around them
3. this observation applies to all societies, in all cultures, in all time periods, including the future. in other words, make peace with the concept that ideology trumps facts. nothing you do will ever change that, it is a simple aspect of human nature. unless you seek to disrespect democracy and free will, and somehow "reeducate" people. which makes the cure worse than the disease
we are all prejudiced. individually, and as societies. so it is better to recognize your weaknesses and work around them than somehow fantasize it is possible to have no prejudices at all. the story summary is nothing more than the sound of someone shockingly realizing a truth about their world, and trying to come to grips with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
After four years of bad rule that included a record deficit, starting two illegal wars, and alienating most of their allies, the people of that nation were asked if they would vote for him again. And they did!
Interestingly, in the follow-up expiriment a group of people were set up to control the purse strings of the same nation, and after four years of exponential spending it appears people are still willing to vote for them as well!
Amazing what people will do, and further proof of the theorem.
Indeed the expiriment is still ongoing, with any luck the monkeys at the switch will pull the lever for once that gives them the smaller banana instead of pulling the big 'ol lever of "free" bananas forever, supplied by magical forces from above.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Humanity as a whole has definitely peaked. We continue to enhance out technology, but the lump of meat at the centre of it has a fundamental flaw, built in by the evolutionary process. Our imaginations that make all the technology possible is a double edged sword that also results in all the useless and often destructive ideology.
If humanity has something approaching a "purpose", it is to create a successor intelligence (machine, biological or hybrid) and at that moment we will have become the gods we conjure in our imaginations, and also obsolete.
Actually, my best bet would be on "cognitive dissonance" rather than "conspiracy theory."
The best way to illustrate cognitive dissonance is via the classic experiment: you assign someone (e.g., a student) a Homer Simpson-esque job that's boring him to tears. Then you one day say he can stop doing it, you have something better to do with him. But you ask him if he can find a replacement for that previous crap job. You even offer a dollar if he does. So he'll go try to convince someone else that it's a great job to take. The fun thing is, after a while he'll have convinced himself too that it's a great job.
Apparently, having to reconcile between "I'm a nice and honest guy" and "I just lied to a bunch of people for a lousy dollar", he'll alter the latter to, basically, "yeah, well, it wasn't really a lie." Just to keep his mental model consistent.
It seems to be a function of at least the mammalian brain. When you have two contradictory ideas in your model, one has to give. With humans, though, if one idea is too important to let go, something else has to give.
Even more fun is that the strength of the effect is inversely proportional to how sustainable or justifiable that action is. If you offer him a lot more money, he has the escape of, basically, "yeah, well, I needed the money. So I have my price too. Bite me." If it's a precondition to getting out of that crap job, same thing, he has an excuse. But when there's no excuse he can wrap his mind around, he'll alter the truth so he doesn't need an excuse.
A similar fun effect is with kids. Apparently when they really want something or to do something, as silly deterrent like "mommy will pout" is often actually more effective than a harsh punishment, if applied consistently. When there is no real justification for "why didn't I do that, if I wanted to anyway?" something else has to give, and it becomes, "I didn't really want that in the first place." Fun stuff.
I find that the same applies to politics, religion, fanboys, or, for that matter, everything else. The least justifiable a position is, the more people will warp reality to keep it. And the more rabidly they'll defend that redefinition of reality, lest their whole mental model comes crashing down around their ears.
And, yes, applying more force just creates more resistance.
And for a last bit of fun, there's no defender more stalwart of a piece of bullshit, than someone whose model already broke down once and was patched to that bullshit. If they're going to have to admit "I was wrong and doing wrong" anyway, they'll run with that to the hilt, and make an even more warped model in the other direction. So funnily enough, there is no more rabid, say, XBox fanboy, than one who was a PS2 fanboy and felt betrayed by Sony and had to let their whole "Sony for ever!!!" model crash. And viceversa. There is no bible-thumper for puritan morals more rabid than someone who was a prostitute until last week. And viceversa: nobody does a good christian-baiting trolling like someone who still went to church last month. There is no Republican more rabid about every single aspect of that ideology, than someone who was a Democrat until they felt somehow betrayed. And viceversa.
But now they won't just change about the aspect where they thought they were cheated, they'll go for the whole list, from military spending to abortion stance to gay marriage to everything else. Now Party X is right in everything, and Party Y is wrong about everything, because I don't like Party Y any more. And I must enlighten the masses about how wrong and evil Party Y is!
And the least justifiable that position is (e.g., don't be silly, Sony didn't "betray" anyone and didn't owe you anything in the first place), the more immovable it will be. As I was saying, fun stuff.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What we need is one lone ruler who tells us what to do who has no ulterior motives and hidden agendas beyond making this world the most livable and efficient for as large a fraction of the population as possible.
A Benevolent Dictatorship? That never works in any organization larger than the Python Development Community.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Accepting Scientific fact in the modern world usually requires an amout of thought and analysis. Accepting an ideology requires no thought at all. Humans are basically lazy.
Cue the Dem and Repubs pointing and accusing each other of doing just that.
You know, sometimes, one side really is right, or at least substantially less wrong than the other.
From the immortal H2G2:
The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Why is this? Because what people believe is based on trust, not facts. They trust faces that are familiar to them and (thanks to the education system) are not capable of working out for themselves which answer is correct.
Ultimately it comes down to emotions
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sound Bites just implement association and association is the basis of our emotional responses.
Mass media typically just hit us with sound bites, knowing that most people will just skim the news. They see Obama and Muslim in one sentence and even if it's saying that he's not one, Obama-Muslim is still the association created in many minds. Couple this with a Muslim- Terrorism association similarly constructed and Obama is now connected to that too. The association creates an emotional response and that is what drives most people.
It's not about logic. Just association.
This is well understood by spin doctors. You may notice that newspaper articles contain spin in the form of opinion and association building sound bites at the beginning but still include the actual facts at the very end. They do this knowing full well that most people won't read to the end and parse the data and process the logical inconsistencies but they can still provide counter arguments about bias by pointing to the end and saying "Look we really did include all the facts".
These days, is there *anything* that doesn't trump facts?
I think you just proved the point. She never tried to ban anything. Expressing an opinion that a particular book "does not belong there" is not an attempt to ban anything. You might think that Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries don't belong in a children's library, but expressing that opinion is not an attempt to ban them. But believe what you will. On the other side one could make the argument that Obama was raised as a Muslim in a portion of his childhood. He was registered as a Muslim when he went to school in Indonesia for instance. That's the test. Believe both are debunked or that both have some truth in them and you are healthy. Believe one but not the other and you are just as described in the article -- unwilling to accept that your point of view is possibly incorrect.
I was a poli sci major, now a law student (yeah, I know, what the hell am I doing on Slashdot...). I think the most useful discussion I ever heard in class was one on the general idea of "lenses" we see the world through.
The professor who taught the course had been in the Intelligence Community for some time, and this is an issue that analysts and other intelligence officers encountered constantly and is, in fact, encountered in essentially every career path. Analysts, who may not have visited the country they work on in years, will see it very differently than the man on the ground. The man on the ground, however, who is constantly tied up with a million small details, will likely see things differently and fail to see the big picture.
In my own life, I can think of a few instances where this has been particularly true. I had the "pleasure" of getting caught in the middle of a slum during the December 2001 riots in Argentina. Not a pleasant experience, needless to say. So now, every time I go back to Latin America, I'm paranoid. Once you've seen people getting stabbed and robbed all around you, you get that way. It's my "lens" - I always see things as less stable than they truly are, and always feel that I need to be ready to either batten down the hatches or bolt at any moment.
A more useful story would come from a recent work-related incident. A legal issue came up when I was an intern at a law office (yes, imagine that). I was in a conference with the other attorneys - all distinguished professionals with lengthy records - discussing the matter, and all of the attorneys handled it exactly like they would a case from a textbook - they played their "role". They took the facts they were given, assumed they were real, and attempted to find a legal answer to the situation. That's what lawyers do. After listening to discussion on this for several minutes, I piped up and questioned the very basis of the facts (the situation seemed a bit far-fetched to me - one not yet entirely corrupted by the practice of law - and I simply applied Occam's razor). I received strange stares for a moment, and then the attorney in charge of the matter said, "wow, I'd never considered that before. Let's look into it." Sure enough, I was right, and we saved a lot of money, headache, and effort on research and other costs.
People simply see things differently and will process information differently. Environment, experience, language, education, spirituality, family background, geographical origin, economic situation, genetics (to an extent), etc. all shape how we see the world - and how we even interpret - or even recognize - fact. It's only human. The best we can hope to do is to acknowledge it and to seek out those who view things differently in the hopes of honing our own vision and seeing things we hadn't seen before.
Now, you might claim illegality under the so called "international law". But here too, one can find a legal basis in various UN resolutions (e.g. 678, 687).
But, advocating for taking war actions only under the direction of the UN is fairly silly. There are plenty of situations in which the United States should be compelled to act even if various nations disagree with US policy.
Instead of focusing on the legality of the action in question, the more interesting question is if the war itself was in America's best interests. Here, one can most certainly raise all sorts of claims vis-a-vee whether the war itself was a worthwhile action (cost vs. benifeits).
Come on folks we all know that were the Colbert Nation leads the world follows. All this is saying is that politics these days is about Truthiness which is "Truth that comes from the gut, not from books". Back in 2005 Colbert was right.
His latest campaign is that we don't even want answers and should not be allowed to ask questions.
Its very sad how the two best political commentary programmes in the US go out on Comedy Central.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there
Talk about a straw man.
You handily glossed over the fact she only thought the book did not belong, and never did anything about it.
Further proving the main point. Something within drives you to ignore the very text in front of you, in the rush to demonize the Other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, democracy works pretty well. There are two types - representative and direct. The direct democracy works much better than representative, because you don't have to trust the representatives. In fact, representative democracy encourages people to blindly trust, and this brings these issues.
I like to compare this difference to difference with a contract system. Representative democracy is like spoken (unwritten) contract - you have to rely on trust. Direct (or semi-direct) democracy is analogous to written contract system - you use higher law - in case of contract the judicial system, in case of direct democracy the referendum, initiative and recall to enforce the contract. Obviously, the written contract is better than spoken contract. But people have trouble understanding that direct democracy is better than representative democracy for exactly the same reason.
I would also like to note that this result doesn't affect democracy in negative nor positive way, because the people who are wrong can be wrong both ways equally. I believe that facts triumph over superstition in the end, because there is no single superstition, but the whole spectrum. For example, those believing in evolution are united in their belief. Those believing in creationism are very fragmented - ranging from people who believe in ID without God to young earth creationists.
Still I'm not completely impressed with other systems, the "meritocratic" technocratic bureaucracy espoused by the Chinese communist party seems flawed as well (don't buy Chinese Milk!). That's despite being described as "the Harvard Alumni Association wit an Army".
That's a very naive characterisation of the Chinese system, or any non democracy. From my experience it's more like organised crime with an army. Fact is absolute power lies with the people with the money and guns, not with the Harvard alumni.
One of my friend's husbands works in China. One of his partners is in the PLA, and the main reason he is a partner is because people are scared of him. Let's just say if her husband's company makes a business offer and you're Chinese, you don't refuse it once you find out he's involved.
Very scary place.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
... is the voice that can be used to correct falsehoods.
It is also the voice used to create falsehoods.
Do people actually watch Fox News? I get my info from Alex Jones. :P
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
It appears to be a generic troll. Completely generic. Notice the complete lack of any context whatsoever. You could cut that text and paste it into any political discussion from 1980 until today -- "the current crisis" could mean anything, the "explanation" of the root cause in fact fails to in any way explain how the supposed cause is in any way causal to "the current crisis" (it can't do that, of course, since that would require actually justifying the assertion with details that would then make the post no longer completely generic). There is, in fact, no actual content to the message itself -- it like a Rorschach test -- if you thought that message actually said anything, look again at what it actually says, vs. what meaning you're actually inserting into it yourself by making assumptions about what the author is referring to. If in fact you think it said anything at all, you're making assumptions about what the author meant that he never actually said. "the current crsis", "the problem" "pretty much every area" -- the message contains many words, but it specifically says nothing at all.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Just as kidnapping CAN be legal, there can be legal wars. The state can for instance kidnap you, it is done in cases where a judge decides to hold an otherwise innocent person in jail to force their cooperation. You most often see this used against journalists to pressure them in revealing their sources.
The problem with understanding what a legal war is that it all depends on what set of rules you choose to use. International law as such does not exist, it more a set of rules that overtime have in general become accepted to be used as international law. Of course, by the time war becomes an option it would be fair to say that the parties who disagree to the extent that war is now an option are hardly going to agree on a common set of laws.
But a legal war WOULD for instance be if a party was attacked first. The right to defend yourself. Another legal war would be to come to the aid of a ally who requested your aid and after a decleration of war.
There are rules, and the US has been claimed to have ignored those rules in the case of the Iraq war.
The US had not been attacked by Iraq, nor did it come to the aid of allie.
This makes the war illegal, unless you accept the US claim the Iraq was behind 9/11.
The japanese war against the americans was illegal (no decleration of war) IN american eyes, the japanese didn't share the western practice of declaring war before attacking.
The american war against germany was legal. The german one against the US borderline. There was a decleration of war, but US property had been attacked before although not in attacks that could be seen as an outright attack.
The whole point of 'legal' wars is not just for the sake of argument, it is to prevent the world from sliding into anarchy. Basically, if everyone followed the concept of 'legal' wars, then war can't just break-out overnight.
That is what is so scary about the Iraq war. The idea that any nation with the means can just attack another country when they feel like it. The 'law' is a very thin shell we use to keep us all civilized. Wether it is that big guy who is 'restrained' by the law from punching your face in or the superpower who is restrained by international law to invade another country.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The modern media is not the fourth branch, or estate, of government. It is the First Estate. Let me explain.
The estates have classically been, in order:
1) The Church
2) The Aristocracy
3) Everybody Else
Traditionally added to this list has been
4) The Media ("Independent of church and state")
This was the rule up to one should think about 50 years ago in most countries. It's still the case today in many, especially latin american, countries. However, one should realise that the estates we not so much defined by WHO they were so much as WHAT they did. For instance, one can easily replace "aristocracy" with "very rich people", and the second estate model still fits modern society.
However, how does one replace "church" in modern society? Even in america, religious leaders wield only a small fraction of the power they once did. Do we then conclude that the model of the three estates is therefore outdated and does not apply? I would argue that this is not the case, and that the three estates model is in fact a valid model for how almost all societies operate on a basic level.
What did the first estate do? The church was closer to the people that the aristocracy. It wielded great influence over them through its sermons, traditions and omni-presence in society at large. It mostly sided with the aristocracy, to maintain the status quo. Though it would disagree with their policies when it suited its own purposes. The general idea was that the aristocrats ruled, while the church helped keep the people in line. In turn, the aristocrats would confer legal status, benefits and privileges to the church. It was a symbiotic relationship designed to keep power out of the hands of the masses.
Who replaces the church of the Ancien Régime in our 21st century society? No-one? Look beyond outward apearance and to the actual substance of the matter. Who is close to those in power and spreads their message to the masses? Who is close enough to the average citizen to influence their opinion? Who generally agrees with the government, but can disagree when it suits their purposes. Who benefits from their patronage?
The modern media, or at least the majority of it, constitutes the first estate in our modern society. I'd like to stress that I do not believe this to be the result of a conspiracy or plot. Rather, I would hold that the three estates model is a natural state towards which human societies will gravitate, without anyone ever consciously planning or realizing it.
The demise of church power in western society has left a vacuum. The Media has filled that vacuum. When people talk about the Daily Show being the only source of "real news", they are in effect pointing out the inherant difference between the "New Media" of the First estate (Bill O'Reilly), and the "Old Media" of the Fourth estate (Jon Stewart). These two model of media have always existed together, but in recent times, the First estate media has become the dominant type.
In order for idealogical to work, it needs propaganda. It needs a first estate. In order to resist ideology, we need the truth. We need a fourth estate. Right now, we have too much of the former and dangerously little of the latter.
May the Maths Be with you!
You know, sometimes, one side really is right, or at least substantially less wrong than the other.
Yes, but not necessarily because their analysis and thinking are more sound... You can be a bloody-minded partisan and still hit on a good idea every now and then, even if it's just because the other side opposes the idea.
I'm from the UK and recently took a holiday in San Diego to visit some relatives. Great place, but unfortunately they had a limited Sat TV package that only gave a choice of a few news channels, and Fox News was the one that got turned on most.
Now I've never seen Fox News before, and coming from a country there the TV news has a mandate to be unbiased, Fox News was quite a shock to the system. I've never seen anything like it. It's completely one sided (towards Republicans) crammed with emotional rhetoric deliberately aimed at misinforming the viewer. It so over exaggerates the current level of the "terrorist threat" to America, that an outsider viewing this crap would think you're on the cusp of being invaded.
Watching it reminded me of the kind of news propaganda that the Nazi's used in WW2 to convince their population that their cause was just and righteous, and demoralize their enemies.
I know that sounds a bit strong, but I was just so shocked at the level of dishonest manipulation Fox News are involved in. And horrified that there are people in the USA who actually watch this trash and BELIEVE that it's real news!
If you believe an Iraqi Air Force general.
Of course, only Fox News interviewed him, so maybe that's why Fox viewers think Saddam had WMD.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Well, in the end, the scientific method is just a way to _avoid_ clinging to some dogma and building cognitive dissonances to support it. There is no immovable "truth", or rather, we don't know it yet. Your pet theory is likely to be not quite the whole "truth" yet. There will eventually be some data which require it to be refined even further. Be honest to yourself and admit that you could have only an incomplete understanding of the universe, and that way we can all continue to learn more.
Anyone who sees science as some immutable dogma, or as some choice between this dogma and that one, isn't doing science in the first place. That's religion. It's the exact opposite of science. And, yes, it's funny to see people rant against religion, while using science as a dogma. That's not science vs religion, that's religion vs religion. One of them uses pseudo-science trappings, but it's used as a religion nevertheless.
I don't see how you can qualify the real thing as, basically, self-delusional, or conversely claim that only sticking to a bullshit fairy-tale as The Truth is the only non-self-delusional behaviour. Science is all about avoiding that kind of absolute truths and abandoning any pretense that you know everything. This is the data we have. This is the theory that explains that data. When we'll have more data, we'll refine the theory some more. If some of those axioms don't fit the data, we'll discard the axioms. It's just about as intellectually honest as it gets.
So, pray tell, in which way is that kind of admission that we don't know everything "self-delusional"?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think all but the most ardent free-marketer would agree that the current economic meltdown was caused not by the concentration of power in Washington but by the abdication of government responsibility to curb the amorality of unbridled greed.
Your comment seems to exemplify the article's thesis about ideology trumping facts.
Looking at the paper on the Roberts study linked to TFA:
Tell some people bad stuff about a Republican, then tell them it isn't true. The pro-Democrats in the audience believe the bad stuff and ignore the rebuttal. The pro-Republicans... mostly ignored the bad stuff in the first place (or maybe didn't think it was so bad?)
Film at 11. Or, to put it another way, mud sticks.
I can't quickly see any link from the paper to the specific rebuttal of the ad which the participants were shown - but the paper assures us that it was a "a sharp, factual, bipartisan evisceration of its insinuations" - so that's alright then. (I'm reluctant to criticize a paper too deeply after a 2 minute skim, but that line made my red pen itch).
The authors of the paper seem to be taking as axiomatic that the ad was completely untrue and the rebuttal was compelling. After all, the title of the paper says "False political beliefs".
Note that the question in the study was "do you support Roberts for Supreme Court Justice" and not "do you believe that the ad was accurate". Any good propaganda will contain a grain of truth - however disingenuously presented. In this case, it was that one of the "nonviolent" protesters was a convicted violent protester. That shouldn't count for anything in a court of law, but it might reduce your audience's enthusiasm for the right to protest.
This study would be more interesting if it were done using a nice, well-defined reproducible or falsifiable scientific or mathematical fact and a common misconception. Actually, this has been done in science/math education and there is evidence that merely telling someone "your belief is wrong - here is the right answer" is ineffective unless you force them to see the absurd consequences of their belief. (go Google for "cognitive conflict").
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Tfa presents a scientific study, with *facts* that show that ideology trumps facts. This guy refuse to belive it cause he thinks it only applies to "close minded prejudiced morons".
I say- Don't be so hard on yourself... ;-)
as opposed to what you THINK, then facts become a threat. When ideology is what you think, you can revise your thinking without a threat to your ego.
Fostering brand loyalty is a cost effective way to get repeat customers. But you don't <em>have</em> to be a mindless consumer of political ideology.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes, that was metaphorically speaking, and using the term "wiring" rather inexact.
The actual "wiring", as you noted, is largely the data. That's how we learn.
The metaphorical "wiring" I'm talking about is actually in the DNA and proteins encoded by it. It's how the neurons themselves are built to work. They don't rewire the network randomly, they have a bit of code in the DNA that says how they should work. The BIOS and bootstrap code of that neural network, so to speak. That's really what I'm talking about when I say "wired".
I hope it didn't cause too much confusion to anyone.
As for how would you check for consistency, I dunno, by running a proof through it and seeing if you get two contradicting results? There's even a conjecture that that's what dreams are: the night job that runs simulations through that data.
But in truth I doubt that there's anyone who can tell you exactly how the brain works, and which pathway belongs to the consistency checking job. If we knew that, we'd already have a working AI.
We can however look at it from the outside, like at a black box, and notice some things it does. And there is strong evidence that it does that kind of a model consistency check and cleanup. Even if we don't know exactly how it works, we can see what goes in and what comes out, and it looks that way.
Same as I can look at a plane and say it tries to keep its altitude constant, even if I have no fucking clue which control surfaces are used for that, and even less clue what the code running on its computers is.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
How much does a cow weigh? If you ask ten people to estimate the average weight of a cow, then the average of their estimates will probably be a little off. If you ask 100 people, you'll get a number that's closer. If you ask 1000, you'll get a number that's even closer. Why? Because, 90% of us (hypothetically) don't know what a cow weighs, so our guess is going to be off. But, statistically, 45% will be too high, and 45% will be too low, so they cancel each other out. That leaves the other 10% who grew up on a farm, or are veterinarians, or for whatever other reason know what a cow weighs. As the sample grows, the correct answer rises to the top. Which means that, since 90% of us don't know enough about politics to make an informed vote, then the best candidate will rise to the top because the other 10% will know what they're doing. But that doesn't work, does it? Why not? Because we're not just randomly guessing. We're deliberately choosing the wrong answer - the wrong candidate - based on something other than the facts. Our ignorance is getting in the way.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
The best example of this is how people of both major parties continue to believe in government.
Witness the current crisis, whose root cause is the concentration of power in Washington, D.C. Everybody proposes all kinds of solutions, and every one of them is to increase the power of government, which caused the problem in the first place!
I'm curious to hear your theory of how big government caused the current financial crisis. Maybe I just don't get out much, but I hadn't heard that one yet.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
You're letting your prejudices and biases cloud your judgment.
Of course, Palin didn't literally ban books from library shelves: she simply doesn't have the power to do so. But it appears that she opposed the presence of particular books in the library and exerted pressure.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5766173&page=1
The story is credible also because Palin is in trouble for several other abuses of power.
What's the message -- just accept it?
Or would we rather establish a Ministry of Truth rather than allow people to believe in wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy presented as fact?
We need the freedom to be "wrong". That's what it means to be an adult.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Most people I meet are so indoctrinated as either republicans or democrats that they merely parrot back the party line. There is no attempt to think for themselves whatsoever.
Lemmings should not have the right to vote, but unfortunately in our country they are encouraged to. The truth is politicians are afraid of an educated constituency, as their job would be tougher.
This is just another sign of the sorry state our society is in.
I'm a big believer that people are entirely rational and that their conclusions are based on facts, and no study is going to persuade me otherwise!
Several facts:
Fannie and Freddie are government-created entities, and are not run nor structured like other private companies.
Washington policy, particularly centered around an "ownership society," loosened rules and practically forced some companies to make loans to poor people who couldn't afford them in the mistaken idea that it somehow creates equality.
Several senators - particularly Dodd and Sanders - continually blocked measures by the Bush administration to actually be responsible in their required oversight of Fannie and Freddie.
Reality is fact: Gravity, Inertia, those are facts.
Whatever is in your head are NOT facts... even how you preceive actual facts. Knowlage is really the only determining factor between wild speculation and at least a partially correct view. Another key is being willing to adjust what you think is real as new evidence is supplied.
Short version: Anything you have an opinion about is subjective; but reality itself doesn't give a shit what your opinion is and wilie e coyote will still fall like a rock after stepping off a cliff.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
The lazyness of physics book writers doesn't make physics into dogma.
The laws of physics are not final and eternal, the fact that newtons law of gravity has been proven to be wrong should be proof of that.
(Leviticus 11:11)
This is one of my favorite Bible quotes. I ask people if they take the Bible literally, then (if yes) ask them why they eat shellfish. If they do not take the Bible literally, then why are they against homosexuality?
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
well there is a finite chance that there is no such thing as gravity and ever since the universe came into being all the objects, gas etc have merely coalesed into bodies by chance and every time you drop an object it only moves "down" by chance.
if you have a 2 compartment box with a divider, one compartment a perfect vacum, the other filled with gas then open the divider and one minute later close it again there is a finite(although stupidly unlikey) chance that all the molecles in the gas will be on one side of the divider.
Nothing is 100% certain, "facts" are merely things which are extremely unlikely to be chance.
Certainty is for priests and children.
Facts don't stand alone. They need to be interpreted in the framework of a world view.
But that's not what the studies found.
In this case, all the article stated was that people who were told the wrong things (by Fox) about something that happened far away (Iraq) that the individuals involved could not confirm on their own, had the wrong view of reality. How on earth could this be otherwise?
Let's take a concrete example. The moon landing. You and I believe that it happened? Did it? Can you actually confirm it yourself? Practically, no (unless you are Bill Gates). So how do we know it happened? We have a trust network that verifies this fact, and that trust network has proved reliable in the past, so we have no reason to doubt it. That's just the way it is and we have to live with the consequences. The best we can do is to show that Fox has been unreliable in things that an individual can verify directly.
BTW, no form of science is possible without this sort of trust network. No person is an island. If you believe everyone loves you, and everyone tells you that they love you (but laugh at you behind your back), you'll likely believe you're lovable no matter how many experiments you run to truly verify it.
The funny thing is, the study's conclusion have been verified nonetheless, simply by the reaction to the objective facts. The objective facts said something that any 5 year old knows, but those trivial facts were extrapolated to support pet prejudices against the Bush administration (which is guilty of many things and can't be defended anyway), religion, and prejudices in favour of a "Science-only" ideology (as if Mozart has anything to do with science).
I agree we should be free to think as we will.
Although I don't believe we have a right to correct information, it'd be real nice if politicians and corporations were held responsible for their misinformation. Our choices (in Truth, wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy) are only as solid as the information on which they are built, and unfortunately, our Public Representatives (from city council members on up) feed us only the information we require to achieve the goals they desire. There seems to be no regard for the validity of the information.
It's our responsibility as citizens to hold liars responsible for their lies. As we've seen with Clinton and Bush, though, lies are accepted as truth, even in the face of physical evidence.
Oh, well. I guess we (as a population) also have the right to accept any gilded bullshit as gospel, and build our worldview on that.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You've come pretty close to my definition of evil: "Fucking over someone else for your own gain."
You've also described something I like to call, "Casual selfishness." It's those actions that only slightly inconvenience other people, but really gain you very little at all, done without consideration, and with forethought only about your own slight gain. I see casual selfishness every day on the ride in to work -- from those who don't queue up in slow moving traffic until they force their way in at the very end of the merge, for instance, or those who ride your ass though you couldn't go any faster.
Fortunately, those people are in the minority. I'd say it's only a percent or two who do things like that.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The "science as dogma" argument is often used by creationists trying to refute evolution (and other religious-based arguments trying to "unseat" science). Having spent time with very religious people, I know first hand that they take great comfort in "knowing" that their holy books (whichever ones they may be) contain all knowledge. They are used to having a certainty that there are no real unknowns in the world. Sure, we humans might not know it all, but the holy books prove that God, Jesus, Flying Spaghetti Monster, whoever, *does* know it all and by praying/studying real hard you can get a glimpse at that knowledge.
When these religious folks look at science, they just can't conceive that scientists would be OK with not knowing everything. They assume that scientists must look to "science" as their holy book and thus they must pray to/study science in an effort to gain greater knowledge the same way that the religious folks pray to God. Of course, all religious folks also tend to believe that all Gods who aren't their own are false gods. This means (to them) that science is a false god to be banished.
Getting back to the subject of cognitive dissonance, they are presented with two conflicting world views:
1 - This holy book which you have been studying for years holds all knowledge. Pray to The Great Whoever to attain this knowledge.
2 - Science can learn many things about the world without prayer and while being OK with the idea that their theories can change at any moment (e.g. with new evidence).
Their brains can't accept both as true and they've invested a lot of their lives in #1, so #1 becomes "TRUTH" and #2 gets warped into Science Is A Threat To My God.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
She did try to do something about it.
I am from Alaska. I have family in Wasilla, some who know Palin. The facts: Palin asked the city librarian if she would remove books from the library. The librarian said, essentially, "Not on my watch." So Palin attempted to change the watch.
She did try to do something about it, at the cost of a well-liked city librarian. She did so because of her scary fundamentalist ideology, the same thing that caused her to push through measurements requiring rape victims to pay for their rape test kits.
This "censorship" thing is not a strawman. I'm not sure if two cases make a pattern, but the "Troopergate" (stupid name, I know) affair indicates she likes to fire people she doesn't like, or who stand in the way of her doing things like censor libraries.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I believe Dennis Kucinich is much more liberal than Obama. And I was certainly ready to vote for him. He'd barely be "moderate" in most mentally-healthy countries.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I keep hearing how the government "practically forced some companies to make loans." This isn't supported by the facts. The bill in question (passed by Clinton in '93) essentially mandated fairness in lending -- that if banks gave a loan to one person, they couldn't refuse a similar loan to a similar person.
In fact, deregulation allowed standard banks to behave as speculative agencies. It wasn't Fannie and Freddie that gave these sub-prime loans, and nobody was forced to do so. The fact is, they were highly profitable in the short-term (say, 15 years, which is plenty to make a killing and get out). Other banks purchased up blocks of loans. Couple that with increasing privatization of Freddie and Fannie.
There was so much return on these subprime loans, that Fannie and Freddie were financially pressured into purchasing up blocks themselves. As they are the biggest mortgage lenders, they ended up with huge numbers of these loans.
The economy started spiralling down about the same time the ARMs came due, exacerbating the rate of mortgage defaults.
Jeez, doesn't anybody listen to NPR anymore?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
At some point, there has to be reality or exsistance is meaningless... and because I know some 'intro to philosophy' college brat is going to say "well it is", I'm going to go ahead and say "Then mass-suicide if there's no meaning". If it's meaningless then you shouldn't bat an eye at ending it.
I enjoy reality as I can see it, and while it's subjective to the way we see it, it's still there. It's sickeningly egotistical to think that just because you can't understand it perfectly it isn't real.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Yeah, but this leads to information pollution. There are so many different spins on the "facts," that the facts themselves are obscured. Consider the evidence presented by the government in the lead-up to the Iraq war. While other papers were debunking this evidence (whatever else you might think of the Guardian, they nailed that), ours were toeing the Presidential line. It wasn't until Joseph Wilson published his response in the NY Times that we started even talking about the validity of the evidence.
And even that was misdirected with the Valerie Plame incident, which effectively drew attention away from what Joe Wilson was talking about: the fact that at least some of the evidence was outright forged.
This whole mess is insane. How can we, as citizens, make valid choices, when we can't even get basic facts? The news stopped focussing on presenting facts, and started focussing on interpreting those facts, to the point where the facts are lost, and the interpretation is all that remains.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"Facts" my ass. Here are some real, unbiased facts:
1) The CRA bill had virtually nothing to do with the current financial crisis. To quote:
The reason bad loans were given out was because it made people a fuckton of money. The real failure was in the Bush administration not working to encourage investment opportunities outside the secondary mortgage market for the vast glut of credit that was around after the 2001 tech crash. Instead, they let the "invisible hand" work, and since real estate looked like a great way to make money, they threw their money in there. Suddenly banks saw a market for MBSs and began loaning like mad so they could resell the investments and make boatloads of cash. This drew new investors, which encouraged more bad loans, lather, rinse repeat. Throw in unregulated ratings agencies that were financially motivated to lie about risk, not to mention general risk obfuscation thanks to the structure of the instruments being sold, and you have a recipe for disaster.
All of this could've been fixed with some sensible regulation, but the government instead chose to sit back and ride the wave.
2) Fannie and Freddie largely largely avoided the subprime market until late 2007 when the market was failing and needed credit to keep it functioning, and they only stepped in when the government more or less told them to. So what the hell would regulating Fannie and Freddie have done to avoid the current problems? Nothing at all.
But I don't expect you to actually believe any of this. After all, cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.
Your statement here is dishonest, depending on the sensitivity and nature of an experiment then Newtonian Mechanics is completely and utterly bogus. In order to apply Newton's Laws you MUST have an inertial reference frame. Since inertial reference frames do not exist in reality, Newton's Laws are ALWAYS an approximation. So, depending on how poor that approximation is then your answer using Newton's Laws will be more wrong. This problem is not just in "fringe" cases of physics, every day phenomena do not follow Newton's laws. A simple example of this problem is the Coriolis Effect (the deflection of objects due to a rotating reference frame), which causes projectiles fired from gunships to be deflected and miss their intended target (unless the gunner compensates for this effect).
You are misusing the term "dogma", dogma applies to a belief in the purest sense (without proof). Unfortunately, in English we do not have a separate word for "belief with proof" so instead we normally say that we "know this to be true with a high degree of certainty." If we were German we would use the word "kennen", which has the appropriate meaning but is normally translated to English simply as "to know."
Go take some philosophy classes, especially those that concentrate on ethics. Ethical systems derived from scientific principles are VERY different from ethical systems derived from dogmatic beliefs.
...and Man creates God by Intelligent Design.
Squirrel!
1. Who fucking cares about which religion he was brought up in? Or even which religion (if any) he practices now? As long as he doesn't attempt to impose his religion (that includes Christianity) on others, it's a non-issue, or at least it should be to any reasonably intelligent person...
2. If you think Obama is a Communist, you (like most Americans) don't know the meaning of the term. I'm a socialist (as in left of the social democrats in Sweden, that would be pinko commie to you), and believe me, Obama is no communist. Here he would be on the far right side of the spectrum. His views on socialized health care for instance are to the right of even the most right-wing parties here.
They will gladly point you to a posting on CoastToCoastAM.com or WhatReallyHappened.org as proof.
Or point to their holy book of choice. "It's written in the Bible" counts as "proof" to a disturbingly large number of people, particularly in the USA.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
He was pushing for some reforms since 2001 - that's not exactly doing nothing [...]
"Pushing" is not results. I literally don't care what they we're doing all this time. There is only one fact that matters, and that fact is that the man in charge failed to prevent the crisis that you acknowledge he knew was coming. The ONLY thing that matters to me is results. And based on results, Bush is an abject failure on this score (and nearly every other score, but I digress).
I recognize the roots of this came from the left. And they should be held responsible as well. But one man had the responsibility to SOLVE IT before it became a $700 billion dollar debacle.
As for McCain, I have zero confidence in that idiot. He's uneducated, he picked a horrendous VP candidate, he's a hothead who can't even control himself in public enough not to call his wife a c***, he dumped his crippled wife pretty damn fast once he returned from the war for a rich socialite.
I may not agree with Obama on a lot of issues, but at least I know he's not a moron. Is it too much to ask for educated Republicans who aren't dishonorable embarrassments to run for President?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You WANT more government regulation and intervention in the markets? Because that's what you're asking for on these matters.
Damn fucking right I do. I want the government to hold S&P accountable when they claim that an MBS that contain tranches of subprime mortgages are AAA when they're so clearly not. I want the government to hold the banks responsible when they hand out predatory loans. These are *basic* things the government should have been doing to curtail the market forces that led to this situation. The fact that you don't understand that just says to me that you don't actually understand how the financial markets got to this place, and are instead intent upon parroting republicrat talking points.
Well, there are studies about your arguments, and they show that:
1. Direct democracy leads to better decisions; it has been statistically proven on budget spending both in U.S. and Switzerland. So it works better even in the US, which has (especially on local and state level) one of the best democratic systems in the world (maybe you are American, so it sounds strange to you, but from (my) foreigner's perspective it's very much true).
2. It also has been shown that the commitment and political education of population is the consequence of political system, not the other way around. To wait until these conditions are satisfied is just silly. Also, modern concepts of direct democracy are being used in practice for almost 100 years in both U.S. and Switzerland, and I highly doubt that people in 1908 had better education or more free time than we have now.
If you want references for these studies, read the book at http://democracy-international.org/book-direct-democracy.html