Slashdot Mirror
Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More
SharpFang writes "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that misinformed people, particularly political partisans, rarely changed their minds when exposed to corrected facts in news stories. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
It's nothing but lies designed to obscure the fact that Barak Hussein Obama is a Muslim terrorist who wants to entrance our children with commie healthcare. The sooner he goes back to his hometown in Kenya the better.
And my facts are just fine. Bill O'Reilly told me so.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
n/t
Didn't RTFA but if this study uses a logical positivist approach to a soc-sci research topic then it's completely pointless.
for homeopathy!1111 :P :P
Just kidding :P
But in reality we usually look at 'first facts' and feel they are more credible.
It's not much as lies... if you heard first "A is good" you'll keep thinking that, the same with "A is bad" regardless if A is good or bad in reality
how long until
Now I have to change my strategy for dealing with stupid people. Maybe they'll fall for some homeopathy... fight stupid with stupid.
It's all a conspiracy.
This explains the popularity of right-wingers, ordinary people who would have nothing to gain for voting for right-wing parties, yet who keep doing so.
You mean like the reception/antenna shorting issues with the iPhone 4?
... when exposed to corrected facts in news stories.
Perhaps because we have learned to distrust the news providers?
This is why George W. Bush served two terms.
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Nietzche
Including this
In some circle, they call that a leap of faith
Well people (and by people I mean you and me as well) believe a whole lot of things just because that's the way we were brought up. We have never really dug into our beliefs thoroughly.
When it comes to politics it really is some sort of emotional connection, not fact based, facts can't change our minds when this is the case. Politicians like to play on our innate sense of belonging, our fears, not however our minds.
No wonder people are insistent they have "faith" in the absence of facts.
He was right. The ONE was right. Change is here. We are experiencing change. Change we can believe in. Since we have the truth, the misinformed lie more.
Wow. They recently discovered the same thing about beliefs vs. science.
Right wingers are the ones that think Obama was born in Kenya, left wingers are the ones that think Bush fired Shinseki over troop levels. Yup, seems true to me and in other news water is wet, snow is cold, and lead is heavy.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
There's something called the Kruger-Dunning effect which is kinda interesting as well Dunning-Kruger effect. The premise is the following one:
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.
It is pretty simple. Most of the people are simply not able to admit that they have made a mistake, and when they face the real facts, then become even more stubborn just for the sake of being RIGHT (after they put their heads in the sand of course). In this sense, Christianity is very useful religion, because it says that we are all sinner....a little bit exaggerated, but better than the total ignorance.
Seriously, this looks like a weak rehash of Festinger's (1957) Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, only without the data or depth of study. People change their opinions to suit their convictions, and shown by Festinger's study of the reactions of doomsday cults' reactions to the fact the the world didn't end on the expected date (c.f., "When Propheshy Fails"). Really, what am I missing here?
I know this is Idle but there's been a lot of articles related to how people think lately. Myself, I'm perfectly okay with people having different viewpoints. Even outright wrong ones. Why should I care about it? So there are people that think their party is infallible and fall for the party talking points. Nothing new really and understanding it doesn't really change much. I can't really use this information beyond what I think are some common sense rules about people in general.
Diversity is part of humanity. Who's to say where the next great change will come from? Logical thinking is not the end-all be-all for human prosperity.
As a wise man once said - let them live.
Excerpt from the article:
"CONAN: And again, we'd like to think of our brain as something that's been trained in, you know, Cartesian logic, when in fact, our brain is sort of hard-wired to leap to conclusions very quickly.
Mr. NYHAN: That's right. And what's interesting is in some of these cases, it's the people who are most sophisticated who are best able to defend their beliefs and keep coming up with more elaborate reasons"
I remember taking a neuroscience course in college once with a professor who had done experimentation that he thought suggested that what separated humans from other mammals (the cortex) was primarily a mechanism to _slow_ learning. In fact in studies I've read child apes are able to more quickly learn how to use tools than child humans. Humans are slow learners in the same way that a feedback control loop needs a dampener: it allows us to stabilize and converge on techniques and facts that serve us well without too easily 'forgetting' them.
WARNING: anecdotal evidence
Walking and talking with people, the more 'reasonable' of us tend to simply be those that think about the issues (whatever they may be) more than others, and so misinformation in their minds will more quickly be 'flushed out'. However you don't _want_ people to just believe 'facts' without great trepidation, that is a good thing, its called skepticism, and it should be hard to overcome. Facts printed in news stories or articles (as mentioned in the article) are often wrong, like the countless stories that mis-reported the Toyota accelerator problem without doing their fact-checking first (one of the biggest proponents was a repeat insurance defrauder).
end anecdotal evidence
--"You are your own God"--
I'm a liberal but I have studied the climate science controversy and no longer believe that CO2 causes catastrophic global warming. I have been following the skeptical web sites. It's real lonely for liberals over there. In fact, the prevalent opinion on those blogs seems to be that global warming is a plot to let the UN take over and make the whole world communist!
Never mind just the public, it seems to me that even scientists will not change their minds in the face of evidence contrary to what they believe.
This explains the popularity of chicken-wingers, ordinary people who would have weight to gain for voting for chicken-wing parties, yet who keep doing so.
A Faux News commentator said "Well what would you EXPECT from a bunch of social scientists in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor?"
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
People tend to want to hear information that agrees with their particular world view. This is why even though all main stream media has a slant to a story there are different "flavors". AP actually puts out 7 different versions of every story depending on which propaganda machine is quoting them. Today's media presents very few facts but presents lots of opinions. Every "expert" speaker is just a person presenting his opinion. While it is easy to bash Faux news you can just as easily catch the same thing going on at NPR, BBC, CNN, etc if you are observant. All of them have money behind them determining how a story is presented, or if it is even presented at all. If your smart enough to read slashdot you should be smart enough to research things for yourself.
I wonder if there is any correlation between a religious nature and political partisanship? Currently one party claims to be the party of religion, but looking back, this seems to change over the years with first one then the other aligning themselves with a church or religious body. It would be interesting to see if belief in a religion correlates with this political self deception.
This is admittedly totally of topic, but I thought it was interesting that as a word-for-word transcript (but probably excluding um's) how many times both speakers used "so" and "you know". These are two very articulate adults, one of them a regular radio host.
After all, we know that the truth has a liberal bias.
Test your net with Netalyzr
This is a problem with pretty much every political issue there is. You have to pick a side eventually. Very few people are truly neutral as far as political spectrum goes. You are leaning either to the right or to the left. The problem is that when you finally pick your side (early twenties, typically) it becomes natural to stick to it no matter what new information comes your way and you end up in a "us versus them" kind of position. You see everything that doesn't make your side look good as propaganda or media bias. I think politics can be compared to professional sports in many ways in the sense that science, data and morality have basically nothing to do with who you are rooting for.
For most people, Politics, like Sports and Religion is all about having an emotional attachment to something - they're for/with/believe a group/ideology because they feel like "one of the group" and one cannot be against oneself.
A high level of intelectual abilities (i.e. IQ) is no defense against it: just look at all the religious-like flamewars around things like editors and operating systems.
In order to do trully informed judgements one must first be aware of one's inner-self, one's drives and fears and be capable of analysing one's motives. One must be capable of separating the "logic" from the "feelings" and the "habits" in the way things are perceived, interpreted and reasoned about.
Unfortunatly this requires a level of inner maturity that seems to be far above that of most people ...
I just read this a while back. There are larger ramifications than political sniping, and beyond politics altogether.
It's a perfect illustration of why this phenomenon matters to all of us.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I see iPhone users written all over this, flaming not inteded.
There isn't much like the scent of a fresh harddisk
Given the amount of spin and misrepresentation of facts that people are exposed to on a daily basis, it's not entirely irrational to disregard evidence waved in front of their faces.
I can select stocks the rose over the last quarter to quote as evidence that the market has improved. I can select stocks that fall over the last quarter to quote as evidence that the market hes declined. Or I can select a random sample of stocks and give an answer that is a statistically accurate reflection of what the market did. Whether I sway someone's opinion with these facts depends not just on the facts themselves, but their trust in my choice of facts.
Slashdotters get even more entrenched in their belief that the Toyota "sudden acceleration" issue was real, even in the face of the conclusions drawn by the NHTSA that it was due to entirely to driver error.
By the way, cause what popular magazine declared that people should stop buying certain models of Toyotas until Toyota "fixed the sudden acceleration problem". That would be Consumers Reports. Sound familiar?
--- What?
Can be found here http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf. The statistical correlations found were weak, in some cases not even statistically significant. Also, for some questions they didn't see any backfire effect (where corrections make people believe the lies more) for all questions. For example, when dealing with liberals, there was no backfire effect when correcting the misconception that George Bush banned stem cell research (he in fact restricted it to a specific set of cell lines). However, in this case, correction did not alter the belief level although it didn't create a backfire result. Clearly, more research is needed. There's also a relevant older article which shows that uninformed people are more likely to think they are informed. http://ann.sagepub.com/content/560/1/143.abstract. This connects with the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect where incompetent individuals generally overestimate their own competency.
Seriously, it really is.
No! When I'm misinformed and I get facts presented (esp. in studies), I totally change my mind! I'd argue this news story is wrong!
I mean they were inundated with callers who said that they had changed their minds because of facts. But still believed that people didn't
The saddest part of this story for us, nerds, is that our strongest weapon - our knowledge, superior understanding of facts, digging deeper into matters than cheap news stories, is in fact totally inefficient against "joe average". The more you argue your case the worse your chance to -really- win the argument, convince the other side. More often they will admit defeat to get you off their neck and keep believing their falsehood even stronger.
That is why John Hodgeman's punch line "Glen Beck makes a lot of sense if you think about it. If you don't think about it, he makes even more sense" makes me quite sad.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Seems like GNU fans are falling to that group. No matter how hard you explain that Linux kernel is the operating system by using technical and historical facts, they can not drop the GNU/Linux and taunt how it is the only truth.
Its great that we know this, so how do I convince Joe Average that he is wrong though? He won't believe the truth, so do I threaten him or call him names or what? How do I make Joe Average see the truth when he is ignoring it?
it's full of lies, don't believe it!
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
This is one of the reasons that I dislike discussing/arguing issues in person. They will bring up some information I hadn't heard before, but I have no idea whether it is reliable or not. I try not to be set in my beliefs, but 90% of the "facts" that people spout usually had some foundation in truth originally but have become so misinterpreted by the time they heard it that it is almost complete crap. I like to look into things before I accept them, but that isn't an option in person. If you can't immediately refute any random thing they bring up and won't just accept what they say as gospel truth then you are pegged as a ignorant stubborn idiot. Furthermore, when I am pressed like that I do feel a strong desire to dig in and defend myself, when otherwise I would just take in the information and have one more thing to mull over while I continue to read about the issue.
Hmmm... I wonder how closely habitual acceptance of misinformation parallels with low intelligence. I think this all boils down to 'stupid people are stupid'.
National Propaganda Resource
All so called "facts" are suspect coming from this organization. Stories are designed not to engage but to denigrate and dehumanize, embarrass and harass.
NPR is a NWO affiliate and does its bidding, tables ideas, plants seeds and provides misdirection operations with the official face of a media based on "facts".
The truth could nto be more obscured coming from this organization.
..the peak of human thinking?
We are so accustomed to be lied to by every facet, what is the truth anymore?
MSNBC tells us one thing, Fox news tells us the opposite. The media can not be trusted to tell any truth.
Then you have political correctness, when even if you do know the truth you can not tell it because it may upset some group.
Face it, truth is dead, pick what lies make you feel the happiest.
seems to be to have a widely viewed news program that is at the same time informational, entertaining, and possibly humorous.
The daily show.
Saving the world, one day at a time.
OK, so we know now that just pointing out the facts doesn't work. What does? Have any studies identified techniques that actually work?
I think I finally understand why no one ever believes me.
Enlightenment is the elimination of that which is unnecessary.
Not sure if this study has been featured (as a story) on Slashdot before, but I do know that it has been linked to dozens, if not hundreds, of times in the comment threads here on Slashdot.
This highlights a fundamental weakness of democratic systems of government.
"The people" are, on the whole, intellectually unfit to govern themselves.
It remains true that those governed should have authority over the policies of government, and that the governors should be held accountable to those they govern. These must be true in order to avoid rampant corruption and crimes against humanity. But it is also true that the majority of people are too incapable of critical thinking, of self-education, and of consistency in the application of their principles to be effective in discriminating good policies from bad.
People who claim to love freedom will happily deprive their neighbor of very important freedoms, and see no problem with this (this is true on both sides of the political perspective....freedom-loving Americans want to stop their neighbors from marrying the same gender, or owning guns, or terminating unwanted pregnancies, or using drugs for pleasure, or having access to sexually explicit material online, or having access to shared public facilities while being of a different race, and so on). That is just one example, but others abound.
When you provide facts to someone, but also look as though you're arguing against their position, it hurts their ego to switch to your side.
The trick is to show you don't care who's right, give the facts, and then not argue afterwards. Then it's not a battle of egos anymore.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
How is it there are always these peaces that are designed to support the official government stories? You never have the other side like Scientist for 911 Truth. I ean let's talk facts! I'm open to all sides but i can see that this site is a front. Shame on you.
The experience of the last century shows that fanatics can remain hermetically sealed from the truth until the fabric of their society collapses around them, and there is literally rubble in the streets.
I think that education is the only hope to fix this, but that means that this will be a problem for the rest of our lives, if not a lot longer.
Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."
That's a lie!
I'm shocked - SHOCKED - that every fact presented in the article happens to contradict a conservative viewpoint.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
First, The Boston Globe has an article that explains the same details, though not in question & answer interview format.
Second, the adult human brain is engineered to actually dismiss information that it does not agree with. There was a very good article I read (that I think was posted a while ago on /.) that explained the situation very well. In summary, the prefrontal cortex of the adult human brain is the "information filter" that is responsible for filtering out "unnecessary" information. For example, ask yourself how many people you walked by today. Then ask yourself how many of those peoples' faces do you remember vividly? Though your eyes most likely saw many, many faces, your prefrontal cortex filters out that information before it even is stored in short-term memory. I know there's an article out there that explains the science more thoroughly, but sadly I failed to find it.
Anyways, the same information filter that filters out unnecessary information also is also responsible for blocking any information that it determines to be dissonant from accepted information, i.e. cognitive dissonance. In this previously mentioned misplaced article, scientists hooked up participants to an MRI in an experiment analyzing how their brains processed conflicting information. The participants were sorted into two groups: physics majors and non-physics majors. The video was a recreation of Newton's gravity experiment, where a person drops a tennis ball and a bowling ball, both hitting the floor at the same time. When the physics majors saw the experiment, their brain did not register much activity, because what they saw was already what they knew to be true. But when the non-physics majors watched the video, the "WTF" section of their brain went crazy. In short, they believed that the bowling ball would hit the ground first, and when it didn't, their brain had a difficult time processing the information that conflicted with previously held beliefs. When faced with this confliction, adult minds must either reclassify what they know (a very difficult task for the adult brain), or filter out what they have just witnessed (a very easy task for the adult brain). In the end, I'm sure most of those non-physics majors ended up rationalizing what they saw with excuses such as, "Video editing" or "lead weight inside tennis ball."
As difficult as it is, the only way to prove to someone the truth is to first prove to them that their accepted beliefs are false. The only way this is possible is to take what they believe to be true, then show them how their own "facts" are inconsistent with one another. Only by creating cognitive dissonance within their own thoughts, rather than introducing it from an external stimulus, can you create the conditions necessary for them to be willing to listen to truth.
I just think it's funny that all slashdotter's assume that they are immune to this phenomena. Or that for some reason only conservatives fall prey to it.
So this study proves that dumbasses will continue to remain dumbasses.
Sources of truth in our society ain't worth the powder it would take to blow 'em to hell. That's the problem.
P.S. Once again Slashdot has me typing this in a 2"x3" box.
Get Firefox 4.0 -- it lets you resize any text entry box to the size you prefer.
Oh, and I agree with the rest of your statement.
The comment thread under the article has been derailed by a heated argument about 9/11 conspiracy theories.
1) People believe what they want to believe, most often they believe that which
conforms to their ( pre-existing ) worldview.
2) By definition, 50% of the population has an IQ of 100 or less. What this doesn't tell
you is that most people, EVEN IF their IQ is above 100, do not ever engage in
critical thinking. And if they aren't engaging in critical thinking, they aren't going to
get results which are any better than the imbeciles, because intelligence is useless
unless it is USED.
3) The bigger the lie, the more likely the above idiots are likely to believe the bs, hook, line,
and sinker. You know, lies like "Iraq has WMDs" or "We must defeat Al Quaeda and the
way to do that is to engage in war in Afghanistan ( where the real reason for this war is
maintaining access to petro-chemical reserves ).
I am American. Most Americans are such gullible fools it makes me want to puke, and this is
independent of their IQ. There was recent proof of this on Slashdot in the way most of those
who posted embraced all-electric cars despite the fact that there are practical and significant reasons
why all-electric cars are not going to be successful in the mass market yet. The difference between
Billy Bob Dumbass and the Slashdot audience is that the Slashdot audience allows itself to be blinded
by its fetish for what they assume is "advanced tech". The sad truth is that most of the people who post
on Slashdot don't know shit about the subject they are commenting on, and they are simply engaging in
mental masturbation because their lonely pathetic lives lack any other form of fullfilment.
And now if you will excuse me I have real work to do, and it has nothing to do with a website or a computer.
This is the only thing sustaining the republican party.
That' hardly surprising. No one wants to admit their political party sucks. At best they might acknowledge theirs sucks less but that would be the extent of it.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
For proof look at any thread about any Apple product.
I think that a lot of this has to do with how the facts are presented. A lot of the time when someone is blatantly wrong (as most people who watch FOX News are), people present the facts to them in ways that are antagonistic. When someone is attacked (even if it is with the truth) they go on the defensive. And the more effective the attack, the deeper they'll dig in. In this case, the harder they'll hold on to their incorrect views.
Nobody would go to the cinema if the film didn't have a flow to it, a beginning, a middle and an end.
We like our facts to fit the same pattern and where they don't we twist them around in our head until they do.
What we also do is look for stories which fit our circumstances. If we are poor, we believe in evil rich oppressors and Robin Hood style heroes. If we are rich we believe in the feckless, unworthy poor, and our own natural superiority.
Don't imagine that it is someone else who is prone to this and not you. If affects us all. It's just that people don't tend to recognise it in themselves - because that sort of fact doesn't appeal.
You are merely thinking in slow motion, fleeting seconds before impact.
The Republican party depends on a group of deeply delusional voters known as Evangelicals. That's why, in the 21st Century, there are elected officials pretending to be concerned about gay couples, pretending that evolution is a lie that shouldn't be taught as fact, and pretending that a woman's body is the property of the Federal Government.
And if you don't believe me, just look at how pathetic McCain was when he had to prostrate himself in front of these idiots: http://thinkprogress.org/mccain-flip-flops/
The Democratic party has it's fair share of hypocrites, but only one party demands delusion as part of their party platform. They are still demanding God be put back in Government, and pretending the founding fathers wanted the same thing. Their next sentence could be about the dangers of muslim theocracies, but their delusion is thought-proof. They know God chose America to fight Evil, just like their old hero President said himself: he answers to a higher father, even if the father he has in reality fought the same war against the same army only a decade earlier.
E.Jaynes in "Probability, The Logic of Science" devotes several pages to this very issue. It turns out that when testing multiple hypotheses, we always end up comparing the two most probable ones because probability is perceived exponentially (he in fact uses dB for measuring evidence) and the gaps between prior probabilities becomes very large. When listening to a news story that presents evidence contrary to your own current beliefs, you will end up comparing the "I am wrong" hypothesis with "The newsman is lying" hypothesis. Because the prior probability for the latter is always higher than the prior for the former, no amount of evidence will change your mind. The only way it can happen is if enough evidence accumulates against "he is lying" hypothesis that it falls below the prior for "I am wrong". So, as you can see, this behavior is mathematically correct and is the right method of reasoning because it prevents us from incorrectly changing beliefs when given false evidence.
I don't think the problem is necessarily people disagreeing with facts. It is people disagreeing with conclusions that might be based on facts. If you take any controversial position you will find that both sides are usually able to pull facts that support their conclusions and discredit the opposition.
This just in, people prefer to believe things that conform to their own biases regardless of the facts.
In other news, religion is still popular even though the facts indicate religion is just self-delusion and wishful thinking.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Age old saying: "A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still"
The more you argue with someone against their point, the more they will search their mind for reason to defend their point.
People are a lot more adept at convincing themselves of something than they are at convincing someone else.
This is just human nature at work
We know this,which is why celebrities are used to endorse everything from politicians right up to soap powder. They are familiar faces and we tend to trust the famialiar. I would expect this effect (or corrections reinforcing wrong beliefs) could be reversed just as easily by having the same (or more worthy/familiar) celeb making the correction. Provided it's done in a non-confrontational way, even with the original celeb endorsing the new one.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
such as curing the insufferable legion of Apple Fanbois. They seem to have gotten the shortest end of this stick.
There is nothing in words that prove truth. Truth is always in the context, and without being able to cross reference what is claimed to be true with the definitive reference which is reality, then there really is no way for anyone to tell if something is true or not for sure. Hence, we either guess (however educated), go with our gut (however experienced), or try to read between the lines (however insightful). The result though is simple. Basically if they manage to make sense, and entertain us in the process, they usually win.
Hence, I say the best story wins.
Facts alone do not work
You need to have "PROOFS" too, and also it will take EFFORT to convince somebody to change his mind.
Nothing new
Thats one way to explain libertarianism
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
.. I suggest administering facts combined with strong stimuli, like electric shocks, whips or baseball bats.
Duh.
We are a culture that values strength over intelligence. A man who is unflexible, unyielding, who cannot be changed is strong. A man who is open to change, who compromises appears to have a weak heart. When we argue and discuss, our goal is not to learn something, is not to find the right answer - our goal is to win the argument
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
self-knowledge is the only gateway to genuine knowledge
if you don't know yourself, if you don't admit to or understand your own failings and weaknesses for being a simple human being, then you will always suffer because of your unadmitted weaknesses
humanity has good parts, bad parts, and ugly parts, and you are part of all of it, inside you are the seeds of everything you look outside yourself and detest or hate about others
our own pride, egotism, and arrogance leads all of us to our own doom
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It would have saved a lot of money on the study and still have the same information.
"The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world." -- Adolf Hitler
Of course he was in the business of lies, being a master politician, lying right up to the very end, when the Germans swore they were on the verge of unleashing secret weapons that would change the course of the war. Because the Fuhrer told them so. Few people knew that in fact he had ordered everything burned and destroyed behind the retreating armies.
But on the subject of truth and lies, Hitler never started World War II, either. Britain and France had decided that Germany had to be taken down long before the actual Polish invasion. In fact Chamberlain said, in May 1939 "the fate of Poland depends on the final outcome of the war, which will depend on our ability to defeat Germany rather than to aid Poland at the beginning.". I'm not saying Hitler was a good guy. Like Napoleon before him, he was not. Nor is anyone who carelessly throws men's lives away. But like Napoleon, Hitler was manipulated into a corner and forced to yield. And, like Napoleon, he decided to fight his way out instead.
And on the side of the allies, I can understand that dealing with Hitler in 1939 was probably a much wiser decision than starting a war with Hitler in 1944. Germany was not at all ready for all out war in 1939 or 1940 and its major victories were mostly due to the complete strategic incompetence of their opponents. The famed and feared "Blitzkrieg" was not a doctrine, but invented on the fly during the French invasion. Commanders (Rommel included) regularly disobeyed orders and often entire divisions weren't where they were supposed to be. The tanks used were earlier Czech models because the German tanks had severe transmission problems. Their engines/gearboxes were incapable of dealing with the heavier armor. Had the Germans had 5 more years of uninterrupted research and production, training for their conscript, and slave labor for their factories, they would have been far tougher to defeat. Such a boost to production cannot be expected on the Allied side, because the allies only made a huge effort when they realized how quickly European nations were falling under the jack boot, and how close they were to losing.
"The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. " -- George Orwell
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It is good that these facts have been "formalized" by studies, but these facts are hardly a surprise to anyone talking to committed partisans.
Especially on the internet :).
When all else fails people just choose to believe that the other person's sources are faulty or biased.
That tactic is the great panic button for baling out of a failing argument and having to change your views.
These findings are not a surprise to me.
Thanks to the innovation of the internet I've had probably thousands of arguments with people committed to a particular viewpoint.
The usual mentality is not curiosity, listening and interest in discovering truth.
It is a verbal boxing match with both sides flinging opinions and links until someone gets tired and stops
"After several hours Joe finally gave up on logic and reason and simply told the cabinet that he could talk to plants and that they wanted water."
- Idiocracy
Obi-Wan: Luke, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
This study is total garbage. There's no way intelligent human beings are predisposed to deny facts in favor of pre-determined beliefs. I can't believe anyone is taking this "study" seriously.
Ummm... guys, it's called dogmatism.
Did we really need peer-reviewed research to confirm that it exists? Where have you been living? Why do you think there are STILL people refusing to take vaccines, even after Andrew Wakefield has been utterly discredited? Why do you suppose there were still people who thought Piltdown Man was real, even after the hoax was exposed? Why do you suppose it is that so many people mindlessly "vote the party line" in direct opposition to observable reality?
Dogmatism and its kid brother groupthink are huge threats to meaningful progress in just about every facet of human civilization.
It is called Pleasure Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_principle_(psychology)
What is interesting is, more and more across all ages & positions are falling in trap of this. This is backwards.
Well can't say I'm surprised But I have karma to burn and I wasn't surprised to get modded down on that one. BTW, thanks for demonstrating how true my signature really is. (Oh well, I hope a few other readers on Slashdot get a laugh or 2 out of my sig since it does capture the reality of alot of posts that are modded down as "troll".) Note, this posting is what is known as a rant. A rant. (Last a checked a rant isn't a relative of a troll in LotR) Please feel free to use this as a guide in the future if you ever think another post is a troll. It also demonstrates sarcasm and derision. Yes, people use those outside of literature class.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Because that way I could have things my way and live my life to my rules. I'm not interested in restricting the rights of others, but removing a lot of the bloody stupid restrictions people place on each other.
I honestly believe that a true meritocracy or an enlightened dictatorship could do better. The problem is that they are open to abuse. So we're stuck with the rule of those that can manipulate the moronic mob into voting for them.
Democracy truly is the worst form of government apart from all the rest.
As a wise man once said - let them live.
I'll leave them alone to believe whatever they want, as long as they do the same for me.
Its not what the facts they believe that is the issue, its their insistence that everyone else follow their Dogma as well.
In any case, reading through the article I found that it was a nice conversation, but really didn't tell us much of what we don't already know: people are social animals, and love to congregate in tight, defensive groups. In politics, this often means that they adopt a wholesale party line, without either thinking about the facts involved, or considering each tenet independently
I think that the issue is much more complex than that. And not necessarily a bad thing either! It has many pros (I believe they even outweight the cons) and it would be misleading to simply liken it to how primitive animals act.
Lets say that you find politician A to be an intelligent person and to have values similar to yours. Then A and B disagree about some subject you haven't studied that much. It is pretty convenient to default to what A is thinking: After all, you know him to be intelligent, to have values similar to yours and he has apparently delved deeply into the subject. It is very likely that if you had the time, intelligence and interest to do that - which you might not have - you would get to the same conclusion as he did. So, you side with A.
Then, a supporter of B comes and begins to argue with you and you don't have proper answers. But you know that a person who is intelligent and generally similar to you has delved deep into the subject... Even if YOU can't answer the person B's supporter, person A might be able to do it. As long as you haven't studied the subject as much as you believe A to have done, it makes no sense to change your views when you can't answer B's supporter's facts! Think of it like this: A phycist explains me "World works like this". Then a fundamentalist comes to me and says "Your explanation has this flaw!". Even if I can't answer him, it doesn't mean that the scientist was wrong. I just don't know enough of the subject to answer the fundamentalist. For as long as I haven't either studied the subject enough or seen the scientist and fundamentalist argue with each other, no amount of facts need to be able to change my opinion: I just can't evaluate them enough myself so I first choose who seems like a trustworthy person and leave evaluating the facts to him.
Now, this leads to one thing: If everyone you consider intelligent thinks some way about subject you aren't an expert in, you begin thinking like them (Which I find to be very convenient trait). If two people who you find intelligent disagree about something, THEN you begin thinking "Hmm. I wonder which one is correct here?". If you have certain opinions about gay rights for example and everyone around you has those opinions, arguing about it on the internet won't change anything. Even if you lose, you only begin pondering the flaws tha the other side had or how you forgot to present some arguments. But lets say that your parents think one way and best friend thinks another way. THEN you are likely to begin thinking "Perhaps there is another side to the issue? Afterall, my best friend - whom I consider intelligent, etc. - thinks differently than I do."
So it really comes down a lot to having different kinds of assosciates with different combinations of beliefs. And that thing can co-exist with the trait that I have been defending here, the trick is that the groups to which you assosciate yourself need to be smaller and lines between them less clear... Let's look at politics for example: In USA, you have democrats and republicans which (despite acting identically in some areas) represent two completely opposed ideologies, attitudes towards life, etc... I'm half-surprised that you guys aren't in a civil war yet! Here in Finland, we have some 7 or so parties in the parliament and a lot more parties that only exist on municipal levels, etc... So switching from one to another (lets say between Greens and the Left Alliance, as those are the parties that have gotten my vote usually) doesn't mean a massive transformation in your identity. In addition, with a system like this, the lines between politica
It would sound like the perfect troll: find out how timid a kid was at age 3, that tells you how conservative he'll be at 23.
As it goes, it's completely backed up by research. And the researchers weren't looking for that info, it just sat there in the data.
In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments.
They weren't even thinking about political orientation. And why would they? They're psychology professors researching personality theory, personality development, research methodology, and stuff like that.
Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. Why? Who knows. Maybe for craps and giggles. Maybe because they had a column blank on their spreadsheet and wanted to fill it with one more metric to see if there was a link between voting and eating the erasers on the tops of pencils.
What was interesting to them was the arresting patterns they found.
As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.
People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3.
Don't forget: the Blocks had NO IDEA what political affiliation any of the three year-olds would have when they did the survey in 1969. But go forward twenty years, and there it is. Everything that people say they want their kids to be: kids just like that became Libs. Everything that makes short-tempered parents scream and beat their kids: future applicants for a CPAC pass and an EIB golf shirt request on the Christmas list.
The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics. The article doesn't say if Professor N.S.Sherlock lit his pipe and smiled knowingly to himself upon hearing the results, but I wouldn't die of surprise if it happened.
Pure science: sometimes, the truth just hurts. Especially if you've been easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable all your life.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
B.F. Skinner did some very interesting experiments with pigeons. He kept them hungry and put them in a cage with a food dispenser that would dispense a food pellet at random intervals (with a known average interval). When the pellet dropped the bird would instinctively connect it with some random movement it had made just prior to the food appearing. It would then repeat that movement over and over again until another pellet dropped. Since it did not work every time the bird would also connect other random movements to the food. Over time the bird joined these random movements together in an intricate dance that it would perfom in front of the dispenser. The interesting part is that once the time taken to perform the dance was as long as the average interval between random pellets the birds did not change their routine, since they were almost certain to get the reward within two repetions. Once the bird was at this point it would dogmatically stick with same the dance even if the dispenser was turned off or the average interval changed.
It's my contention that most of the mundane daily rituals we humans perform, (including what we choose to read), are initially developed in the same manner.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm surprised that no one has suggested this as a theory yet, but - isn't this supposed 'phenomenon' really just about personal pride? If I allow myself to be utterly convinced that something is true, only to be told later that that thing was, in fact, utterly false, what is my reaction? Ideally I would be humble enough to accept that I can make mistakes, but this trait is extremely rare. Most people would mistakenly and ironically cling to their false belief than admit that they could possibly make a mistake.
Well, that pretty much explains the whole religion thing. Drat.
Communism is funny?
Hey, maybe I should joke about slaughtering a few million black people as well.
FIREWOOD, HAHA, BUT ALREADY CHARRED! LOL!
I don't need to read the article to know that this is bull. Now I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and hum.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It makes for a really neat Catch-22. Because the press is 'free', it is also for sale. There's no way to prevent the corporate/wealthy interests from gaining control over the media without allowing the government to control it instead.
So, pick your evil -
A) Government-run media
B) Greed-run media
There isn't any 'C'. At least not within the reasonable confines of established western civilization.
Humans are neat!
I noticed you focused on the negative aspects of that article. How about the later paragraph:
The researchers--John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley--found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.
I guess you could make a value judgment on those attributes, but they have equal value in a person.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Lies: n. Plural of lie. See: Religion
Although it's phrased so as to sound nonpartisan, when you look at the examples of misinformation you'll see that they're all on the right politically. The article is yet another "my political opponents don't believe as they do because of arguments and evidence, like I do; instead, they oppose me because of some psychological reason", which is just an ad hominem attack.
The real reason why people don't change their beliefs upon seeing "corrections" is probably that they expect that any true correction will make its way around to more than one source and that a "correction" that they never heard before is inherently untrustworthy because that one person could have an agenda and be omitting, distorting, or misrepresenting in a way that isn't obvious unless you thoroughly check it out. People without the time to check it out themselves won't believe it until it's been seen by lots of others (under the assumption that some of them will have had the time to check it out, and would discover any problems).
The article tries to imply that because they quoted reliable sources like the FBI there should be no worry about them making up the facts. Obviously they couldn't be making up the specific numbers, but they could have been quoting out of context, omitting qualifiers, or otherwise lying with statistics even if it's literally true that the numbers themselves are being accurately quoted.
Some changes that were heralded as progressive turned out not be improvements and were regressed. So does it really have to be a positive change for the person to have been progressive? What if the change proposed was tried long before like the equivalent of the patriot act having happened under every wartime president regardless of party(including many that called themselves progressive)? Its sort of regressive because we have already tried it, but it isn't a recent change being rolled back, its a radical policy that has been re-instituted. I do not agree the literal definitions of these labels are useful in describing the people we use the labels for.
That said the GP is confusing fascism with right wingism. The left has never had a monopoly on fascism, but neither has the right, the term fascisti itself being used by an outgrowth of the Italian socialist party. People drawn to power want more, its how it works. We are supposed to remove those who abuse it, but I don't see how we are to do it.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
As Slashdotters break their arms patting themselves on the back over this finding, I can't help but notice that the truth I occasionally show up here to post (the US government is targeting and eradicating political dissidents with large networks of informants and clandestine technologies) only helps cement the deeply held belief by the VERY WELL-INFORMED (lol!) people here that the issues of my group are the product of mentally ill minds. Where mental illness, mind you, is defined by the very people who are responsible for the persecution of targets.
Ironic, indeed.
I'm not making these assertions based on fact, these are just my gut feel reactions - I'd love to see the facts.
Nullius in verba
If even a small minority of folks are like me, then a significant percentage of his viewership can be attributed to people looking for a good laugh.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Again a political/social/psych. etc. study that "finds" what has been pretty obvious to those who posses minimal observation and critical thinking skills.
Confirming the "findings" would be an appropriate high school social studies project.
Now if they had an answer (or would work on trying to find one) to solve the problem at hand, that would be a significant contribution to mankind. Stating and verifying the obvious is a baby-baby step.
Quotes from TFA:
The phenomenon is called backfire, and it plays an especially important role in how we shape and solidify our beliefs on immigration, the president's place of birth, welfare and other highly partisan issues. Also, what "facts" might impact my views on welfare? My view on most poltical issue is a matter of opinion (highly consistent and systemic but opinion nonetheless).
I am not aware of the "birth" manufactured controversy being an issue. It arose briefly during election but - IMO - it has been kept alive by people who need strawmen to knock around. NPR calling it an "issue" strikes me as odd, factually.
Now, there's a huge problem with violence on the border, but virtually all of it happens to be on the Mexican side.
Wow. Just WOW! "Virtually all of it"? Unless Arizona is Antarctica or a crime-free nexus, how can one even begin to make such a generalization? 90% 95% 99% - all of this I could believe but "virtually all of it" implies someone selling a stretcher.
That said, I appreciate the article WRT to crime and Phoenix. I would like to know more, sadly, NPR wanted to knock down a few easy targets rather than discuss the issue in depth.
People by design are taught to question. I’m not even sure how this is news. Of course when I hear a “fact” that contradicts something I know to be true I am going to defend, ask questions, etc. That’s a natural process that protects us from deception. Later I will digest the information and make a judgment call. Depending on the source I may even keep believing in the lie. Change that, and I become naïve.
... Iraq did have WMD!
Also, Saddam was involved in 9/11 and he behind a conspiracy with the easter bunny to hide the fact that we never really went to the moon since it really IS made of cheese! ;)
AFAIK this technique has been widely used in news media all over the world for a long time.
..) the smartest but you will for sure persuade the widest audience.
:[insert any anti Nokia/whatever FUD form a weird rumour site in Kazakhstan]
Say whatever crap you want to persuade people about, and please don't forget to include some FUD, that's usually very effective.
Then let the commie/liberal/gay/hippie/islamic others biased media say you're saying crap and have no argument. Let they rigorously demonstrate you were wrong and BINGO.
You might not convince (actually since you have no arguments you cannot convince
What's important is to talk FIRST.
I've seen this zillions of time on Engadget : Breaking News
And then 3 hours later : Updated : actually it was complete bullshit ! YAY !
Of course the updated part goes into the title, the "complete bullshit" mention comes at the end of the article or "after the break".
This apparently only happens on the Right.
"The phenomenon is called backfire, and it plays an especially important role in how we shape and solidify our beliefs on immigration, the president's place of birth, welfare and other highly partisan issues."
I can see where this holds true with things like the president's birthplace but the rest of that statement is simply an attempt to relegate opinion. What belief on immigration? What about welfare? It's ironic that the piece itself is infused with partisan bias, the thing it's apparently attempting to expose.
Nothing new or earth-shattering here. People tend to invest themselves emotionally in their beliefs. They will often cling to a discredited belief because it fits with their general worldview, and gives them a feeling of comfort, power, or righteousness. Plus, few people enjoy being proven wrong.
When you attack someone's preciously held beliefs, no matter how graciously or tactfully, the reaction is often the same as if you took an axe, went into their house, and started destroying their furniture. The natural reaction is to both defend and counter-attack.
Until and unless critical thinking is taught and instilled in people from a very young age, this will continue to be the norm. And, believe me, the powers that be do NOT want kids learning how to question and examine things critically -- by and large, they want moderately-educated clones who will quietly fall into line and do the bidding of the corporate interests that really run things.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
WTF? The article/interview is the biggest piece of flamebait ever written. Every single person with an opinion will think the opposing side of whatever argument is wrong. Its been that way since man learned to communicate. This article's subject can be used on both sides of any argument, republican or democrat, christian or atheist, carnivore or vegan, etc... Each side believes they have facts that disprove the other side, and each side disputes the validity of those facts. The interviewee has (brilliantly) made a perfect case. Everyone agrees with him, because everyone knows some other asshole who refuses to believe their facts. Personally, I think his facts are wrong, and he should eat a dick.
All this shows is that people have a bias to what they first know, which is usually a good thing as it prevents you second-guessing everything you do every second of the day.
That'll give you a nice example of how people would rather believe shiny falsehoods than the actual truth.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Fear and Ignorance
I pisses me off no end: if it weren't for religion, we'd be damn near immortal and traveling amongst the stars by now.
Intelligent debate (with relevant facts) *is* very good -- not for the debaters who will change nothing, but the observers.
The best discussions I've had were when both parties understood nobody would be changing their minds; that allows us to discuss without anger or overly emotional involvement; and in the end both parties walk away with a broader perspective.
See my sig.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
This whole article is just a pack of lies, yet somehow I trust the results.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
And it didn't take long to see a flaw in the study's argument, and a greater flaw in the application in the article, transcript really.
If you are presented with a set of 'facts' that later turnes out to be inaccurate, the article seemed to take the view that you should reconsider the arguement you were making and change your opinion. Sounds resonable. It is not.
A specific issue in the transcript: violence related to illegal immigration on the Arizona border. After debunking (correctly) the reports of beheadings, they go on to challenge the veracity of otehr claims, such as kidnappings in Phoenix and drug trafficing across the border. In fact, they seem to be claiming that none of these 'facts' are accurate, and cite other facts to dispute the amount or frequency of kidnappings, etc. Actually, no, they just claim that there are statistics that disprove increases and higher than usual levels of the problems being cited by those who claim that immigratin-related violence is a problem.
This is a mistake on their part. Kidnappings may be decreasing, drug trade across the border may not be as much, there may not be any beheadings on the U.S. side of the border. But to claim there are no immigraiton-related problems along the Arizona - Mexico border is ludicrous. If that's their argument, that having disproved some facts, that we should change our mind about other facts, well, no wonder people are claiming that we are just ignoring the reality down here in AZ.
We are not. There is plenty of trouble along the border, and even further inland, related to illegal immigration.
I understand the real possibility that people (even me) will ignore corrections and contrary evidence to cling to their claims. Consider the possibility here that, despite a few mistaken 'facts', there is indeed a problem. Just because there isn't as much smoke as you told the 911 operator, it doesn't mean there's NO fire.
As an aside, this is more of the campaign to discredit the anti-illegal-immigration crowd. Keep it up. You are losing, and your increasing attempts seem to be failing, and bringing more attention to the problem, which results in even more unanimity among citizens. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
politics.
Is there a direct link between liberal/conservative and democrat/republican? Even more annoying is that in Canada we do have political parties that are called Liberals and Conservatives but I'm guessing they don't mean the same thing.
My gut feeling is that the conservatives are the republicans and those most likely to be pro-corporation and use religion heavily in their platform. So the liberals would be the democrats???
Am I even close?
Wasn't Blitzkrieg formulated by Heinz Guderian in his book, Achtung Panzer, in 1937? The invasion of Poland lasted about 4 weeks, and France 6 weeks, hardly enough time to invent a new doctrine and train everyone to use it.
Let's have a show of virtual hands: How many 43-year-olds here hold the same political convictions they did when they were 23?
You, sir, have let your beliefs lead you to a conclusion that is beyond the evidence presented. You can't conclude from the research that timid 3-year-olds end up as conservatives. You can only conclude the 3-year-olds who were perceived as timid (and might have just been polite and respectful) by their teachers, became conservative 23-year-olds and that 3-year-olds who were perdeived as outgoing (and might have just been unruly) by their teachers became liberal 23-year-olds.
As for "liberals had developed close relationships with peers" perhaps liberal tend to be social butterflies. How many of those friendships lasted? This conservative has friends that he has known, literally, since birth. But due to the number of friends I had as a child, one of those teachers would probably has classified me as "timid." By the way, this timid conservative teaches software classes, and sometimes even gets applause after class (no, I'm not kidding. It's kind of cool in a weird sort of way).
As for timidity being "Everything that makes short-tempered parents scream and beat their kids" perhaps that's true among liberals. But the conservative parents I know don't scream and beat their kids just because their kids display a personality that doesn't fit with the teacher's ideal.
Well, yes it is. The economic problems are because you need a certain minimum level of cashflow for a market economy to work. Either you have to re-inflate the economy or abandon the capitalist system.
This is correct but I'm pretty sure from the sound of your post you have drawn exactly the wrong conclusions about how this actually happens.
If you want money to flow, the ONLY way is to loosen things up for businesses so they can spend and hire. People with jobs spend money. Businesses with fewer regulations and no expectation of large tax increases also spend money.
If you try to re-inflate the economy by having the government spend money, the businesses all clamp down on spending and hiring because the government doesn't produce anything - they only take. Thus any increased government spending is followed inevitably by the government taking more from people and businesses. So any government spending ALWAYS has the effect of causing cashflow to weaken, even in the sort term.
If the government really wanted to inflate the economy they would reduce government spending, and lower taxes for businesses.
It only works every time you try it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, I think there is something to this research. One only needs to read the posts on this thread, from the asinine top level post to the many equally asinine refutations, to conclude that entrenchment in one's beliefs... especially in the face of facts... leads to deeper entrenchment in those beliefs regardless of the verdict of the facts.
Of course, I think this is more likely to be a problem on Slashdot, where zealotry and entrenched ideologies are more deeply embraced than in the general populous. But demonstrative nonetheless...
People don't like changing their minds, and spamming them with truth only makes them dig their heels in deeper.
But that was.
The study:
1. was done by professors at UC:Berkeley, an institution known for promoting left-wing points of view and squelching others.
2. was performed by a married couple; therefore it is unlikely that a serious evaluation of study shortcomings would have been performed by those guiding the study.
3. used 100 toddlers in the San Francisco Bay area. This is an incredibly small and narrow sample to draw such broad conclusions.
4. relies on the evaluations of a school teacher as to the state of mind and social attitude of a 3-year-old; no psychological professional ever did an actual review.
5. relies on 3-year-olds being in school (day care), as public school does not exist for 3-year-olds. This will taint the randomness of the sample with social and economic influences.
You could make a value judgement, but all it will reveal is yourself. A good analogy that I like is a dartboard. The perfectly balanced person is standing at the centre of the board. When you look toward the centre of the board, thinking that you'll see the 'perfect person' you see way over the other side to someone who is your opposite.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
This study certainly mirrors my personal experience, especially in political "debates" with friends or acquaintances. One of my friends is staunchly in favor of a minimalist government; an idea that I can respect. When I asked why, he asserted that the state was doing "too much," like building roads, and doing it inefficiently to boot. When I asked for a concrete example, he brought up roads. The state, he said, should not be in the business of building roads; instead they should have open bids for contracts. When I pointed out that they do just that, he accused me of twisting his words and "missing the point." He went on to ramble about how the only job of the government was to protect us from foreign invaders, and then in the same breath used the military as an example of a "huge waste of money." I guess I did miss the point, because I still have no idea why he believes what he does. He just believes it, and the fact that he doesn't know why has no bearing on his belief.
It's not just politics either. I have a friend who is convinced that he *must* fully drain his (NiMH) batteries every time, or else they will lose capacity. I tried to explain that a) what he was describing was memory effect, b) that it hasn't been conclusively demonstrated in NiMH, c) that memory effect doesn't come into play outside of specially designed circumstances anyway, and d) that charge/discharge cycles have the largest effect on capacity in all other (i.e., typical) scenarios. As a result, he went from occasionally leaving the phone off the charger, to being bound and determined not to return it to the charger until it turns itself off. As you might expect, the phone is always nearly dead whenever someone needs to use it because it hasn't been charged for hours, which means even if he was right, it still defeats the point. (And of course, he burns through batteries as a result of intentionally racking up charge cycles, and always pins the blame on roommates who return the phone to the charger).
I know it sucks to be wrong because I'm wrong all the time, but I've also learned that it's really not that painful to admit when I'm wrong. As a plus, I don't look like a raving lunatic by continuing to argue in favor of disproved ideas.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The first thing I thought when I read this article was, "what beliefs do I have that defy facts?"
I start reading the discussion here, and sure enough, I see hundreds of posts about why one side is right and the other is wrong. Most of which have very little factual information; just beliefs.
Most of you idiots just don't get it. I had to quit reading half way through (and I always read at -1, and try to read *everything* that might be worthwhile, particularly stuff that challenges my own beliefs) because there's so much righteous indignation. And it's coming from *all* sides.
Get a fucking clue. This article should have prompted introspection and questions, not chest thumping and proclamations about how what you believe is right.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
We've all known this for years, so what?
Hey Greynol, did you know that you're a perfect example of this phenomena?
"Reality is self-induced hallucination."
"The dogma affected never reason effective."
Both are true irrespective of wealth, IQ test scores, social position, racial/cultural heritage, religious conviction....
Facts will always be the amphetamine of choice for idiots and bigots.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Lies! I refuse to believe it!
Sm:)e.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true.... People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."
It is easy to understand why Psychology Today puts it in those terms, because it sounds sensational and they are out to sell more, but it really isn't as bad as you make it sound.
Especially if you are the kind who hangs out with all liberals, then you really have a narrow moral view (you probably favor openness to new ideas, new experiences, etc). Jonathan Haidt makes a good point that you probably have a very one-sided view, and that there are good things on both sides of the moral/political spectrum. The person who showed that video to me said it utterly changed him forever. It wasn't that impressive to me, but it is quite good.
Qxe4
I read the article. They have so much insight. They should tell Socrates about it.
I refuse to believe that.
Making rushed decisions and then sticking to them for no reason is a huge negative in my book.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.
People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3.
Alternately, it could be that the ones, that the teachers in a very liberal region didn't ostracize, came to have (or perhaps already had to some degree) the same ideology as the teachers. Even if there is a correlation here, cause and effect may not be what it first appears to be.
I don't know if you lifted those attributes directly from the article you linked, but as presented it implies you have a strong positive liberal bias and a strong negative conservative bias.
You say liberals are self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient; all positive spins on specific personality traits. You could have just as easily said selfish, spastic, lacking discipline, and tend to ignore things that they don't agree with.
You say that conservatives are easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable; every single one of these is a negative spin. These same traits could also be listed as trusting, having a strong sense of justice, cautious, respectful, having integrity, having a strong sense of propriety, and charitable.
Based on my own personal experience living for over a decade each in both Phoenix, AZ (arguably one of the most radical conservative areas of the country) and San Francisco, CA (conversely one of the most liberal), I find it hard to believe that I could have overlooked that all liberals are so possessing of positive virtue while all conservatives are so weak and pathetic. Or that those attributes are so uniformly divided between the political ideologies.
My point is that while your linked research might be 100% factual, and may include very valuable insights, it possesses such an obvious bias that I must conclude one of the following:
1) The research in question is not complete and failed to account for some very obvious considerations.
2) The researcher in question did not have the skills/intelligence to properly analyze the data and missed some obvious deviations/outliers.
3) Either you or the researcher in question had an agenda to promote and "fudged" the data to promote a particular result.
I don't know which of the above is true. Does it matter as far as the integrity of your "facts" are concerned?
I was engaged in political debate in the press for several years. One of the things one learns early on is that the goal of the debate is not to convince the opponent who, as the study in TFA found out will never yield. The goal is to convince the audience, who hasn't yet formed an opinion of where the facts are. The audience at large will usually side with the person with the most solid arguments (give or take a bit due to clarity and style of presentation, etc).
When I showed him that it was true and showed him that by percentage more Republicans supported Kennedy's Civil Rights reforms than Democrats did he went into a fit of rage!
A true fact but a bit misleading. The party composition was different then. Only a very few southern members of congress voted for the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 (introduced by Kennedy but passed under the Johnson administration) and only a few northern members voted against the bill. Among Northern Democrats a higher percentage supported the bill than Northern Republicans. Furthermore the passage of the bill caused many southerners to switch parties to the Republicans and is directly responsible for both parties respective positions on civil rights today.
You have to be careful comparing different eras. The Republican party of Lincoln's time bears little resemblance to the "same" party 100 years later which in turn bears only a casual resemblance to the Republican party of today.
I see what you did there! =)
You added "rushed", that was not the word used, nor did it say they stuck to them for no reason.
Exactly the point, you see it as detrimental, but a ER doctor/nurse with too much belly button gazing and being wishy-washy about what to do sounds like a bad idea...
Value judgments are just that: judgments. You can paint any of these attributes in a bad light.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Not 43 yet, but I have reversed my political view significantly in 20 years.
And I have to give the OP some credit, his wonderfully snarky remark about the Professor and the Pipe proves he knows how ridiculous the whole study is.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
You can describe either 'type' using positive or negative words. You obviously fancy that you fall into the liberal group and want to slag off the other.
But you obviously have a chip on your shoulder. A need to put other people down. A need to ridicule them for being inhibited, victimized...
Maybe if you didn't, the gulf between the two groups wouldn't be so wide - but you enjoy there being two opposing sides. You like ridiculing them and enjoy provoking. Without it your politics wouldn't mean anything.
You need to take a long hard look at yourself whatever your political opinion.
So if facts only reinforce misinformation in the misinformed, how do we deprogram them?
"As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient."
"People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3."
That study makes perfect sense.
I've always thought that the obvious difference between (US) liberals and conservatives is that liberals like people, conservatives dislike people.
Big cities, surrounded by many different ethnicities, crowded, forced to cooperative, etc.. = mostly liberals.
Small town, isolated, mono-culture, great distance between houses = mostly conservatives.
They also don't produce, they spend
But they do not spend NEARLY as much as they take in. They are not producing as much economic benefit for the country as you see with the equivalent funds flowing through the private sector.
Yes the government produces some small benefits here and there, but nothing like the private sector (and here I include universities).
Also the CESDIS (where Beowolf clusters originated) was only partially funded by NASA.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
here's an excellent demolition of the ridiculous jack block study,
http://www.ironshrink.com/articles.php?artID=070214_block_conservative_study_methodology
here's a an interesting demolition of this ridiculous Jack Block study. http://www.ironshrink.com/articles.php?artID=070214_block_conservative_study_methodology
You added "rushed", that was not the word used
Rushed is synonymous to Quickly. This does show how wording can affect perception, however.
Fer example, imagine if you'd said swiftly rather than quickly. It has a much more positive spin on it.
On the converse, a desire for the liberals novelty means that they might not be willing to use established methods, instead focusing on "new and dynamic!!!!" methods. My wording here is deliberately negative.
nor did it say they stuck to them for no reason.
Snap decisions aren't always positive, although sometimes snap decisions are very important (sports, fights, etc. Quick paced events and so on)
I'd personally argue (in my opinion) that a tendency to "stick to your guns" can be detrimental dependent on how far you take it. To wit, taking your medical professional example I could argue that a doctor who stands by his initial diagnosis despite new information hinting at the possibility of a different illness could be bad for the patient. Imagine if your doctor kept with his initial assessment that you had a common cold because he didn't want to see Zebras?
I'd say that *both* conservatives and liberals have positive and negative traits which would be much better if they could just come together
The sun in your eyes made some of the lies worth believing.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
The most out of touch with reality is going to make reality appear to be on the otherside. In the USA, the "liberals" are closer to reality as the wingnuts take over the "conservatives" dragging them further off the deep end.
Emotions trump logic; this pretty basic stuff. Notice how the successful ones get their followers to be upset at anybody contradicting the doctrine/dogma? They need to get emotional when when threatened so they are even less likely to question anything.
"A man believes what he wants to believe and disregards the rest"
-Paul Simon, in the song The Boxer
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I found the interview impossible to read because the interviewee kept using the words "you know" as commas.
QED
I hit the end, and saw that the interviewee was paid by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (Which by the way has to be the BEST name for a Foundation ever, but I digress.)
Look 'em up... they pay for opinions, and aren't even slightly apologetic for it.
Step up to the plate... a big swing... and a miss, intellectually. Since we're talkin' facts here... not paid "research".
+++OK ATH
There are many counterpoints, many hypotheses that would describe the behavior you described, but I'll leave just a few:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Seriously. I see this all too often - the meme of the stupid idiot.
Honestly, it must be rather comforting for those with an inferiority complex to dismiss anyone with whom they disagree as a bumbling idiot. And studies like these only reinforce the notion that "other people" are wrong.
But these studies are hardly enlightening. It is well known that intelligence follows a bell-shaped curve, and no matter how many studies are done, there will *always* be people who won't change their opinion in light of contradictory evidence. But this is hardly indicative of the norm. In fact, the opposite is a much larger problem; the notion that AGW was faked has been repeated so often that people otherwise indifferent to the debate have now started to believe global warming was a hoax.
You can't have it both ways: either people change the opinion every time the "truth" changes and are subject to being fooled by anyone willing to tell a lie; or you have people who never change their opinion once formed, in spite of evidence to the contrary. The unfortunate reality is that because very few people can be experts in everything, the common man must form his opinions based on the statements made by others, and, quite frequently, those who articulate their opinions with the greatest eloquence are believed, as the common man lacks the expertise to form an opinion for himself.
What I believe is the more typical case is that people change their opinions slowly once formed. This is effectively a cerebral low-pass filter which eliminates noise from the equation. Thus, a person's opinion may not always reflect the immediate information they have about a topic, but rather, reflects the sum of the experiential knowledge. If the brain worked otherwise, people a block away would slam on their brakes the instant they saw a red light. By delaying the process of evaluation, the mind gathers more information than it would otherwise, and comes to a better conclusion.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Sure, people are sheep. . . but this study smashes is credibility with the pretense of "presented with facts in news stories". Ummm yes. Facts? In news stories? Where? When?
News stories are filled with just as much lies as any politician could spew, and then some. Typically if any fact is presented in a news story, it's just the fact that the news agency is a total whore for some coporo-political interest somewhere and is willing to sacrifice it's own ratings to keep the BS flowing.
If I want truth, the last place I'd look are news stories. I wouldn't want to be misinformed, after all.
Belief is stronger than reason.
And what a lot of nonsense. This study shows nothing new, con artists have known it for millenia. Once someone begins to buy into a delusion, they will then take actions, even just thinking, on the basis of that buy-in, and so will actually try to DEFEND the delusion, since by doing so they are defending their OWN actions. Its how you rope in a mark, no world shattering news here.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Pure science: sometimes, the truth just hurts. Especially if you've been easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable all your life.
And now you've officially made an unsubstantiated leap. According to the study, conservatives are all those things, *as kids*. 20 years later? They've grown up to be just as varied and complex as everyone else.
Let us know when you start practicing pure science instead of using it as a prop for your beliefs.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
instead it's yet again a bunch of condescending liberals attacking Arizona for trying to stop the slaughter of it's citizens and bashing conservatives in general. The libs are a shameless, sorry lot.
I'm reading this from the other side of the pond here in London. I believe that, despite American's best efforts, you have 'inherited' some of the Problems the UK has experienced in the past albeit with different degrees of pain and suffering.
The Belief System posts really hit me, very intriguing and I am thankful for that. The 'Truth' should always be able to be questioned, if anything, to Prove it as Truth. However, is not all Truth relative? What I mean is, I was raised a Christian and therefore all my personal beliefs and my belief system will always be tailored towards a 'Christian' way of thinking as that is what I am most comfortable with, despite losing my family and friends when I was kicked out of the faith. If I was born and raised in the Middle East, my belief system and therefore my 'Truth' would be very different.
Since being kicked out of Church for basically going against the doctrines, I have had some difficult times and a long journey and have learnt many things. One of which is that there is good and bad in all faiths AND in ALL belief systems. For example, I find many people who state that Evolution is a fact haven't done the research in the same way as many ultra strict religious groups haven't done their research either. By this I am not being a 'religious nut' and advocating Creationism as fact, but rather stating that Evolution, like all belief systems has it's faults and is a theory, albeit a very convincing and plausible one. I look at the post by 'The Raven64' as one example of this. For a fact, the Bible is scientifically sound on many grounds, one of which is the 'circle or sphere of the earth' described in Psalms (check it yourself!) and other parts of the Old Testament. Many people rubbish each other's ideas and that is not only the human condition but also the truth.
There will never be one belief system that will suffice for all Humanity. Look at history and it will tell you that. We have tried almost all conceivable ways and methods to rule and govern people in general, all have 'failed' or at least have faults, this also includes Religion (before certain people comment to that effect).
The scary issue is that we now have the technology to not only destroy ourselves but also our whole planet and that is fast becoming a heating point. Mankind has never been so advanced and yet has never been so destructive. We have the technology to look after the Earth and those on it but lack the motivation or will to do so. Whether that is due to an inherent defect in our design, evolution or nature or by our greed and Capitalism is open for argument.
Sometimes I wonder if it is best to move into a Rainforest with my family and live like hermits...and yes that was some degree of sarcasm.
Many thanks once again for a very interesting discussion.
Ignorant people fearing what they don't understand?
I'm stunned. Stunned, I say.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens