
How telling people the facts may not cause them to change what they believe - michael_nielsen
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full
======
grellas
The theme of this piece is that democracy itself is premised on the idea of an
enlightened citizenry, or at least one capable of becoming enlightened through
the spread of information. The unstated premise is that rule by elites may be
preferable to rule by the people if science should someday discover that
average people will be irredeemably swayed by their prejudices and will not
make their political decisions based on their intellects. The remaining
unstated premise is that good government will follow when people can think
like policy wonks and can accurately absorb and act upon detailed factual
information about their government.

I think all this misses the point of the U.S. system of politics. That system
is based on a constitution adopted over two centuries ago and premised on the
idea that good government consists of a government of limited powers with
proper checks and balances in place to make sure it remains limited. The idea
back then was to move away from the old systems of rule by royalty and to
adopt a form of government that philosophically was based on the idea that all
_legitimate_ forms of power ultimately derived from the popular will but only
as checked by systems that were designed to curtail the effects of mob rule,
prejudice, and passions. Thus, the federal government was set up as a
tripartite government, with a legislature, an executive, and a judicial
branch. The legislature was to have a popularly elected component (the House
of Representatives) but also one in the Senate that served to check the
popular (Senators were not even elected by popular vote until the 20th
century). The executive power was to be sharply curtailed by the specific
grants given to it in the constitution and was not allowed to enact new laws
but only to enforce those enacted by the legislature, with its tie to the
popular will. The judicial branch, in turn, was to enforce the rule of law in
a way that was far removed from popular sovereignty, with federal judges
appointed for lifetime tenures (subject to approval by the Senate) and capable
of being removed only on the narrow ground of committing an impeachable
offense. Finally, with the federal power having been so defined and
circumscribed, the constitution provided that all powers not expressly granted
to the federal government were to be reserved to the states and to the people.
A bill of rights was superimposed on top of all this, making clear that
certain supervening rights of the individual could not be impaired by federal
governmental authority (this eventually being broadened to encompass action by
the states).

If you read the Federalist Papers, which were in essence arguments propounded
at the time in support of adopting the U.S. Constitution, there is no naive
assumption in these documents that pure popular rule would somehow become a
pristine way of running a government. Indeed, it was just the opposite. In one
after another of these documents, it is assumed that rule by pure popular will
is basically evil and dangerous because people will be driven by baser motives
to accomplish their ends. Thus, there is all sorts of concern about not
allowing unswayed prejudices to run unchecked through the course of
government. The point of the arguments was to _recognize_ that this is the
reality of how people think and act and to set up a system that deals with it
while preserving freedom and holding public officials ultimately accountable
to the people.

I think this system ultimately had a theistic base in a Judeo-Christian
tradition that saw man as a fallen and fallible creature who was prone to all
sorts of mischief when given a chance. This may be open to debate but it
certainly was one important component of that era. In any case, the founders
appeared to have no assumptions about the ability of people to rule themselves
based on becoming progressively enlightened. Their approach was realistic and
pragmatic and dealt with how to contain power so that it does not corrupt
those given the authority to rule.

This piece has interesting elements in it about how people resist changing
their minds based on new information but I think it is off in its implications
of what this means for good government.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes. I agree, with this addition.

American Democracy is about the consent of the governed. It always has been.
If you read both the Federalist Papers and the people who were arguing the
other side, it's quite clear that the anti-Federalists had some really good
points. Many of the predictions they made about the future course of the
country were proven correct. Their arguments caused so much concern that a
Bill of Rights was a precondition to adoption of the Constitution.

There has always been two strains of thought in America. Strain 1 says that
people should be led by their betters. Heck, even Jefferson privately
acknowledged that there is a natural aristocracy among men. These people feel
that with the right people in charge, working the right system, the sky is the
limit. If things are wrong, it's a problem of not having the right person.
Government consists of doing whatever it takes to make the quality of people's
lives better.

Strain 2 feels that all systems of government are broken, mainly because it's
impossible to have a government that doesn't involve men, and men are
fallible. I agree that this has some religious roots, but it also has roots in
a study of history. As Thomas Paine pointed out -- not the religious person by
any means! -- a man who has a king for a tyrant knows who oppresses him. But a
man who is a serf to a complex system of bureaucrats is just as oppressed,
only he has nobody to point a finger at. Strain 2 believes that every time
structure is added, the system becomes more and more broken. That even if you
had a super smart person, they'd more as likely be a dictator than a savior.
Government consists of doing as little as possible to prevent people from
harming each other.

This fight continues today. The constitution was a compromise between these
two strains of thought. That's why it's worked for so long. Good government
consists of a balance between these two schools of thought, with some kind of
reset option every now and then when the system gets too much cruft in it(in
my opinion)

So Joe Sixpack who knows nothing votes, but he votes instead of marching in
the street with guns. Clyde Wineglass (Joe's cousin who went to Harvard)
votes, and by voting he also blows off steam. The major parties exist solely
for giving the illusion that things are changing every few years, which makes
Joe and Clyde feel better about voting. Over time, each of them builds up a
long narrative about how their party almost did this or that, but the other
party stopped them. By having a "good" party and a "bad" party in their mind,
each of them is able to deal with their frustrations about government without
actually becoming angry with the government. This allows our civilization to
continue.

It's interesting to observe how different the idea of parties (or "factions"
as I think Madison called them) turned out to be compared to what the founders
thought would happen. Sometimes you get it right even when you screw up :)

Sorry if that was a little cynical, but that's the way I currently understand
it. And I agree with grellas, these guys are off-base. This entire line of
science-of-irrationality, as it applies to politics, is a threat to this
system of consent, because it threatens to put people in boxes. In addition,
it continues to politicization of science. Either of these would be bad by
themselves. Combining the two? Ugh.

~~~
gtt
could you point me to the futher reading on strains 1/2 and differences
between them?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
As far an an overview of these strains through the history of the country, I'm
actually looking for a book that covers the longer version right now. The
problem is that once you start giving concrete examples -- such as the Civil
War continuing to evolve the United States along Hamilton's dreams -- people
start getting offended. Many of these great political events and policies
already have a narrative in people's minds, and people get touchy when you
start redefining their version of history. And that's not even getting into
the last hundred years!

As far as how it started, here's a great introduction to the Great Debate.
It's a description, in the Framer's words, of the issues they saw at the time
the Constitution was created. Note that during the Constitutional Debate
Jefferson was mostly neutral. Once he started serving in Washington's cabinet,
however, it became obvious that these two strains of thought were always going
to oppose each other. Jefferson noted that each day he girded himself to
prepare for battle. Washington as well tried to stay above it all, and managed
to do so during his presidency. Afterwards it became obvious that he was more
of a smart-guy-and-structure person, but he managed to keep that mostly under
wraps.

<http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=4878>

------
gojomo
_the second group was immediately told the correct percentage the [federal]
government spends on welfare (1 percent)_

If the researchers reported "1 percent" as the actual federal government
spending on welfare programs, they were themselves misleading people in the
service of an agenda, perhaps by using an incredibly narrow legalistic
definition of "welfare".

For 2009, Wikipedia reports $3.1 trillion in US federal expenditures. $224
billion, about 7%, went to Medicaid and SCHIP -- medical assistance to lower-
income people -- which would fall under a common, casual definition of
'welfare'. Another $360 billion -- over 11%, went to a category Wikipedia
calls "Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending", which appears to
include ~$40 billion in unemployment compensation, at least $100 billion in
"other income security", and $100 billion in food and housing assistance.
Again, most people would consider most or all of this spending 'welfare'.

Even Social Security and Medicare -- as they often subsidize the spending of
people with more money than they've paid in, especially low-income people --
have at least some component that would be fair to consider 'welfare'.
Together, they are over $1.3 trillion of the federal budget -- more than 40%.

A plain English definition of 'welfare' from Princeton's WordNet is
"governmental provision of economic assistance to persons in need". From the
items listed above, one could easily make the case 15%-40% of the federal
budget fits that definition.

And this is without even going into subsidies for the middle-class and
corporations -- the home mortgage interest tax deduction, cash-for-clunkers,
financial bailouts, farm subsidies -- which are also economic assistance, and
ostensibly justified because the recipients are said to have some pressing
need, and sometimes archly labeled 'welfare'.

(While I've used 2009 numbers, the 1999/2000 numbers -- when the Kuklinski
UIUC study was published -- aren't _that_ different in overall proportions.
The respondents -- with their more-common answers of 5%/8%/11%/15% -- were all
closer to the real values than the researchers' preferred 1% answer.)

~~~
eli
You may be technically correct, but I think very few people would consider
Social Security part of "welfare."

IMHO, you could rerun the study with the phrase "food stamps" instead of
"welfare" and get very similar results.

~~~
tokenadult
_I think very few people would consider Social Security part of "welfare."_

Okay, so now we have an illustration of mass irrationality in the political
system. Looking at how Social Security is funded and distributed fits typical
definitions of a welfare program.

~~~
btilly
_Looking at how Social Security is funded and distributed fits typical
definitions of a welfare program._

I disagree. Typical definitions of a welfare program have money going to poor
people as a central feature. That doesn't describe Social Security.

Social Security pays a disproportionate amount to those who are well off.
There are two factors. The amount you get paid out depends on how much you put
in, and your life span. People who are better off generally wind up paying in
more, and then live longer to collect benefits. Overall Social Security
represents a wealth transfer from young to old, and from the poor to the top
20% of the population.

Oh right, and in recent decades it has been a net source of working revenue
for the federal government, through the form of buying Treasury bonds. But now
it is considered broken because the federal government does not have any way
to pay back to Social Security money that is owed it from general funds...

~~~
tokenadult
_Social Security pays a disproportionate amount to those who are well off._

I agree with this criticism of Social Security and this basis for saying that
Social Security is distinct from welfare. The reason I tend to regard Social
Security as a welfare program is that it is, I think by general agreement, an
ENTITLEMENT program, in other words a program that a subsidized recipient can
draw from with only minimal reference to individual characteristics of the
recipient. (You disagree with me on that point, in part, but the degree to
which Social Security payments to recipients are linked to taxpayer
"contributions" to a Social Security account is only partial, not on exact
actuarial principles.)

~~~
btilly
Well obviously Social Security is an entitlement program. So is Veterans
Benefits and Services. That doesn't make either welfare.

Anyways most of this is a terminology argument. You're defining welfare
broadly as any government spending for the purpose of helping (mostly poor)
people. The researchers defined welfare narrowly as the federal government's
contribution towards the cost of sending people welfare checks. (That would be
money spent on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families).) Reasonable
arguments can be formulated for either definition. The fact that they use a
more narrow and technical definition doesn't make their definition wrong. Nor
does it indicate any dishonesty on their part.

------
vsingh
"If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively
accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively
dismiss information that doesn’t."

This is important. Darwin, on his journeys, was very strict on himself about
noting down any information that seemed to contradict his theories, because he
knew that the natural tendency of the brain is to turn a blind eye to any such
inconvenient facts.

------
jerf
Suppose I am a perfectly-rational Bayesian. Over the course of my long life I
have acquired a false belief with a high degree of confidence. Through sheer
statistical flukery and the vicissitudes of living in the real world, a
perfectly-rational Bayesian should actually expect that in their enormous
stock of beliefs lies at least one of these. We all have access to only a tiny
shred of the full totality of reality, and it isn't even a uniformly-randomly-
chosen shred.

So you come up to me and present to me a fact that demonstrates I am
objectively wrong in my belief. This being the real world, let us suppose that
it isn't entirely unexplainable in my belief system. I take your fact,
discount it with my strength of belief in your reliability, and update my
Bayesian belief. It can stay quite strong, even if I behave with perfect
rationality. With the way the Bayesian rule works, you can only utterly
destroy my belief with something that is utterly impossible under my belief
structure, but your ability to provide that evidence is capped by my inability
to believe you that strongly in the first place. I must consider that you
might be trying to fool me, or that you yourself might be wrong and bringing
your own fallacious interpretation into what you may very well believe are
objective facts.

If even a perfectly rational person may not be convinced by you simply telling
them a few facts, how do you expect mere humans to behave?

I'm not necessarily defending people. If you think this country is going to
hell in a handbasket because we're funding too many Bridges to Nowhere, but I
provide evidence that Bridges to Nowhere (for whatever your definition is)
account for only .04% of the Federal budget, you've still got at least a
little cover left in wondering whether or not I'm using a different definition
than you or just lying. Of course, this sort of belief should be susceptible
to change over time as you are presented with numerous falsifications of your
belief, but my point is not that people are secretly acting rational, but
rather that this isn't really that mystifying, nor can one imagine it
changing.

------
1053r
Perhaps this is why it generally takes a new generation of thinkers to push
political thinking forward. I would postulate that we are more likely to
reject the views of our parents than we are to reject our own.

If that is true, it explains, for example, why gay marriage is a hot button
issue for baby-boomers and older, but largely less of an issue for people
under 30
([http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/06/future_trends_f_1.html)).

I'll bet racism data looked pretty similar a few decades ago, but now
expressing racist views publicly will get you in trouble even if you are
extremely conservative (that Republican politician from the south a couple
years ago who got extreme negative publicity for calling blacks "monkeys").

If it is necessary for one generation to die for political views to move
forward, that doesn't bode well for progress if Aubrey de Grey and Ray
Kurzweil prove prophetic. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgLRhxvRlKg>) and
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwei...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil))

~~~
alsomike
"Science advances one funeral at a time." -Max Planck

------
ars
The researchers ignored something.

The people may have heard the new fact and simply did not believe them.

And that's the right thing to do because most so called "facts" are actually
lies.

You can't just tell people something - unless you are first. You need to prove
it, or at least demonstrate with reasonable evidence.

The first mover has an advantage though - people will accept a new fact if you
are first.

But the second guy needs to work harder.

~~~
ams6110
I also didn't think it addressed a longer term perspective. I think that if
someone throws out a "fact" that challenges some tenet I hold, I might be
inclined to dismiss it at least in the immediate term. However as evidence
mounts most reasonable people will at some point see that they have been
mistaken and change their minds.

------
jeromec
From the article: "The general idea is that it's absolutely threatening to
admit you’re wrong"

From an article by PG in 2009: "More generally, you can have a fruitful
discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of
the participants."

PG article link: <http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html>

~~~
Elite
When I engage in difficult or critical conversations, I try to avoid the word
"you" as much as possible. This immediately tends to put people in defensive
mode and their response can become combative as they perceive this as an
attack on who they are.

------
thesethings
It's very cool that political scientists are doing studies about this. From
what I understand, cognitive science ID'd this a long time ago.

They call it, "confirmation bias."
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>)

Framed in this post: "If we believe something about the world, we are more
likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs,
and actively dismiss information that doesn’t"

The point by both cognitive scientists and political scientists is this
determination to believe something is completely sincere, not about deliberate
deceit or spinning (though that does occur, it's a different phenomenon ).
Anything that disputes your view is seen as exceptional circumstances/
invisible. "Yeah, but that's an edge case," "yeah but he went to Yale," "yeah,
but she moved from France when she was 3."

We may even see it happening on our favorite news aggregator sites.

More reading (from cog sci perspective):
<http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/>

~~~
SoftwareMaven
People tend to draw patterns from single data points on what they believe and
to call anecdote on pieces of real patterns for what they don't.

Your post is just an anecdote in my world. ;)

------
TGJ
When you are proven wrong you are no longer taken seriously. People tend to
say "See, you were wrong here. So what else are you wrong about too?" In order
to circumvent having to justify everything, admit nothing. Or, If I'm never
wrong, I'm always right. I would think that people that cling on to their
misconceptions might have a hard time releasing the idea that they are not
perfect butterflies and are simply like everyone else.

~~~
cromulent
Politicians suffer dreadfully from this, to everyone's detriment.

~~~
anthonyb
Indeed, but mainly because appearances are pretty much all you have when
you're a politician - you may only need one "FooGate" for your polls to slump
and then be hounded out of office.

------
Herring
I've heard there was a logical reason for this (in jaynes' probability book)
but i've never gotten around to checking it out.

 _> The equations also reproduce a more complicated phenomenon, divergence of
opinions. One might expect that open discussion of public issues would tend to
bring about a general concensus. On the contrary, we observe repeatedly that
when some controversial issue has been discussed vigorously for a few years,
society becomes polarized into two opposite extreme camps; it is almost
impossible to fi nd anyone who retains a moderate view. Probability theory as
logic shows how two persons, given the same information, may have their
opinions driven in opposite directions by it, and what must be done to avoid
this._

~~~
ajb
Jaynes argument is roughly as follows: Consider how you would react to being
shown evidence of, eg ESP or faith healing. I (for example) simply have a
weaker prior belief in the possibility of faith healing than the possibility
of being convincingly lied to. So being shown evidence of faith healing makes
me very suspicious rather than causing me to believe in it. This is rational
(given the my prior belief weighting).

------
rdtsc
Interesting connection with self-esteem and fear:

"if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or
threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from
keeping people agitated."

This theme is developed well in the "Power of Nightmares" documentary by Adam
Curtis. The more scared the people are, the easier to control them. I think
Leo Strauss and his neocon followers realized this. Deep down they wanted to
help their country. But realized that "the informed, rational citizen" didn't
exist, aside from a narrow "elite" segment that truly understands how things
work. So this ruling elite should create powerful myths for people to believe
in. People have to be led by irrational fears and beliefs.

------
dmarble
"[H]aving lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by
better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on
important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It
is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own
judgment of others." -Benjamin Franklin in a speech during the Constitutional
Convention of 1787

I'd be impressed to hear a presidential nominee quote this when faced with
accusations of flip-flopping. I really respect people who change their
positions based on new or better information, or simply more experience, so
long as the change is genuine. In fact, I think it's the best way to live.
Voters are not so forgiving or understanding, though.

------
mynameishere
Do they really think that the bit about federal expenditures for welfare means
anything? I mean, if you ask your typical Boston liberal whether they are in
favor of increased or decreased military spending and they say, "Decreased" is
that opinion suddenly ignorant or wrong or anti-democratic because they then
guess that current expenditures are 50 percent (too high)?

Seriously, forget balance sheet trivia. Let's worry about the basic cognive
skills of journalists first.

------
sitmaster
Maybe this is a natural reaction to the fact that so much of the information
we receive is propaganda? Even if, for example, a news story presents a series
of facts, other relevant facts are often elided to give a mis-impression.

------
stcredzero
What I've found:

    
    
        - Lots of people will think of your contradictory fact as a 
          Dirty Rotten Trick
        - If your fact contradicts their preconceived notion, they 
          assume you're a liar and a cheat

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness>

------
known
Between _Truth, Fact & Belief_, lesser mortals will choose Belief because it
serves their needs.

------
known
Their belief may serve their immediate _needs_.

