
Strong beliefs, loosely held - ingve
https://lisacharlotterost.github.io/2017/05/07/why-do-we-not-believe-in-facts/
======
bsder
This doesn't address the problem of how to deal with someone who doesn't
_WANT_ to correct their worldview.

That's the real problem.

I start off too many conversations with: "Look, if you want to talk about
<position>, fine. However, you have to tell me _up front_ what evidence you
will accept that your position is wrong. If you can't do that, then this is a
harangue and not a debate or discussion."

~~~
UweSchmidt
Oh sure, no doubt others are so _wrong_ and the struggle is so real.

It is easy to see the flaw in others' arguments, but the true challenge is to
identify your own biases and irrational worldviews.

~~~
bsder
> Oh sure, no doubt others are so wrong and the struggle is so real.

And sometimes you _ARE_ objectively right. Truth _DOES_ exist.

This false equivalence that social validation is equivalent to being correct
is what got us to this point.

And _that 's_ the trick to finding your own biases. Which of your beliefs are
based on "social validation" rather than any notion of evidence? Which of your
beliefs requires you to dismiss actual facts to the contrary?

~~~
candiodari
And what if you wouldn't be able to interpret evidence (either way) correctly
because you don't have the skill for that ?

Because that's the case in 99.99% of topics, at least for me.

Additionally, what if one's education would, if honestly evaluated, conflict
with widely held political views ? What if it is perceived that they may lead
to policy changes ?

For instance, taking two points that are sure to be controversial here:

Among psychologists there was a long drawn-out fight about whether being shown
violence (tv, video games) causes people to be more violent. That fight is
over (there are extremely thorough and long duration studies available). The
answer is yes, being shown violence, especially as a child, makes you more
violent. Participating in violence does the same, but more so (ie. video
games, and keep in mind these are decade long studies. We're talking about
things like duke nukem (NON-3d version), and other ancient games, including
believe it or not tetris. Not that one game was studied in isolation) (It also
seems rather unclear how someone could honestly believe at this point that
games like DOOM aren't worse). Participating, or being victimized, in real
violence (ie. living in a bad neighbourhood) even more. Exposure to criminal
acts makes people more criminal. And yes, that includes the victims.

------
Retric
Sometimes I think bridging the gap is important. People rarely get offended
when you talk about Humans causing an increase in carbon dioxide. It's not
something they need to get offended about and the cause > result is obvious.

Them talk about effects of CO2. Does it help plants grow or hurt athletic
performance.

~~~
ythn
People mostly get offended when you start demonizing them by comparing them to
holocaust deniers. The problem I see is that people are more interested in
convincing people that climate change will have apocalyptic consequences than
they are in discussing solutions to the problem.

~~~
Retric
I don't nessisarily think we need to do anything. It's like NYC gets flooded,
well ok sucks for them, but not exactly a life or death issue for 100's of
millions. Perhaps the will build a dike, perhaps they will move, or perhaps
someone is going to dredge the oceans making artificial mountains to side step
that problem whatever not going to affect me much.

People get really wound up in these ideas, but the existence or non existence
of the moon landing has no real impact on me. It's like sure people are dumb,
at what point did you assume people where intelegent and rational because
that's clearly not the case.

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xupybd
Interesting, the author uses the 97% of scientists agree the human activity
has caused climate change statistic. I do think we have but that stat is
terrible and misleading. The paper it comes from is dubious at best. Referring
to that in an article like this is a little ironic.

~~~
guelo
I just skimmed through this paper that supports the 97% consensus and nothing
jumped out at me to suspect the paper is "dubious". It seemed like a strong
conclusion to me.
[http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002/meta;jsessionid=E5246116C465592C9FE0F33CC2A1129D.c2.iopscience.cld.iop.org)

What issues are there with that paper?

~~~
mrslave
In addressing the question of 97% consensus of blah (where blah varies)...,
and not the paper specifically, this article provides a good summary of the
quality of this figure: [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425232/climate-
change-...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425232/climate-change-no-
its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle)

The “97 percent” statistic first appeared prominently in a 2009 study by
University of Illinois master’s student Kendall Zimmerman and her adviser,
Peter Doran. Based on a two-question online survey, Zimmerman and Doran
concluded that “the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role
played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the
nuances and scientific bases of long-term climate processes” — even though
only 5 percent of respondents, or about 160 scientists, were climate
scientists. In fact, the “97 percent” statistic was drawn from an even smaller
subset: the 79 respondents who were both self-reported climate scientists and
had “published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the
subject of climate change.” These 77 scientists agreed that global
temperatures had generally risen since 1800, and that human activity is a
“significant contributing factor.”

~~~
guelo
I see, but there have now been several more papers on this question with
increasingly better methodology. The meta review paper that I linked above
seems conclusive on the question.

------
tabeth
This article doesn't address what I believe to be the actual problem: why
should you "believe" in facts to begin with? Despite popular belief, there's
no inherent reason to believe in facts. You could argue that factual
information can make you money, however that's not necessary true. One can
become quite rich by spreading lies, actually.

So... why believe in facts at all? The answer to this will generally include
some intellectual elitism, driving away the group I describe in the first
paragraph even further. People might use words such as _correct_ and _right_ ,
but those words already impose a value judgement to begin with, only further
begging the question.

~~~
lgas
The value in having (true) beliefs comes in being able to predict the future
more accurately and therefore make better decisions.

~~~
fnovd
When irrational actors are the ones making decisions, knowing facts won't
necessarily help you and may end up coming back to bite you. As they say, the
world around you can stay irrational longer than you can stay sane.

~~~
lgas
I was referring to you, the individual as being the decision maker. If you are
irrational there's nothing I can do to help you. The reason we should want to
believe true beliefs is the same reason we should want to not be irrational.

------
amelius
I'm afraid this is too abstract for the intended audience.

~~~
mac01021
Who is the intended audience?

------
nerdponx
[https://xkcd.com/1273/](https://xkcd.com/1273/)

------
ythn
I liked the content, but I didn't like the conclusion. If you have a strong
belief I feel like you should be able to strongly hold (i.e. defend) it. The
philosophy "strong beliefs, loosely held" will just breed rabid dogs that obey
whomever has the most convincing evidence (note that convincing evidence is
not necessarily strong evidence).

For example, watch this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag4HN_jeYV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag4HN_jeYV4)

Purple is obviously the villain here, right? Grab your pitchforks!

Now read this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/69xqxh/reviewer_ask...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/69xqxh/reviewer_asks_question_about_product_safety_and/dhavgpv/)

Now it seems clear that the video creator was hiding something and that Purple
is justified in their actions. Lynch the youtuber!

Now read the youtuber's response to that and be prepared to grab your
pitchforks again...

I'm of the opinion that weak beliefs should be weakly held and strong beliefs
should be strongly held. Something that you haven't studied yourself should be
a weak belief, weakly held. Something that's only been on the news for a few
days with very few actual facts should be a weak belief, weakly held (i.e.
Ahmed Mohammed, Michael Brown, etc). Something you've studied or experienced
over an extensive period should be a strong belief, strongly held since you
are an expert.

~~~
Retric
None of that is enough to get to a strong belief. Weak beliefs weakly held is
a common and perfectly reasonable stance. The important part of weak beliefs
is to not make major changes based on them.

Now some things like gravity are very strong beliefs. But, you should be open
to the possibility that something else is going on even with gravity. That
does not mean you should stop believing in gravity based on a slick YouTube
video, but rather accept that with solid evedince something else might be
going on.

~~~
ythn
I can still change my mind with a strong belief, strongly held, it's just much
more difficult.

For example, one strongly held strong belief that I have is that the speed of
light is the maximum speed of matter. So when CERN publishes a report that
they discovered superluminal particles, I don't instantly switch beliefs -
that would be weakly held. Instead I stand my ground and wait to see if it's
reproducible, etc.

~~~
Retric
The cern thing was not presented as solid evidence just we don't understand
what's going on. The question is how much evidence it would take you to change
that belief vs someone to change their stance on global warming. Supose, the
consensus in 3 years was they where going faster than the speed of light would
you have updated your beliefs then? Because that's not even close to enough
evedence for say global worming opponents.

Further many people disagreed with QM even with a lot of evedence backing it
because it was so different from what they where used to. They essentially had
not threshold to update their beliefs.

~~~
ythn
> Suppose, the consensus in 3 years was they where going faster than the speed
> of light would you have updated your beliefs then?

Yes I would have updated my beliefs, but my new beliefs would be both weak and
weakly held. If in 20 years the consensus was still solid they would become
both strong and strongly held.

> Because that's not even close to enough evidence for say global worming
> opponents.

For them the evidence they need to see is perceptibly rising temperatures or
sea levels. A lot of people view climate change as highly politicized/hyped
science (which it is) and are therefore skeptical if not of climate science of
the apocalyptic predictions (which are not universally agreed upon by climate
scientists). They will change their minds if they see that it hasn't snowed in
10 years or if their beach front properties are getting swallowed by the
ocean.

~~~
Retric
We have _perceptibly rising temperatures_ that's not enough for these people,
because it's not rising everywhere evenly and people don't really have great
memories.

~~~
ythn
Well, demonizing them doesn't help. Most people are willing to talk solutions,
not a lot of people like being insulted. For example, I've had lots of
discussions with climate skeptics about nuclear power and I can usually get
them on board by the end of the conversation.

~~~
Retric
I don't mean to demonize just be realistic.

Changes that are obvious and massive to the CEO of a company which owns ski
resorts around the world may seem meaningless to people living at those same
locations. I like most people don't recall the date of each snowfall over the
last 50 years, because it has little real impact on me, but keeping accurate
track of those same storms can be of vital importance for some people who see
these trends as both obvious and critical.

------
draw_down
I've seen people mention this concept before. But how strong is a belief
really, if you're not sure whether it's worth holding on to?

------
gonmf
I mean come on, is an article with pictures such as:

[https://lisacharlotterost.github.io/pic/170509_Republica_Tal...](https://lisacharlotterost.github.io/pic/170509_Republica_Talk84.png)

worth discussing? What's next, the right-wing field sharing articles of IQ
across racial groups?

~~~
kevinwang
What do you think that picture is meant to say? To me, it is meant to convey
that regardless of political affiliation, more "intelligence" makes you
believe in your convictions more strongly, whereas - regardless of political
affiliation - being more curious barely affects your beliefs, except to make
you less skeptical of global warming.

So I didn't see that image as bigoted.

