Re: Brin: Arguing Doesn't Work: Fact Vs Belief

Dawkins addresses this a bit in his book _The God Delusion_.  
Evolutionarily, it makes sense.  Children cannot afford to disbelieve 
things that are told to them by elders.  Doing so means consuming 
poisonous things or getting too close to lions or other dangerous 
predators.  So the person commits what was told to them in childhood to 
their model of the world.  Again, it is evolutionarily dangerous to 
question this model no matter how much false information that model 
contains.  For example, If you are taught growing up that eating red 
berries will kill you or make you very sick, you will avoid red 
berries.  If you heard a story from someone saying that they ate 
delicious red berries and nothing bad happened to them, you would not 
believe it as the risk associated with believing them and eating red 
berries is literally life or death.  If you actually see someone eating 
red berries, you would see them as foolish and maybe even try to stop 
them.  Even if nothing happens to that person, chances are that you will 
still not risk eating the red berries.  This is especially true if it is 
a stranger rather than someone you trust.  You have to be confronted 
with multiple instances of people eating red berries with no dangerous 
effects or pressured by someone that you trust before you will risk 
eating them yourself.

Meaning, people are willing to add facts to their knowledge, but are 
inclined to disbelieve those facts if they are from "strangers" (people 
who think or look differently than they do).  Worse yet, it is a precept 
in most belief systems that unquestioning faith is a virtue rather than 
a liability.  If a person is not willing to genuinely weigh and 
reconsider their world view, they are likely to see any facts contrary 
to their beliefs as either wrong or downright deception meant to mislead 
them (Creationists rejection of astronomy evidence of the age of the 
universe and rejection of evolution are prime examples).  Worse, as 
people tend to surround themselves with people of similar belief, others 
in their "group" whom they trust will reinforce their irrational beliefs.


On 11/14/2010 4:14 AM, KZK wrote:
> More evidence of how badly designed the brain is.  I can only add a 
> truism: "It’s cheap to maintain Lies and expensive to maintain Trvth."
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874&f=1014&sc=tw 
>
>
>
> New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their 
> minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more 
> attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key 
> principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.
>
> ...
>
> CONAN: And when facts are readily available, why are they not enough 
> to change people's minds?
>
> Mr. NYHAN: Well, the problem is, you know, as human beings, we want to 
> believe, you know, the things that we already believe. And so when you 
> hear some information that contradicts your pre-existing views, 
> unfortunately, what we tend to do is think of why we believed those 
> things in the first place.
>
> And, you know, so when, you know, we get these corrections, we tend to 
> say I'm right, and I'm going to stick with my view. And the thing that 
> my research, which is with Jason Reifler at Georgia State University, 
> found is that in some cases, that corrective information can actually 
> make the problem worse.
>
> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf
>
>
> "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's 
> even remotely true."
> --Homer J. Simpson
>
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