This diary is inspired by the New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert:
Why facts don't change our minds
This is an important article, and it points to a scientific explanation for the obviously “irrational” thinking we see every day.
After starting off with a few examples from the 1970’s from Stanford, she writes:
The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who’s followed the research—or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today—knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational. Rarely has this insight seemed more relevant than it does right now. Still, an essential puzzle remains: How did we come to be this way.
The article continues by drawing from The Enigma of Reason by Harvard cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, and includes material from The Knowledge Illusion: Why we never think alone by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, and “Denying to the Grave”, by Sara and Jack Gorman, which has been diaried here: www.dailykos.com/...
Another example:
A recent experiment performed by Mercier and some European colleagues neatly demonstrates this asymmetry. Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems. They were then asked to explain their responses, and were given a chance to modify them if they identified mistakes. The majority were satisfied with their original choices; fewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two.
In step three, participants were shown one of the same problems, along with their answer and the answer of another participant, who’d come to a different conclusion. Once again, they were given the chance to change their responses. But a trick had been played: the answers presented to them as someone else’s were actually their own, and vice versa. About half the participants realized what was going on. Among the other half, suddenly people became a lot more critical. Nearly sixty per cent now rejected the responses that they’d earlier been satisfied with.
So what is the darwinian advantage to developing reasoning.
This lopsidedness, according to Mercier and Sperber, reflects the task that reason evolved to perform, which is to prevent us from getting screwed by the other members of our group. Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments.
The work asserts that there is an evolutionary biological foundation for “confirmation bias”. She concludes:
“The Enigma of Reason,” “The Knowledge Illusion,” and “Denying to the Grave” were all written before the November election. And yet they anticipate Kellyanne Conway and the rise of “alternative facts.” These days, it can feel as if the entire country has been given over to a vast psychological experiment being run either by no one or by Steve Bannon. Rational agents would be able to think their way to a solution. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring.
And now back to the title of this diary. The Republicans understand the above pretty well, the Democrats (at least the elected and hope to be elected) do not. We live in a country where the mass media is pro Republican. The standard belief is that all politicians lie. Whether that is true or not does not matter. The sources above point out that lies affect our reasoning, even when we know they are lies!
Although many may object, but a corollary to this is that Clinton was the worst possible candidate for the Democrats in the last election. This election might actually have been lost in 2010. By then both Obama and Clinton were selected to run in 2012 and 2016. With the loss in the states in 2010, there was guaranteed to be much more voter suppression in 2016, and the Republicans had six years to gear up their lie machine.
Keep the science above in mind when you campaign locally NOW in the states, and not only for the 2018 midterms. Whoever’s message gets out first has an advantage, whether it is a lie or not. Show the disastrous effect of Republican control in the states, NOW and keep it up.
BTW, if anyone can suggest a better title, please do. Also, we need more diaries on this subject.