Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label one-on-one politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one-on-one politics. Show all posts

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Fact Averse Knotheads

My morality starts with my commitment to care about what's true and what's not true.

Michael Shermer in American Scientific
Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.

Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Anti-vaxxers distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused of fraud. The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New World Order. Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country.
In these examples, proponents' deepest held worldviews were perceived to be threatened by skeptics, making facts the enemy to be slayed. This power of belief over evidence is the result of two factors: cognitive dissonance and the backfire effect. In the classic 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, psychologist Leon Festinger and his co-authors described what happened to a UFO cult when the mother ship failed to arrive at the appointed time. Instead of admitting error, “members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs,” and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this cognitive dissonance, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.
Two social psychologists, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (a former student of Festinger), in their 2007 book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) document thousands of experiments demonstrating how people spin-doctor facts to fit preconceived beliefs to reduce dissonance. Their metaphor of the “pyramid of choice” places two individuals side by side at the apex of the pyramid and shows how quickly they diverge and end up at the bottom opposite corners of the base as they each stake out a position to defend.
In a series of experiments by Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan and University of Exeter professor Jason Reifler, the researchers identify a related factor they call the backfire effect “in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.” For example, subjects were given fake newspaper articles that confirmed widespread misconceptions, such as that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When subjects were then given a corrective article that WMD were never found, liberals who opposed the war accepted the new article and rejected the old, whereas conservatives who supported the war did the opposite ... and more: they reported being even more convinced there were WMD after the correction, arguing that this only proved that Saddam Hussein hid or destroyed them. In fact, Nyhan and Reifler note, among many conservatives “the belief that Iraq possessed WMD immediately before the U.S. invasion persisted long after the Bush administration itself concluded otherwise.”
If corrective facts only make matters worse, what can we do to convince people of the error of their beliefs? From my experience, 1. keep emotions out of the exchange, 2. discuss, don't attack (no ad hominem and no ad Hitlerum), 3. listen carefully and try to articulate the other position accurately, 4. show respect, 5. acknowledge that you understand why someone might hold that opinion, and 6. try to show how changing facts does not necessarily mean changing worldviews. These strategies may not always work to change people's minds, but now that the nation has just been put through a political fact-check wringer, they may help reduce unnecessary divisiveness.
And here's the formula again:

The probability for a TRUE argument goes up in the presence of confirming evidence and the absence of conflicting evidence.

The probability for a FALSE argument goes up in the absence of confirming evidence or the presence of conflicting evidence.

All that said, there's practically no point arguing anything with somebody who demonstrates he doesn't care about what's true or real or factual.

hat tip = Facebooker Gretchen Lynn Demarah

Friday, November 04, 2011

Elizabeth Warren Heckled

Everybody gets to say what's on his mind, even if he insists on being a complete asshole about it (speaking from experience here).

Two things I really like about this:
1) Warren quiets the crowd when they start to go after him for calling her "a socialist whore".  She's a fighter and as sweet as she sounds, I'm betting she can cut you to ribbons when she feels the need, but she keeps it cool and there's nothing the guy can push back against.  Conflict resolved.
2) As is usually the case, the heckler was prob'ly a little nervous about being kinda shitty in public, so he needed to make the statement and then stride purposefully from the room - for dramatic effect.  But the door at the front is locked.  He tries the opener a couple of times, and then has to walk past the crowd to get out.  His body language is defiant and proud, but nobody's paying any attention to him, so again he has nothing to fight.  He's just some random dick callin' people names.

(hat tip: Crooks and Liars)

Sunday, October 23, 2011

People Of The lie

Podcast
I listen to this podcast every Sunday instead of watching the morning bobblehead shows.  They've been evolving a general theme that's aimed at creating and distributing vocabulary and tactics that can be used to countervail the constant stream of nonsense that seems to dominate any random political discussion.

It all comes down to fighting the Conditioned Response and/or the Confirmation Bias and/or the Reflexive Reactions that we're all susceptible to - in order to move a little closer to the big-t Truth.  But just substituting one kind of knee-jerk response for another doesn't get us where we need to go either.

One suggestion: Everybody gets tired of trying to rebut the idiot emails they get from their "conservative" friends and in-laws. One solution is simply to stop rising to the bait, and instead demand the sender provide straight-up proof of whatever the email's about.  Let the facts tell the story.  And yeah, I know - some "conservatives" flat out deny the facts, or just make shit up.  The direct challenge is still the best antiseptic for that.  "What you can't prove qualifies as nothing more than a crock full of shit."  One thing that comes in pretty handy is that I can look stuff up on my phone now and make 'em look foolish in public.  I love that.

Something else that sticks in my brain is the idea that people are not just well conditioned in what they say, but also in what they hear you say in rebuttal.  It's pretty apparent, but I think it bears repeating.  And really, it's just the Straw Man thing, where they take what you say; turn it into something you didn't actually say; and proceed to tear it apart.

Whenever I'm arguing policy now, I'm trying to remember the thing about framing that George Lakoff talks about in Don't Think Of An Elephant.*  If the listener is properly conditioned (ie: the frame of his thinking is set), then he'll hear and agree with whatever is said that fits that frame, and disregard or dispute anything that doesn't fit.
(*)


If your debate partner is at all "typical" of the total putz nozzles who pass for conservatives these days, then he's going to be in line with "The Sweeping Generalization" --government is bad.  --poor people are just lazy.  --taxation is burdensome and oppressive.  --and on and on;  We all know the drill.  You make a point in criticism of something generic like Corporate Greed, and you can bet the rebuttal will be all about how you hate Capitalism, and how you want the gubmint to enslave the noble job-creators, blah blah blah.  It has nothing really to do with the point you made, but it works if you don't recognize what he's doing, and if you don't then turn it back around by insisting that he address the actual point instead of the one he just pulled out of his ass.

Being aware that the other guy is only hearing what he wants to hear, requires me to improve my arguments and to improve how I make my arguments.  If I can anticipate his reaction, I have the advantage.

But here's the real kicker:  I'm not going to convince the guy I'm arguing with, and he's not the guy I'm really talking to.  I'm talking to the people who are listening around the edges; the people who read the comments on facebook or the blogs, but never leave comments of their own.  They're there looking for something that strikes them as reasonable. They're looking for something that rings true.  Give it to them.

Another part of the ProLeft podcast had to do with keeping up with the machinery that produces the crap that too many people take for the truth.



Whatever you believe nobody cares 
Whatever it is you think you know 
Don't give a Goddamn 
Reality is bullshit 
Reflection is a concept 
Based on your own fucked up ideal 

Don't call it part of your faith 
Another way you justify hate 

Voices shouting under water 
Drown you out, steal your air 
Blinded by their own illusion 
Through a crooked looking glass 

Army of theives 
Blood on their hands 
Lightning, fire and brimstone 
They'll say whatever they can 
Conspiracy theories, Arrogant trash 
They prowl alone and trvel in packs 

[Chorus] 

Vocies shouting in the water 
Drag you down, steal your air 
Dissolut, Diabolic 
Snake oil salesmen everywhere 


[x4] 
People of the lie 

Whatever you believe 
Nobody cares 
Idol worship, made of fantasy 
Don't push your deity on me 

Reality is bullshit 
Reflection is a concept 
Based on your own fucked up ideal 


[x4] 
People of the lie