why facts don't change our minds sparknotes why facts don't change our minds sparknotes

In recent years, a small group of scholars has focussed on war-termination theory. Here's what the ratings mean: 10 Brilliant. getAbstract recommends Pulitzer Prizewinning author Elizabeth Kolberts thought-provoking article to readers who want to know why people stand their ground, even when theyre standing in quicksand. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong. Why? By Elizabeth Kolbert . But I would say most of us have a reasonably accurate model of the actual physical reality of the universe. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly, like the conviction that vaccines are hazardous. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together. 5, Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. Theyre saying stupid things, but they are not stupid. The New Yorker, Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any . Copyright 2023 Institute for Advanced Study. Why Facts Don't Change Minds - https://aperture.gg/factsmindsDownload Endel to get a free week of audio experiences! Steven Sloman, a professor at Brown, and Philip Fernbach, a professor at the University of Colorado, are also cognitive scientists. Sloman and Fernbach cite a survey conducted in 2014, not long after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Paradoxically, all this information often does little to change our minds. A group of researchers at Dartmouth College wondered the same thing. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. Thanks for reading. Technically, your perception of the world is a hallucination. They are motivated by wishful thinking. Innovative You can expect some truly fresh ideas and insights on brand-new products or trends. But, on this matter, the literature is not reassuring. In an interview with NPR, one cognitive neuroscientist said, for better or for worse, it may be emotions and not facts that have the power to change our minds. Understanding the truth of a situation is important, but so is remaining part of a tribe. What HBOs Chernobyl got right, and what it got terribly wrong. If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. Jahred Sullivan "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" Summary This article, written by Elizabeth Kolbert, explores the concepts of reasoning, social influence, and human stubbornness. James, are you serious right now? Friendship Does. Select the sections that are relevant to you. Stay up-to-date with emerging trends in less time. While these two desires often work well together, they occasionally come into conflict. Analytical Youll understand the inner workings of the subject matter. By Elizabeth Kolbert. Im not saying its never useful to point out an error or criticize a bad idea. This website uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. Background Youll get contextual knowledge as a frame for informed action or analysis. The belief that vaccines cause autism has persisted, even though the facts paint an entirely different story. Eventually, she did more research and realized that the purported link between vaccines and autism wasn't real. They began studying the backfire effect, which they define as a phenomenon by which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question, if those corrections contradict their views. They begin their book, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Riverhead), with a look at toilets. A few years later, a new set of Stanford students was recruited for a related study. Six of Crows. We look at every kind of content that may matter to our audience: books, but also articles, reports, videos and podcasts. Not whether or not it "feels" true or not to you. How can we avoidlosing ourminds when trying to talk facts? Among the many, many issues our forebears didn't worry about were the deterrent effects of capital punishment and the ideal attributes of a firefighter. Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. Some students discovered that they had a genius for the task. (Another widespread but statistically insupportable belief theyd like to discredit is that owning a gun makes you safer.) I found this quote from Kazuki Yamada, but it is believed to have been originally from the Japanese version of Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami. However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Isnt it amazing how when someone is wrong and you tell them the factual, sometimes scientific, truth, they quickly admit they were wrong? Most people argue to win, not to learn. Once formed, the researchers observed dryly, impressions are remarkably perseverant.. presents the latest findings in a topical field and is written by a renowned expert but lacks a bit in style. You have to slide down it. samples are real essays written by real students who kindly donate their papers to us so that 3. Because of misleading information, according to the author of Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds, Elizabeth Kolbert, humans are misled in their decisions. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person . In a new book, "The Enigma of Reason" (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. The majority were satisfied with their original choices; fewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two. Our brain's natural bias toward confirming our existing beliefs. The power of confirmation bias. The book has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages. Her arguments, while strong, could still be better by adding studies or examples where facts did change people's minds. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits. The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us: Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. The what makes a successful firefighter study and capital punishment study have the same results, one even left the participants feeling stronger about their beliefs than before. Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they werent the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. They were then asked to explain their responses, and were given a chance to modify them if they identified mistakes. You can get more actionable ideas in my popular email newsletter. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. Any deadline. Probably not. The students were then asked to describe their own beliefs. To understand why an article all about biases might itself be biased, I believe we need to have a common understanding of what the bias being talked about in this article is and a brief bit of history about it. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. So she did. Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves, Mercier and Sperber write. It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the. February 27, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - "New Yorker" - In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. Shaw describes the motivated reasoning that happens in these groups: "You're in a position of defending your choices no matter what information is presented," he says, "because if you don't, it. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others by Tali Sharot, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread by Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall, Do as I Say, Not as I Do, or, Conformity in Scientific Networks by James Owen Weatherall and Cailin O'Connor, For all new episodes, go to HiddenBrain.org, Do as I Say, Not as I Do, or, Conformity in Scientific Networks. []. The vaunted human capacity for reason may have more to do with winning arguments than with thinking straight. These groups thrive on confirmation bias and help prove the argument that Kolbert is making, that something needs to change. Those whod started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those whod opposed it were even more hostile. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an intellectualist point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social interactionist perspective. At the end of the experiment, the students were asked once again about their views. Friendship does. How an unemployed blogger confirmed that Syria had used chemical weapons. In the other version, Frank also chose the safest option, but he was a lousy firefighter whod been put on report by his supervisors several times. The best thing that can happen to a good idea is that it is shared. You have to give them somewhere to go. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. You cant know what you dont know. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, its easy to dismiss them as a crackpot. In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed. Inevitably Kolbert is right, confirmation bias is a big issue. If the goal is to actually change minds, then I dont believe criticizing the other side is the best approach. For instance, it may offer decent advice in some areas while being repetitive or unremarkable in others. Science reveals this isnt the case. Helpful Youll take-away practical advice that will help you get better at what you do. Get professional help and free up your time for more important things. Participants were asked to answer a series of simple reasoning problems. In such cases, citizens are likely to resist or reject arguments andevidence contradicting their opinionsa view that is consistent with a wide array ofresearch. 5 Solid. The backfire effect is a cognitive bias that causes people who encounter evidence that challenges their beliefs to reject that evidence, and to strengthen their support of their original stance. Why facts don't change our minds - The psychology of our beliefs. hide caption. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful. Most people at this point ran into trouble. As is often the case with psychological studies, the whole setup was a put-on. Why is human thinking so flawed, particularly if it's an adaptive behavior that evolved over millennia? They, too, believe sociability is the key to how the human mind functions or, perhaps more pertinently, malfunctions. Anger, misdirected, can wreak all kinds of havoc on others and ourselves. I am reminded of Abraham Lincolns quote, I dont like that man. The latest reasoning about our irrational ways. Weve been relying on one anothers expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. Often an instant classic and must-read for everyone. Kolbert's popular article makes a good case for the idea that if you want to change someone's mind about something, facts may not help you. Whatever we select for our library has to excel in one or the other of these two core criteria: Enlightening Youll learn things that will inform and improve your decisions. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others begins. Eye opening Youll be offered highly surprising insights. Overview Youll get a broad treatment of the subject matter, mentioning all its major aspects. I would argue that while arguing against this and trying to prove to the readers how bad confirmation bias is, Kolbert succumbs to it in her article. Finding such an environment is difficult. Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. In the mid-1970s, Stanford University began a research project that revealed the limits to human rationality; clipboard-wielding graduate students have been eroding humanitys faith in its own judgment ever since. Thanks for reading. Research shows that we are internally rewarded when we can influence others with our ideas and engage in debate. Justify their behavior or belief by changing the conflicting cognition. Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the illusion of explanatory depth, just about everywhere. Presented with someone elses argument, were quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Are you sure you want to remove the highlight? A typical flush toilet has a ceramic bowl filled with water. For example, "I'll stop eating these cookies because they're full of unhealthy fat and sugar and won't help me lose weight." 2. If someone you know, like, and trust believes a radical idea, you are more likely to give it merit, weight, or consideration. 7, Each time you attack a bad idea, you are feeding the very monster you are trying to destroy. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. This leads to policies that can be counterproductive to the purpose. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. A short summary on why facts don't change our mind by Elizabeth Kolbert Get the answers you need, now! They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. "Don't do that.". One minute he was fine, and the next, he was autistic. 2023 Cond Nast. Many months ago, I was getting ready to publish it and what happens? It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context. "When your beliefs are entwined with your identity, changing your mind means changing your identity. A helpful and/or enlightening book that stands out by at least one aspect, e.g. If your model of reality is wildly different from the actual world, then you struggle to take effective actions each day. There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them. You cant expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our hypersociability.. How do such behaviors serve us? This is what happened to my child who I did vaccinate versus my child who I didn't vaccinate.' Kolbert relates this to our ancestors saying that they were, primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they werent the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. These people did not want to solve problems like confirmation bias, And an article I found from newscientist.com agrees, saying that It expresses the tribal thinking that evolution has gifted us a tendency to seek and accept evidence that supports what we already believe. But if this idea is so ancient, why does Kolbert argue that it is still a very prevalent issue and how does she say we can avoid it? Plus, you can tell your family about Clears Law of Recurrence over dinner and everyone will think youre brilliant. According to Psychology Today, confirmation, or myside, bias, occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. This is how a community of knowledge can become dangerous, Sloman and Fernbach observe. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. Ad Choices. In the second phase of the study, the deception was revealed. So, why, even when presented with logical, factualexplanations do people stillrefuse to change their minds? That's a really hard sell." Humans operate on different frequencies. The fact that both we and it survive, Mercier and Sperber argue, proves that it must have some adaptive function, and that function, they maintain, is related to our "hypersociability." Mercier and Sperber prefer the term "myside bias." Humans, they point out, aren't randomly credulous. Order original paper now and save your time! The economist J.K. Galbraith once wrote, Faced with a choice between changing ones mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof., Leo Tolstoy was even bolder: The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.. But back to the article, Kolbert is clearly onto something in saying that confirmation bias needs to change, but neglects the fact that in many cases, facts do change our minds. https://app.adjust.com/b8wxub6?campaign=. contains uncommonly novel ideas and presents them in an engaging manner. Risk-free: no credit card is required. An idea that is never spoken or written down dies with the person who conceived it. Why facts don't change our minds. "Telling me, 'Your midwife's right. Why you think youre right even if youre wrong by Julia Galef. Concrete Examples Youll get practical advice illustrated with examples of real-world applications or anecdotes. The most heated arguments often occur between people on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the most frequent learning occurs from people who are nearby. I must get to know him better.. This is something humans are very good at. Each week, I share 3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to think about. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. 1 Einstein Drive Why is human thinking so flawed, particularly if its an adaptive behavior that evolved over millennia? Mercier, who works at a French research institute in Lyon, and Sperber, now based at the Central European University, in Budapest, point out that reason is an evolved trait, like bipedalism or three-color vision. It is intelligent (though often immoral) to affirm your position in a tribe and your deference to its taboos. Cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have written a book in answer to that question. People believe that they know way more than they actually do. On the Come Up. Sometimes we believe things because they make us look good to the people we care about. So clearly facts change can and do change our minds and the idea that they do is a huge part of culture today. Peoples ability to reason is subject to a staggering number of biases. For lack of a better phrase, we might call this approach factually false, but socially accurate. 4 When we have to choose between the two, people often select friends and family over facts. If people counterargue unwelcome information vigorously enough, they may end up with more attitudinally congruent information in mind than before the debate, which in turn leads them to report opinions that are more extreme than they otherwisewould have had, theDartmouth researcherswrote. If you use logic against something, youre strengthening it.. This, they write, may be the only form of thinking that will shatter the illusion of explanatory depth and change peoples attitudes..