The Backfire Effect

[rug]

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Wired, The New York Times, Backyard Poultry Magazine – they all do it. Sometimes, they screw up and get the facts wrong. In ink or in electrons, a reputable news source takes the time to say “my bad.”

If you are in the news business and want to maintain your reputation for accuracy, you publish corrections. For most topics this works just fine, but what most news organizations don’t realize is a correction can further push readers away from the facts if the issue at hand is close to the heart. In fact, those pithy blurbs hidden on a deep page in every newspaper point to one of the most powerful forces shaping the way you think, feel and decide – a behavior keeping you from accepting the truth.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

[struggle4progress]

1. I'll change my mind if I'm ever wrong

[rug]

2. I changed my mind once but that was a mistake.

[TheMadMonk]

3. But of course you never are. :D /nt

[struggle4progress]

4. It's fuggin hard enough bein humble and open-minded, without throwin bein wrong into the mix

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. Let's not forget that, if one person believes ''A'' and another believes ''not A''...

...one of them is necessarily correct.

[rug]

6. Not necessarily.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. Please do tell how a statement and its negation can be both false.

[struggle4progress]

9. You stuck in two-valued logic: it's an over-simplification

[rug]

11. OK.

Realizing language is not binary, it's more a matter of semiotics.

Since any given statement, and its manner of expression, can carry layers of meanings, it is possible for one to assert statement A, emphasizing certain layers of meanings, while another may deny statement A, focusing on other layers of meanings. They both can be right and they both can be wrong, simltaneously.

This does not apply to math, necessarily.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. In that case, either the first person is saying something different from A...

...or the second person is saying something different from not-A.

Either that, or the statement is something vague and subjective like "song X sucks." Since the attribute of "sucking" lacks an agreed-on, verifiable definition, arguing about it is senseless.

Other statements have a definite truth-value but are unknowable. Example: "Barack Obama blinked an even number of times between 20:00:00 and 20:00:45 UTC October 27, 1997."

Others are dismissable due to violating the laws of physics. Like Earth being hollow, for example. I could go on and on.

If a statement has "layers of meaning", then in fact there are multiple statements implied. many of them may be of the "song sucks" variety.

[rug]

14. I disagree.

Give my regards.

[struggle4progress]

8. From certain points of view, that's very sloppy logic

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. What points of view are those?

[struggle4progress]

12. Intuitionism in the Philosophy of Mathematics

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. Now THAT is interesting.

But sorry, Fermat's Last Theorem was true in 1492 too.

[struggle4progress]

20. What could it mean to say "Fermat's Last Theorem was true in 1492"? The conjecture

had not even been stated then, and I rather doubt anyone had the vocabulary with which to state it

If one is really interested in a non-idealistic mathematics, that occurs in the material world and can be given computational meaning, then Brouwer's intuitionistic logic is something one has to face. Brouwer's view of what he had accomplished, and of what he was trying to accomplish, turns out to be very weird -- and is usually dismissed as bordering on the insane. On the other hand, Brouwer did actually accomplish something, perhaps rather different than what he thought he accomplished, and you will find that intuitionistic logic and its various offspring have continued to provoke some deep and productive thinking about the foundations of mathematics. Intuitionistic logic can, for example, be axiomatized (though Brouwer himself would have regarded that as anathema) and the result is quite informative

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. It means that, if some contemporary of Columbus decided to...

..."eh, I'm going to come up with three integer numbers so that a*a*a = b*b*b + c*c*c. If I can't, I'll try with more than three repetitions."

That person would fail. If any person indeed try anything like that at that time, or earlier, it's a fact that that person failed.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

16. Fascinating.

I can see the things those people dislike and the contortions they undergo to avoid them.

Fear of the unknown. I sense fear of the unknown.

[struggle4progress]

22. Intuitionistic Logic

... Because these principles also underlie Russian recursive analysis and the constructive analysis of E. Bishop and his followers, intuitionistic logic may be considered the logical basis of constructive mathematics ...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intuitionistic/


Constructive mathematics is distinguished from its traditional counterpart, classical mathematics, by the strict interpretation of the phrase “there exists” as “we can construct”. In order to work constructively, we need to re-interpret not only the existential quantifier but all the logical connectives and quantifiers as instructions on how to construct a proof of the statement involving these logical expressions .... it is in the polemical writings of .. Brouwer .. that the foundations of a precise, systematic approach to constructive mathematics were laid ...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-constructive/

[struggle4progress]

27. Crickets. I hear crickets. Maybe you aren't really much interested in logic

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

17. There must be something wrong with me.

No matter how much I try, I can't find the set of real numbers any more mysterious than the number 17.

Thanks for that link. For real.

[Silent3]

19. I'm only thankful for positive integer. :) n/t

[struggle4progress]

26. The integers and reals seem to me quite different creatures

If one has integers a and b, and a proof that a != b, then one is quite sure |a - b| >= 1. If one has rationals a/r and b/s, and a proof that a/r != b/s, then one is quite sure |a/r - b/s| >= 1/|rs|. But no such useful lower bound for the absolute difference can be established if a and b are merely real numbers the equality of which would lead to a contradiction

Similarly, given rationals a and b, it is in some sense trivial to decide whether or not a^b is an integer. The situation with the reals is entirely different:

Is, for example, e^(pi*sqrt(163)) an integer? You will have to do numerical calculations to a relative accuracy of something like one part in 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 in order to see that the e^(pi*sqrt(163) differs slightly from 262 537 412 640 768 744

[Silent3]

18. Which is why the best tactic for atheists is breaking taboos about criticizing religion

One can't expect to make much progress by changing the minds of those with hardened opinions. There are, however, a lot of people who don't have strong opinions about religion because they are undecided or only weakly affiliated with religion. Break the taboos about criticizing religion, bring religion down into the same place in public debate where politics and economics and opinions about musicians reside, and the likely result, in my opinion, is that there will be over time viewer believers when there's more opportunity for criticism of religion to be heard and less automatic hushed reference and solemnity about the matter.

[LAGC]

24. Exactly.

Most of the time I don't think the debate around here is really between the active posters, most who are set in their opinions and won't be swayed, but rather influencing the many silent lurkers who read this forum but don't feel compelled to contribute anything... yet.

[Odin2005]

23. IMO this is because people personalize their beliefs into part of their self-identity.

Thus people percieve it as a personal attack if you try to prove them wrong.

[AlecBGreen]

25. +1

well said