2. Who is the audience that Kolbert is addressing? So clearly facts change can and do change our minds and the idea that they do is a huge part of culture today. Often an instant classic and must-read for everyone. ABOVE THE NOISE, a YouTube series from KQED, follows young journalists as they investigate real world issues that impact young people's lives. Even after the evidence for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs, the researchers noted. In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. If reason is designed to generate sound judgments, then its hard to conceive of a more serious design flaw than confirmation bias. getAbstract offers a free trial to qualifying organizations that want to empower their workforce with curated expert knowledge. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person . If the source of the information has well-known beliefs (say a Democrat is presenting an argumentto a Republican), the person receiving accurate information may still look at it asskewed. However, the proximity required by a meal something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. Participants were asked to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the proposals. At the end of the experiment, the students were asked once again about their views. The gap is too wide. Half the students were in favor of it and thought that it deterred crime; the other half were against it and thought that it had no effect on crime. "It is so, so easy to Google 'What if this happens' and find something that's probably not true," Maranda says. Though half the notes were indeed genuinetheyd been obtained from the Los Angeles County coroners officethe scores were fictitious. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Conversely, those whod been assigned to the low-score group said that they thought they had done significantly worse than the average studenta conclusion that was equally unfounded. . Hugo Mercier explains how arguments are more convincing when they rest on a good knowledge of the audience, taking into account what the audience believes, who they trust, and what they value. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. Hidden. Such a mouse, bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around, would soon be dinner. But I knowwhere shes coming from, so she is probably not being fully accurate,the Republican might think while half-listening to the Democrats explanation. 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, arent randomly credulous. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. It's complex and deeply contextual, and naturally balances our awareness of the obvious with a sensitivity to nuance. Innovative You can expect some truly fresh ideas and insights on brand-new products or trends. In a new book, "The Enigma of Reason" (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. There is another reason bad ideas continue to live on, which is that people continue to talk about them. Princeton, New Jersey Sloman and Fernbach see in this result a little candle for a dark world. When it comes to new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering. But rejecting myside bias is also woven throughout society. I study human development, public health and behavior change. But no matter how many scientific studies conclude that vaccines are safe, and that theres no link between immunizations and autism, anti-vaxxers remain unmoved. Peoples ability to reason is subject to a staggering number of biases. In Atomic Habits, I wrote, Humans are herd animals. The two have performed their own version of the toilet experiment, substituting public policy for household gadgets. It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context. 100% plagiarism free, Orders: 14 They were then asked to explain their responses, and were given a chance to modify them if they identified mistakes. Justify their behavior or belief by changing the conflicting cognition. However, truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. You cant know what you dont know. She asks why we stick to our guns even after new evidence is shown to prove us wrong. When the handle is depressed, or the button pushed, the waterand everything thats been deposited in itgets sucked into a pipe and from there into the sewage system. I know firsthand that confirmation bias is both an issue, but not unavoidable. Among the many, many issues our forebears didnt worry about were the deterrent effects of capital punishment and the ideal attributes of a firefighter. Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. Science moves forward, even as we remain stuck in place. This is why I don't vaccinate. Of course, news isn't fake simply because you don't agree with it. Gift a book. Any deadline. "When your beliefs are entwined with your identity, changing your mind means changing your identity. is particularly well structured. She started on Google. Whats going on here? Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality, says to think of an argument as a partnership. I've posted before about how cognitive dissonance (a psychological theory that got its start right here in Minnesota) causes people to dig in their heels and hold on to their . In many circumstances, social connection is actually more helpful to your daily life than understanding the truth of a particular fact or idea. 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. "Don't do that.". Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. New discoveries about the human mind show the limitations of reason. We are so caught up in winning that we forget about connecting. Such a mouse, bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around, would soon be dinner. One explanation of why facts don't change our minds is the phenomenon of belief perseverance. 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. Things like that.". Kolbert tries to show us that we must think about our own biases and uses her rhetoric to show us that we must be more open-minded, cautious, and conscious while taking in and processing information to avoid confirmation bias, but how well does Kolbert do in keeping her own biases about this issue at bay throughout her article? Its easier to be open-minded when you arent feeling defensive. At getAbstract, we summarize books* that help people understand the world and make it better. Science reveals this isnt the case. This is the more common way of putting it: "I don't believe in ghosts." But the word "belief" in this context just means: "I don't think ghosts exist." Why take advantage of the polysemous aspect of the word belief and distort its context . A helpful and/or enlightening book that stands out by at least one aspect, e.g. That meanseven when presented with factsour opinion has already been determinedand wemay actually hold that view even more strongly to fight back against the new information. Every living being perceives the world differently and creates its own hallucination of reality. To reduce the psychological discomfort, the person will have to change either their mind or their behavior so that the inconsistency or contradiction is resolved, thus restoring mental balance. All rights reserved. Surprised? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. 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. In the weeks before John Wayne Gacys scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate. Author links open overlay panel Anne H. Toomey. The Grinch, A Christmas Carol, Star Wars. There must be some way, they maintain, to convince people that vaccines are good for kids, and handguns are dangerous. Presented with someone elses argument, were quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. So, basically, when hearing information, wepick a side and that, in turn, simply reinforces ourview. Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperbers argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coperate. When we are in the moment, we can easily forget that the goal is to connect with the other side, collaborate with them, befriend them, and integrate them into our tribe. The students were then asked to distinguish between the genuine notes and the fake ones. I donate 5 percent of profits to causes that improve the health of children, pregnant mothers, and families in low income communities. 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. 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. As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding, Sloman and Fernbach write. Get professional help and free up your time for more important things. 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. Insiders take Youll have the privilege of learning from someone who knows her or his topic inside-out. Step 1: Read the New Yorker article "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds" the way you usually read, ignoring everything you learned this week. But if someone wildly different than you proposes the same radical idea, well, its easy to dismiss them as a crackpot. We help you to meet your learning objectives. Almost invariably, the positions were blind about are our own. She even helps prove this by being biased in her article herself, whether intentionally or not. Clear explains: "Humans need a reasonably accurate view of the world in order to survive. Presumably, you want to criticize bad ideas because you think the world would be better off if fewer people believed them. In a new book, The Enigma of Reason (Harvard), the cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber take a stab at answering this question. Shadow and Bone. 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. The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention.
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