05-21-2014, 02:43 PM
Article in the New Yorker
I recommend reading the full article.
The major gist can be summarized in a sentence midway through: "If information doesn’t square with someone’s prior beliefs, he discards the beliefs if they’re weak and discards the information if the beliefs are strong." What's the kicker is that this can happen even if he is aware that his belief system is affecting his decision. We, as humans, literally can't stop ourselves from processing information incorrectly, even if we know we're doing it. Now, before the inevitable posts of "see, this is why so-and-so LL poster is blind to his own misconceptions," note that everyone here - absolutely everyone - has fallen prey to this at some point in our lives. We all process information and filter it to fit our world view to some extent, and we're all generally blind to the fact that we're doing it. A noted phenomenon/problem of the Internet is that it allows everyone to splinter communities into echo chambers where the "hivemind" can operate to reinforce misconceptions. The more fractured the communities get, the more the crazy comes out. Even if you can rationally step back and think "you know, this is probably an echo chamber and I'm receiving all of my information through bad filters," it will still affect you at a subconscious level.
I wonder if humanity will ever "evolve" to the point where this stops happening? Because it's such a survival instinct to be able to say to oneself "this has worked for me in the past, therefore I see no reason to change it despite information to the contrary," we may never be able to overcome it. Thinking to the macro level of the entire human race, is there any way to rise above our genetic programming that actually damages us as a whole in civilized society?
Wrap your head around this:
Wow. Merely having a seemingly innocent question asking what your gender is before taking a math test affects women's test scores just by reminding them that they are women, because it makes them conscious of society's pressure on women not to be good at math. This can happen even if they're fully aware that it's bull-honkey. They can swear up and down that they don't believe that for one second, but it still affects them.
One of the concepts that makes me laugh at shows like Star Trek is its underlying notion that as technology improves, the human race does too. It usually depicts a society of the future where humans have moved beyond their base instincts to acquire material possessions and instead pursue activities that interest them; after all, once a replicator can create food out of nothing, there's no competition for food, right? It always seems to ignore that while technology changes, human nature doesn't - we can't rise above our natural programming to be irrational, emotional meatbags, even when we know we're being irrational, emotional meatbags.
TL;DR: we're just rats on a wheel, man!
Quote:Last month, Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, published the results of a study that he and a team of pediatricians and political scientists had been working on for three years. They had followed a group of almost two thousand parents, all of whom had at least one child under the age of seventeen, to test a simple relationship: Could various pro-vaccination campaigns change parental attitudes toward vaccines? Each household received one of four messages: a leaflet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that there had been no evidence linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine and autism; a leaflet from the Vaccine Information Statement on the dangers of the diseases that the M.M.R. vaccine prevents; photographs of children who had suffered from the diseases; and a dramatic story from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about an infant who almost died of measles. A control group did not receive any information at all. The goal was to test whether facts, science, emotions, or stories could make people change their minds.
The result was dramatic: a whole lot of nothing. None of the interventions worked. The first leaflet—focussed on a lack of evidence connecting vaccines and autism—seemed to reduce misperceptions about the link, but it did nothing to affect intentions to vaccinate. It even decreased intent among parents who held the most negative attitudes toward vaccines, a phenomenon known as the backfire effect. The other two interventions fared even worse: the images of sick children increased the belief that vaccines cause autism, while the dramatic narrative somehow managed to increase beliefs about the dangers of vaccines. “It’s depressing,” Nyhan said. “We were definitely depressed,” he repeated, after a pause.
I recommend reading the full article.
The major gist can be summarized in a sentence midway through: "If information doesn’t square with someone’s prior beliefs, he discards the beliefs if they’re weak and discards the information if the beliefs are strong." What's the kicker is that this can happen even if he is aware that his belief system is affecting his decision. We, as humans, literally can't stop ourselves from processing information incorrectly, even if we know we're doing it. Now, before the inevitable posts of "see, this is why so-and-so LL poster is blind to his own misconceptions," note that everyone here - absolutely everyone - has fallen prey to this at some point in our lives. We all process information and filter it to fit our world view to some extent, and we're all generally blind to the fact that we're doing it. A noted phenomenon/problem of the Internet is that it allows everyone to splinter communities into echo chambers where the "hivemind" can operate to reinforce misconceptions. The more fractured the communities get, the more the crazy comes out. Even if you can rationally step back and think "you know, this is probably an echo chamber and I'm receiving all of my information through bad filters," it will still affect you at a subconscious level.
I wonder if humanity will ever "evolve" to the point where this stops happening? Because it's such a survival instinct to be able to say to oneself "this has worked for me in the past, therefore I see no reason to change it despite information to the contrary," we may never be able to overcome it. Thinking to the macro level of the entire human race, is there any way to rise above our genetic programming that actually damages us as a whole in civilized society?
Wrap your head around this:
Quote:when people feel their sense of self threatened by the outside world, they are strongly motivated to correct the misperception, be it by reasoning away the inconsistency or by modifying their behavior. For example, when women are asked to state their gender before taking a math or science test, they end up performing worse than if no such statement appears, conforming their behavior to societal beliefs about female math-and-science ability.
Wow. Merely having a seemingly innocent question asking what your gender is before taking a math test affects women's test scores just by reminding them that they are women, because it makes them conscious of society's pressure on women not to be good at math. This can happen even if they're fully aware that it's bull-honkey. They can swear up and down that they don't believe that for one second, but it still affects them.
One of the concepts that makes me laugh at shows like Star Trek is its underlying notion that as technology improves, the human race does too. It usually depicts a society of the future where humans have moved beyond their base instincts to acquire material possessions and instead pursue activities that interest them; after all, once a replicator can create food out of nothing, there's no competition for food, right? It always seems to ignore that while technology changes, human nature doesn't - we can't rise above our natural programming to be irrational, emotional meatbags, even when we know we're being irrational, emotional meatbags.
TL;DR: we're just rats on a wheel, man!
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.