Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

This was written by Elizabeth Kolbert shortly after the election, so it’s pretty political, but addresses an interesting topic and is relevant to the point above. She asks why we stick to our guns even after new evidence is shown to prove us wrong. The short answer… it feels good to stick to our guns, even if we’re wrong. “Providing people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science.” She explains various studies that illustrate that people don’t change their mind even when it is clearly shown that their decision was based on fake data. Also, she talks about the “illusion of explanatory depth” which is something I’ve often thought but never seen it in a study or with a cool name. It is that people believe that they know way more than they actually do. One study had people rate their understanding of how toilets and zippers work. Then they were asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how they worked, then rate their understanding again. Their scored dropped. After people are forced to realize their own ignorance, it can humble them into moderating their opinion. Since humility and moderation are two of my favorite words, right behind dookie and lollygag, this caught my attention. This is then applied to politics. If we “spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views.” Another way to say this is that when your dad gets in heated arguments about politics on Facebook, one person is definitely going to win an argument and the other will leave saying “hmm that’s a great point. I stand corrected and I agree wholeheartedly.” There’s a great point about how we’re evolutionarily wired to win arguments, not reason clearly, so natural selection hasn’t caught up yet.