Why Do People Believe Stupid Stuff, Even When They're Confronted With the Truth?

For me narrative scripts are one of the most fascinating aspects of human psychology, the ability to believe something despite obvious evidence to the contrary is really incredible, and something that I see a lot of with clients (and in other places :laugh: ) Not only believing something that isn't true, but also creating evidence to support that belief either by filtering all experiences through the bias of that belief, or (a very popular one) sub consciously sabotaging or creating circumstances as evidence.

I don't have too much to add to the thread as a whole, but I personally believe that scripts are closely linked with the brains affinity for creating auto pilot patterns. Maybe its just easier to deal with when you don't have to change your beliefs.

and besides, few people like learning they were wrong :laugh:

I posted about a scientific study that was done on this because it was the most mind blowing thing I learned last year.

As it turns out people hold beliefs not because they are true but because of what it says about them. As a social species most of our actions are driving by a need to communicate things about ourselfs to other people. For example why not drive a crappy car that gets you to point A and back instead of that cool looking sports car, or why wear brand name or why shop at Target instead of walmart?

Another point someone might decide they want to be a redneck and rednecks are good things to be. Now they decide global warming is false, conservative values are good, and obama wants to take their guns away because those are the kinds of things other rednecks think and they are now one to and a very good one. All evidence to the contrary can not be believed because their a redneck and that's what rednecks think.

Sorry if I offended any rednecks.

It's mind blowing because it means you and I could be a victim of this very effect and never have an idea that we are doing it.

For example are there things as a Jedi you could never belief?

Maybe they've reacted strongly to experiences where trust was broken and now they do not care so much about anything which they directly have not experienced themselves. This rejection might isolate them in such a way that they do prefer to rely on constructed worldviews which suit their circumstances but importantly for them that which does not share control outwards to others so much. Imagination is a powerful thing, but perhaps choosing to be close-minded could also be to fit into specific peer groups and simply not caring about the true nature of something - especially if it doesn't impact them in any confronting way. It feels very un-Jedi to me
:ohmy: :blush:

"An open mind is an ungaurded castle." - Warhammer 40k

rugadd wrote: "An open mind is an ungaurded castle." - Warhammer 40k

"who has nothing to defend can never be overrun"

Akkarin wrote: But the point is that people are already reading fake and made-up stuff, because people are reading factually incorrect information (anti-vax, climate change deniers etc). The fact that fake reports are used in the test actually matches real life rather than being innappropriate.

I completely agree with this. The “truth” and “facts” in general are extremely slippery even within so-called hard science – let alone discussions on morality. I don’t know much about anti-vax but I do know a fair amount about the climate change debate – and it is an excellent example of people confusing fact with opinion. The trouble is partly that both extreme sides of that debate publish factually incorrect information. That makes it extremely difficult for anyone to get to at least a sensible approximation of the truth.

More problematic is that the popular theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is not falsifiable – that means it’s not a scientific theory. It may or may not be right but until someone can work out how it can be at least theoretically falsified – it’s not Science. Even worse – a climate change denier (btw I dislike that term – I don’t know of anyone, even the most ardent of sceptics, who denies that climate changes) who theorises that atmospheric composition has no material impact on climate, presents a falsifiable proposition, but one that he/she will never give up – even in the face of contrary evidence. Highly complex, chaotic systems (like the climate) capable of different “equilibrium” states without any change in forcings can provide scientists with strong correlations in their analysis – but attributing causation to just one variable will always be subjective.

For instance CFCs are extremely efficient greenhouse gases and their concentrations correlate much better with the temperature data than CO2 concentrations do. There is no way of being sure that the warming seen since 1970 isn’t due to CFC concentrations rather than CO2 concentrations. See recent research here:
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979213500732

For anyone unfamiliar with the scientific method and wanting to learn more, this video is 10 mins long and sums it up brilliantly. The awesome Richard Feynmann:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

OB1Shinobi wrote: from this perspective it could be said that the greater your need to be right the more susceptible you are to being a sucker

This is exactly what makes the climate change debate so vitriolic, and full of beliefs that are not facts. The stakes are so high. On one side you have the perceived risk of a runaway greenhouse effect and the global devastation that would cause. On the other, you have billions of people in the world without access to electricity and all the environmental destruction that entails, billions more who are electricity deprived, and millions of people dying prematurely each year from having open fire stoves in their homes. Both sides believe they have a massive moral obligation to be right. That pushes them to the extremes of the debate and suckers them into believing things that are not facts.

Vesha wrote: As it turns out people hold beliefs not because they are true but because of what it says about them.

I ‘believe’ this very strongly. Every pore of my identity wants to side with climate change alarmists on CO2. I care deeply for our Earth and the opportunity to help “save” it is extremely appealing to my ego, and many others. It is a very Inconvenient Truth that our actions in pursuing that agenda could condemn billions of people to poverty for many years, completely unnecessarily.

Climate change was one of the first things I could think of so perhaps a better example would be creationists and their insistance on the earth being only a few thousand years old.

Climate change and creationism are the big ones ; the idea of unlimited economic growth is another.

But what would be a little more interesting - and rather than just looking at "those people" who delude themselves - why not consider the little choices about everyday things that we want to be true despite, not only evidence to the contrary, but just because our ideals depend on the (self-)deception.

Examples might be :

• self-image/esteem/value
• family values
• romantic ideals
• political convictions

Basically, anything that gets our knickers in a twist when someone has another 'opinion' about it, merits looking into through this lens. Truth is a pretty slippery fish ... we tell ourselves mishmash fish-meal versions of it and swallow that swill with curry-chips, but how much of our fish-finger fact is truly Truth ?

Morue !

In my opinion, people are too busy in their day to day lives to research what they really believe, so they hear what they want to hear on the news, and discard what they don't; clinging to it like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic. Unfortunately, our society has been engineered to run this way; remember the wizard from the Wizard of Oz: "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."

We are force-fed distractions at every turn to keep us from looking behind the curtain. Most people can tell you who Kim Kardashian is, but how many people know who the Secretary of State is, or what is his job role. We hear on the news every day that the economy is getting better, and most believe it, because they want to; but how many people understand quantitative easing, or how it works?

Rick D wrote: We are force-fed distractions at every turn to keep us from looking behind the curtain. Most people can tell you who Kim Kardashian is, but how many people know who the Secretary of State is, or what is his job role. We hear on the news every day that the economy is getting better, and most believe it, because they want to; but how many people understand quantitative easing, or how it works?

But which way around does it go? Are people fed this stuff to ensure that they are distracted? Or are people just distracted and so they want to watch this stuff?

I do not think one can say that it is absolutely one way around to the other.