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

An interesting article given this thread: Is Questioning One's Faith Inevitable?


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Ah, yes, belief perseverance ...
Fascinating stuff indeed.

I've always held that people feel a need to believe in something , even if that belief is in nothing.

From different perspectives most religious myths / stories can be equally unbelievable, whether they are generally accepted by the majority or not.

It's all subjective, a matter of perspective.

Akkarin wrote: An interesting article given this thread: Is Questioning One's Faith Inevitable?


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i would like to see the same tests done but using ACTUAL scientific research instead of MADE UP scientific research and see if the numbers change at all

OB1Shinobi wrote: i would like to see the same tests done but using ACTUAL scientific research instead of MADE UP scientific research and see if the numbers change at all

I'm not sure it would matter. I don't think that I'd be able to tell the difference if it was written well and was about something that seemed like it could be true.

At the risk that the test subjects would leave the test believing things we know are false I would actually not like to see that experiment. We have quite enough people believing nonsense as it is. Besides, it's not like the brain can magically and without prior familiarity with the subject tell a difference between a fake and a genuine report, so I confidently predict that the results will leave us with the same conclusion. Unless otherwise trained people tend to tentatively keep the beliefs they have rather than changing them. That's why there are different weights to burdens of proof, depending on how much of a conventional world view the new proposition needs expelled before it becomes believable. Without the already familiar, the precedent, we should require the same evidence to believe someone bought a turtle as we do to believe someone bought a unicorn.
But we don't. We try and take justifiable shortcuts in reasoning so we can do it more efficiently at the risk of sometimes ending up with something totally incorrect. Ironic, how this tendency to stick with your existing views can be both sensible and unreasonable, depending on particulars of a given situation. That's why if you want to know something you make sure to have others review your research, for only that way can the final verdict be protected from distortion through any one researcher's personal biases.

all this test indicates to me is that people are not going to change thier minds about issues they already have opinions on
as a result of being fed bulls#&t

i already knew that


EDIT

i undersand and agree with the basic premise that people defend their belifes

i dont argue thst

what i am saying is that a test which is designed to change peoples minds about things ought to usetue truth (relative and subjective as this is) to do so

in a world where particles react to us and each other through time and on different sides of the earth i very much belive in magic

OB1Shinobi wrote: all this test indicates to me is that people are not going to change thier minds about issues they already have opinions on
as a result of being fed bulls#&t

what i am saying is that a test which is designed to change peoples minds about things ought to usetue truth (relative and subjective as this is) to do so

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.

But that is only one report in the article, even if you disagreed with it do you disagree with the rest of the article?

i can see in from observation first of myself and then ofothers that people are conditioned to see what they/we expect to see

absolutely this is a human tendancy which applies to each of us including me right now!

i belive in the Force as an active and interactive reality of existence and consciousness

which means to me as the people who wrote those data statistics or reports meant to change minds were writing them

they KNEW that what they weresaying was untrue

at every step of the way they knew
as they approached and asked for peoples opinions they knew theyd be lying to them based on the opinions expressed

as they drafed theeocuments they knew they were lying

as they gave the information over to be reviewed they knew they were handing over a deliberate deception

as they question the results of the falsified information they knew that they were asking if people had bought in to their lies

i see this as indicative that further resarch from this perspective is needed
- but -
what i am interested in is the statistic which indicates the percentage of people who changed their minds when given accurate information
in a neutral way
which contradicted their assumptions

and

further investigation into the possibility that some percentage of the people tested may in fact have been reacting to the conscious or unconscious understanding that they were in a situation where someone was deliberately attempting to decieve and manipulte them

having had the experience of changing my mind because of new information i know that people do it

what i feel the tests in this article are missing is an inheret sense of respect for people

even when people chooseto hold on to viewpoints that are biased an uninformed, the thing that is assumed here is that the only valid criteria is the factual accuracy of the information

i consider rush limbaugh and alex jones to be essentially the same personality (although if i pick sides it would be with jones)

and what i understand is that even when these guys ar blurting out obnoxious absurdities the thing that nakes them different from this test is that they fully belive their absurdities

they are absurd in a most sincere way

these tests were not

to make sure i answer your question clearly though, yes i do agree wth the essential point of the article

and i also think its an important point for me to ackowledge even right in what im saying right now thst i am proving its merit

and because i see it applies to me i suggest we all take to heart that it may be applicable to us personally
i do

also i am reminded of that dude in the street fighter games who just wants to find someone who is good enough that they can defeat him

most of us hold on to our positions tightly because we feel that its a battle and we dont want to lose

formal structured debate often puts people in the position of having to defend the exact opposite of what they belive is true and i suspect this is a good litmus for anyone

if i can prove the validity of the opposite perspective then i am better able to cultivate an informed and accurate opinion

and from my life i can say that the more i was realized i had been wrong the better i got at being open to counter perspectives

which inturn has lead me to develop perspectives which are pretty well thougt outin some instances

which makes it more difficilt to find counter perspectives that would actually enhance my own

which again proves the idea being presented here

i wanted to add that the way successful hustlers always operate is to play on what you want to hear and see

no good con ever counts tries to change anybodies mind directly but rather seeks to use what you already believe and expect in order to lead to to conclusions they want you to make

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