Religion and Ethics Forum

Religion and Ethics Discussion => Philosophy, in all its guises. => Topic started by: Shaker on August 27, 2017, 10:49:20 AM

Title: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Shaker on August 27, 2017, 10:49:20 AM
Quote
The persistence of beliefs in the face of contrary evidence has always puzzled me. It has also annoyed me. “Why don’t facts change our minds?” as Elizabeth Kolbert puts it in an article in The New Yorker (2/27/17) [...] beliefs are remarkably persistent in the face of contrary evidence. As a rule, individuals fail to revise their beliefs even after they have been refuted. If anything, they become more polarized, growing further apart as they hold to their beliefs more strongly. While hundreds of subsequent studies have confirmed these findings, a straightforward explanation remains elusive. Kolbert asks, “How did we come to be this way?”

http://tinyurl.com/ycces3km

Original article: http://tinyurl.com/y8eu87mm
Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Udayana on August 27, 2017, 11:49:22 AM
I knew it already - there's always some clever clogs trying to show the rest of us up as dumb!  ;D
Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Udayana on August 27, 2017, 12:08:22 PM
Actually reminds me of the recent thread where a point, about the fact of humans using only n% of their brains, was used by people who already knew better - if they had been using their full brain power maybe they wouldn't have fallen into the trap of reconfirming their existing beliefs in contradiction to the facts?

Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Owlswing on August 27, 2017, 09:11:44 PM
http://tinyurl.com/ycces3km

Original article: http://tinyurl.com/y8eu87mm

Who needs facts when you have reliion and politics?
Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Sriram on August 28, 2017, 06:33:59 AM


What we have are theories and models...not facts!  The real fact could be that all this is a virtual reality type of illusion. All in the mind.
Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Udayana on August 28, 2017, 10:58:51 AM
Is that a fact?
Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Sebastian Toe on August 28, 2017, 11:20:09 AM

The real fact could be that all this is a virtual reality type of illusion.
He hypothesised.
Title: Re: "Facts don't matter (to some people)"
Post by: Steve H on August 28, 2017, 07:29:08 PM

What we have are theories and models...not facts!  The real fact could be that all this is a virtual reality type of illusion. All in the mind.
That hypothesis is unfalsifiable, and therefore useless.