"Facts don't matter (to some people)"

[Shaker]

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

[Udayana]

I knew it already - there's always some clever clogs trying to show the rest of us up as dumb! 

[Udayana]

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?

[Owlswing]

http://tinyurl.com/ycces3km

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

Who needs facts when you have reliion and politics?

[Sriram]

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.

[Udayana]

Is that a fact?

[Sebastian Toe]

The real fact could be that all this is a virtual reality type of illusion.

He hypothesised.

[SteveH]

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.