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0 pointsrbecker5y ago0 comments

> To mirror simonh's comment, it's rather ironic that you're responding to a claim of fact, with an opinion.

Are they? "But we are approaching the truth. Everything in history, and everything in our daily experience tells us this." sounds like a claim of fact. Do you disagree with it? Have we not, collectively, changed our minds on a great many things?

Evolution, heliocentrism, the importance of doctors washing their hands, the non-determinism of quantum physics - all of these are a result of people changing their minds when presented with new facts. Even the importance of car safety belts and harmfulness of smoking. You are literally surrounded by evidence of people changing their minds when presented with new facts, but choose to instead focus on a few experiments where some people didn't change their minds when presented with some evidence on certain topics.

How did the article call it.. confirmation bias?

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zzzcpan5y ago

This is just a logical fallacy. Some people changed their minds when presented with new facts, sure, but only some, some didn't and most people likely changed their minds when presented and bombarded with opinions, propaganda, etc., but not facts.

simonh5y ago

Nobody has suggested humans are not capable of rationality, that's an absurd exaggeration. Clearly we are. The article even points out the scientific method as a valuable procedural tool we can use to help overcome the effects of biases, and suggests a method of self-reflection that has proved in studies to help obtain useful results. The better we understand those biases the better we are able to develop new approaches and procedures to mitigate them. But the first step is to understand ourselves and our limitations. Without that, we're a flailing bunch of tribal apes screaming at each other.

rbeckerOP5y ago

> Nobody has suggested humans are not capable of rationality, that's an absurd exaggeration.

It's the title of the article.

simonh5y ago

If articles could be distilled entirely down to titles, we wouldn't have articles. The authors are clearly not saying humans are incapable of rational thought, we're just not perfectly rational and in fact rational thinking can be surprisingly difficult for us, that's all. You know that, everybody who has read the article knows that whether they agree with the article or not, so why say this?

It's exactly this sort of hit and run straw man argument the article describes as being behind a lot of fallacious thinking. Scoring a 'hit' on an opponent, no matter how absurd or irrelevant, or how much it distorts the opponent's actual position, grants an immediate dopamine shot. It feels fantastic.

That's a really crucial part of the puzzle. It's why asking participants in a debate to first state the position of their opponent in their own words, but in terms their opponent accepts is accurate, before arguing against them is such a useful tool. It eliminates retorts based on knowing misrepresentations like this, which are a serious impediment to productive discourse.

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0 pointsrbecker5y ago0 comments

> To mirror simonh's comment, it's rather ironic that you're responding to a claim of fact, with an opinion.

How did the article call it.. confirmation bias?

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zzzcpan5y ago

simonh5y ago

rbeckerOP5y ago

> Nobody has suggested humans are not capable of rationality, that's an absurd exaggeration.

It's the title of the article.

simonh5y ago

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