Do Facts Matter?
 

A recent story on NPR talked about a study showing that when people with mistaken beliefs are confronted with facts that prove them wrong, they rarely change their mind on the issue, and most of the time the presence of facts contrary to their beliefs actually strengthens their original belief.

Here is the link to the transcript: In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter : NPR

For those who don't wish to read that, the basics are that humans do not operate on pure logic. (Which should be fairly obvious.) We want to continue believing things we already believe, possibly as a matter of pride or self-confidence. When someone is presented with corrective information they delve deeper into their mistaken belief. Examples are in the birther movement who claimed Obama was not born in the US, and when a birth certificate was provided, they either ignored the news and claimed one was never provided, claimed it was fake, etc.

It doesn't apply just to one side of the political spectrum though. The same process of "backfire", as it is called, can be seen in the claims the bush orchestrated 9/11. It also does not apply only to uneducated people. The study found, that knowledgeable, although wrong less of the time, are actually worse about being indignant in the face of facts when they are wrong.

Questions:

1. Has there ever been an instance where you were wrong on an issue, and when presented with facts, changed your mind?

2. What does this mean for democracy, which in its modern form is based upon the idea that an educated public will be best able to make decisions about the nation, if education and logic do not determine ideas. If opinions are the basis of beliefs and facts can actually cause opinions to be further from the truth, is democracy simply about pleasing the most people damn the consequences?

3. If people can study facts and still be vehemently wrong, do experts in fields such as Anthropology, Economics, and Psychology really deserve the trust they get?

Many. I've more than likely stuck to certain "facts" after I know I'm wrong, but I don't think I do it too terribly often. While it didn't actually affect my shift from anti-choice to pro-choice, many of the "facts" I'd long believed were true turned out to be false. I accepted that, and moved on. And on smaller, less contentious issues, I do it quite frequently. Of course, I try not to get stuck on details I don't know for certain, period.

In short...yes. That's basically what it's about, and what it always has been about. People prefer security, sticking to what they've always known (or thought they've known), over actually improving their lives and fixing problems. Just look at the "debate" over climate change. I suppose the mentality is, it can't get any worse if we keep doing what we've always done, but if we change, we risk making things worse. However, (most) other options aren't much better.

Well, if anyone trusts them completely, they're an idiot to begin with. Everything is subjective (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of that statement, so hush). You need only look at the history of these fields to know that their "truths" are determined more by society at the time than by observations. People see only what they want to see. But I don't think that makes them entirely worthless. We may not always respond to facts, but the more viewpoints we are exposed to on an issue, the more likely we are to arrive at a...helpful, perhaps, and more open conclusion. And those experts are, hopefully anyway, exposed to more differing viewpoints than the average person. That in no way prevents them from being racist or sexist or just plain ignorant pricks, and again I stress that if someone trusts a self-proclaimed 'expert' completely, they're already in trouble.