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We all ignore the facts (on stoicism and more)

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 11:56 am
by Moocat
Apparently we all ignore the facts when it's contradictary to our brains current majority of facts:

http://digg.com/science/Democrats_and_R ... tudy_Finds

It's an interesting philosophical discussion relating to how our brain reacts to new ideas, old ideas and how it might change ideals. One person on Slashdot posted a summary from a book called The Eight Common Errors in the Thinking Process:

1. Your brain uncritically accepts the first information it gets in any new subject area as correct, whether it is or not.
2. Subsequent information that is in keeping with the information already present in your brain is uncritically accepted as correct, whether it is or not.
3. A new item that is contradictory to the information present in your brain is automatically rejected as incorrect, whether it is or not.
4. Your brain considers every item that is compatible with the majority of its information in a given subject area to be correct and every item that is contradictory to its information to be incorrect. As a result, the brain has no internal way to know which items of its information are correct representations of the real world and which are not.
5. Your brain has no way to know whether or not it has all the information required to respond appropriately to a given stimulus.
6. Unless your brain has additional information to the contrary, it interprets similar items as being identical.
7. Your brain cannot measure anything directly. All measurements must be made by comparison against an appropriate standard, which is often done incorrectly.
8. Your brain continues to interpret the external world as it was when the last sensory signal about a given subject area was received. As a result, the brain is not aware that some of its formerly correct information is now incorrect.

It makes a rather good amount of sense (to me) now that I've read it over. The only way to avert this process of thinking is to think in stoic terms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoic

I'll post my ideas I've tried to conclude from this, but only after I hear your arguements and/or discussions :)

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:46 pm
by shiznatix
"The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making."

Sounds about right.
agreed.

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:49 pm
by neophyte
Reason? More like put your finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing.

Re: We all ignore the facts (on stoicism and more)

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:18 pm
by Roja
Moocat wrote:Apparently we all ignore the facts when it's contradictary to our brains current majority of facts
Nuh-UH! Do Not!

Re: We all ignore the facts (on stoicism and more)

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:41 pm
by foobar
Roja wrote:
Moocat wrote:Apparently we all ignore the facts when it's contradictary to our brains current majority of facts
Nuh-UH! Do Not!
Lollerskates!

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 3:39 pm
by Gambler
only after I hear your arguements and/or discussions
Human mind is not just a dumb information-processing device. And thinking process is not limited by interpreting the external world and producing the "right" output. And there is a thing called inductive logic, whether sophists like it or not.

This is on the points you mentioned in your post. I will read referenced documents later.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:09 pm
by Gambler
Ok, I've read the article, which is exactly the kind of article one can expect to see on digg. It re-states something painstakingly obvious in a cool "scientific way". The only reason most of the people were interested in this thing is because it gave them opportunity to feel superior in comparison to someone ("OMG, politicians are biased, dumb and incapable of rational analysis. And, of course, I am different!!! Look at me, look at me, I'm like SO smarter than those dumb politicians!!!")

Partsisan activists are biased by chioce. Let me put it another way. You don't get to be in a political party if you analyze everything, because it will inevitably lead to conflicts with other people in the same party. This is true for many other social groups as well, including so-called online communities of various sorts.
Apparently we all ignore the facts when it's contradictary to our brains current majority of facts
Maybe people do it for a very good reason. Maybe people who stop doing so will get in deep sh... trouble on a daily basis.
The only way to avert this process of thinking is to think in stoic terms
You don't need to adhere to some philosophy to think straight. The article actually mentions very simple and natural thing, it says something about conscious thinking. All you need to do (if you want to) is to consciously analyze things from time to time. Ask yourself about your own motivations, reasons and believes if you're about to do something serious.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:21 pm
by John Cartwright
If you guys want the topic to stay open.. leave politics out of it please.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:38 pm
by Roja
I think the overall summary (".. Adept at ignoring facts") isn't an accurate statement of the findings.

One key piece stood out for me: "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."

First, I do want to make clear that medical science *does not* have a clear and doubtless understanding of where in the brain certain activity occurs. In fact, in multiple books, the claim has been raised that while certain areas of the brain are commonly 'focal' points for activity, many activities occur across the entire brain, or large portions of it.

With that out of the way, notice that the participants were activating the portion of their brain known to resolve conflicts.

If you are well-informed about a topic and a candidate (and these were staunch party members - arguably well-informed individuals), then you probably have already reasoned through the issues presented. As a result, they wouldn't need much reasoning, if any.

Much like if someone tells me that the moon is made up of cheese, I dont have a need to reason or even evaluate that statement.

The study has some extremely questionable methodology as well, and the writeup is clearly meant to incite reaction.
Gambler wrote:You don't get to be in a political party if you analyze everything, because it will inevitably lead to conflicts with other people in the same party
I don't (totally) agree with that. I've met many members of political parties that have great discussions about whether a particular decision matches up with that political party. Abortion is 'easy' enough to identify a general party to, but what about trade sanctions? UN support? FCC authority?

There are no shortage of grey areas between the two-party system in the US, and that does result in the need to analyze more than a few things.

However, I do agree that by and large, you are in a political party because you've already determined that on many issues (perhaps the majority of issues) you mostly agree with the position of other members of the party. That doesn't mean you don't have to analyze things, but it does mean you may have already completed the analysis before joining.

Also notice that if the portions of the brain involved in resolving conflicts are triggered, it could clearly support the theory that people have already dealt with the issue, and are trying to resolve the conflict presented - using the information they already have, which wouldnt require the formation of new thoughts (reasoning).

I think the study is flawed, but even if you take it at face value the talking points from it don't say much.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:14 pm
by Moocat
While the article did not explain everything it led to more internal questions for myself. It was stated in some previous posts that it may have been flawed, which is indeed what I assumed. However some points of the pdf book filled holes...or rather made new ones...that I believe filled at least some of the holes you've dug :)

I believe that while we may have "thought things over" after having been well-informed about the subject, the fact remains that there is almost always new information in any given subject that we do not know, do not understand or perhaps don't even know we don't understand. An example might be that we KNEW the earth was flat a period of time ago. We thought we were sure in our conviction that if you traveled X number of miles off into the sea a giant sea monster would swallow you up and that's it. We now KNOW the earth is round, making our last assumption false (for now...:) ).

Despite being well-versed in a subject, I don't believe it's possible to know everything possible about it except to the extent that it satisfies some internal mechanism in our brain which triggers a decision. What this means is that we don't know for sure whether we've made a bad decision, even sometimes to the point where we still don't know even after we've made it. It would require knowing ALL known things in order to know for sure whether or not something is correct...which is impossible in our current state of being as far as I know :) Nobody has all the answers to everything.

There are only two ways of making a perfectly correct choice, one is knowing everything there is to know. Another is knowing nothing at all. As knowing nothing at all is impossible unless you have just been born, I submit that we (the human race) could attempt (but possibly never achieve) a system which collectively combined all knowledge that we have. However, this is into the realm of science fiction, but it's fun to think on :)

Could we ever advance to the point where we could share all our information across a broad ultra-network of information instantaneously in time with our experiences? Wonder what that would be like... :)

If anyone ever figures that out, revive me from the dead while you're at it and hook me up ;)

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:29 pm
by Roja
Moocat wrote:Nobody has all the answers to everything.
Geez. Be patient. I'm working on it. These things take time. :)

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:12 pm
by Bill H
... if you traveled X number of miles off into the sea a giant sea monster would swallow you up and that's it.
You are displaying your ignorance. Everybody knows there are no giant sea monsters, you fall off the edge!

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:31 pm
by John Cartwright
Bill H wrote:
... if you traveled X number of miles off into the sea a giant sea monster would swallow you up and that's it.
You are displaying your ignorance. Everybody knows there are no giant sea monsters, you fall off the edge!
You are absolutely right Bill H.. but what you forgot to mention if you fall into the phpdn forums and forced to moderate for all eternity.. :evil:


joking of course

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:20 am
by timvw
Jcart wrote: You are absolutely right Bill H.. but what you forgot to mention if you fall into the phpdn forums and forced to moderate for all eternity.. :evil:
Keep up the good work! We appreciate it :)

Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 12:31 pm
by Gambler
An example might be that we KNEW the earth was flat a period of time ago.
Some people assumed it was round. They didn't "know". Besides, form of the earth can be safely ingnored when you deal with sufficiently small-scale problems, like buinding a hous). Same way you can ingnore moon's gravity and great deal of other things. What I'm trying to say is that every problem has some scope, and you don't need to know things outside this scope to make practical decisions in regards to the problem.