Depressing but true

[undyingking]

Two roundups which between them demonstrate just how useless humans are at thinking things through.

• Does ideology trump facts? Studies say it often does
  "If the findings of some political scientists are right, attempting to correct misinformation might do nothing more than reinforce the false belief...
  "Could this response be why, despite being repeatedly refuted in the media, the percentage of Americans who believe Sen. Obama to be a Muslim continues to grow?
  "It seems to suggest that this effect might lead to problems when it comes to efforts to educate people about controversial or politically charged topics..."

And, as if to neatly support those findings:

• Green idealists fail to make grade, says study
  "According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad...
  "Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts...
  "[O]ne respondent said: 'I recycle 100% of what I can, there's not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so that makes me feel less guilty about flying as much as I do.'"

I'm sure I'm as guilty of this sort of thing as everyone else. Systematic denial of this sort is a mechanism that humans must have evolved very early, as an important species behavioural trait: if we estimated risks and consequences accurately, we'd probably never have bothered coming down from the trees. What's interesting though is that clearly it is possible to overcome it under certain circumstances. How can that effect be spread wider?

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Re: rumours...

I think it all comes down to the nature of understanding, really. The education system brilliantly masks people's ability to follow logical reasoning by never once testing this ability in a way that cannot be substituted by good memory. (Mostly, to be fair, because devising a viable test of this seems to be impossible.)

In areas like politics, what we see is simply the evolutionary consequence of the minimal role played by understanding/reasoning in people's thinking processes. And to some extent things have to work this way, because it's impossible for every voter to be an expert on every issue. so if they did think about everything they'd answer "don't know" all the time and (different) special interest groups would control every vote.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I suppose it comes in in mathematical subjects to some extent. We had quite a lot of "derive the expression for whatever in such-and-such situation" type problem sets -- and of course the ones where you actually did derive it yourself, rather than look it up, laid down a little layer of understanding in the mind that often came in useful later on: because by the end there was just too much stuff for people to memorize it all, if they were lazy like me.

Your evolutionary point is well made, although I guess a seasoning of reasoning does help species progress from time to time (although maybe that's arguable, and what we perceive as "progress" isn't really). If so, it seems to be worth developing a few specialized people in each community who can reason on their behalf.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Reasoning in general is tremendously valuable. The trouble in politics is how to distinguish between the "few specialized people" you propose and other people who talk in the same way and make very similar sounding pronouncements, but are in fact talking complete bobbins.

We have a reliable way to tell the difference: try following their recommendations and then wait and see what the consequences are! Unfortunately, this approach has some... drawbacks. ;-)