The Oatmeal has a very interesting cartoon explanation of one element, the Backfire Effect, here. I’m not going to summarise it, so you’ll just have to trust me that it’s worth reading.
I will never trust you again.
It’s a little hard to read when the article suggests I’m outraged at things I’m not actually outraged about.
Geezus, I didn’t know panel cartoons could be the length of Mason & Dixon.
You can’t fight willful ignorance with information.
The backfire effect helps explain why information is rejected, and armed with that, you can present your argument more appropriately.
This correlates with something I’ve been pondering and observing for a while, which is that discussion about ideas, even with people I generally am aligned with, is becoming almost impossible because emotions and feelings about issues and concepts have become the focus and the grounding point of supposed logical, factual positions. “Are you angry? Why not!?”
I wouldn’t rely on that. The Backfire Effect could just as easily entrench the rejection of the facts. You know, because it’s just fake news. My observation is that it requires disillusionment based on more ignorance to change someone’s mindset when they’re not operating on a rational basis.
Yes indeed, but knowing why your arguments induced the backfire effect can only help you argue more successfully the next time. Probably with another person, of course, as the previous person will be more likely to reject your new arguments because the previous ones backfired.
The reasons your arguments induced the backfire effect is because humans are perverse, stubborn, know-it-all self-deceived bastards, and you will never be able to reshape your argument to get through that.
“None so blind as the one who will not see.”
Interesting cartoon. George Washington had some freaky teeth.
Apparently the cartoonist didn’t bother to actually read the sources he listed for his claim that Washington had a separate set of dentures, made from the teeth of slaves. None of the sources mention a second set of dentures, and the only evidence is that (a) there are human teeth in his dentures, and (b) a notation in his ledger that he paid 122 shillings to “Negroes” for nine teeth. Everything after that is conjecture. Now it may be a reasonable conjecture that they were from slaves, but to state it as fact in the cartoon undermines his entire point, IMHO.
How dare you contradict my entrenched belief based on a cartoon I read this morning!!!
No-I’d rather you “summarise” it, please.
Fuck, that was tedious. I quit after about 6 panels in.
So, what’s the fucking point?
Try harder
(that’s the point)
Some facts are not easily accepted, and others are. Also, some lies are easily accepted.
The author doesn’t know how to fix this, but we should listen to each other more.
There was something about a pinky toe eating tacos as well.
Even more interesting is that he never actually claimed that Washington had slave-tooth dentures. He asks “what if” he told us that, and then later on he claims that he told us that, but he never actually tells us that.
People engage in motivated cognition, they depend on the integrity of their belief system to not only maintain the integrity of themselves and their own identity, but to justify the existing time and energy they’ve put into the belief and to avoid being socially ostracized (imagine if you became a convert who fully believed fascism or racism was acceptable. You’d lose status and friends).
It sucks, and it is what it is. In theory isn’t that why many governments use republics instead of democracy because the voters generally aren’t going to be informed enough?