The limits of reason when confronting intuition and its implications for politics and blog threads
There is a famous psychology experiment which deals with how humans resolve conflicts between intuition and reason. The spoiler is – not very well. But the experiment goes like this:
The subjects are given this simple problem. A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Most people’s intuition quickly tells them that the ball costs 10 cents.
However,
…if the ball costs 10 cents, that would mean the bat costs $1.10, so the two together would be $1.20 — violating the first piece of information you had. A little algebra, or a little more thought, reveals that the ball must have cost 5 cents. Oops.
So, we are not good at math, so what? The interesting part is what comes next. Most subjects can be talked into accepting that the ball costs 5 cents, but it takes a long time, and some work to overcome the initial intuition. More work than it should. Think about the implications of this for Teabags.
Now, compound the psychological problem facing Republicans by layering on a linguistic and cultural problem we have with arguing in the United States. In the US we use the word “argue” to mean two different things.
1. give reasons or cite evidence in support of an idea, action, or theory, typically with the aim of persuading others to share one’s view.
2. exchange or express diverging or opposite views, typically in a heated or angry way. To fight.
So, essentially, we have people (Republicans) having wrong information and making bad decisions based on their intuition with a built in resistance to changing their minds, and we have them not understanding that “argue” can mean something other than “to fight.”
A fundamental requirement for a democracy is that we have parties that can be swayed by a well reasoned argument. We don’t have that now. We don’t have it on a national stage and we don’t have it on this small stage called Delawareliberal. We have plenty of teabags who have made up their minds based on their faulty intuition which is guided by a corrupt media establishment, but we don’t have any that are willing to have their views changed in light of new evidence.
That’s why I’ve been less and less tolerant of Republicans as the years have passed. It is clear to me that there are some Republicans want to try to use words here as a proxy for fists (as I’ve said before, they just want to fuck shit up), and there are some that want to pretend to be taking part in a legitimate “argument” but they can never really get there. It is just the nature of blogging, and the nature of politics in America in 2013.
I think the fundamental problem is that capitalism has replaced democracy and the fourth estate has been completely marginalized by a media monopoly. There are plenty of organizations out there doing good work and telling us that the bat is .05. But I know that I’m part of the problem here.
I had a friend post a comment about how frustrated he is at CNN. It dawned on me then, that I watch those same media companies waiting to CONFIRM something I read somewhere else and already know the answer too. It’s as if I’m programmed to not be legitmized until I see it on CNN, CBS, NBC etc. We all do it, we hate the news, yet we watch. Waiting for that sentence, that word, that in your face moment that we already know but need to hear again from Brian Fucking Williams.
So for now, the Heritage Foundation will tell 47% of Americans that the fucking ball does cost .10. Even though we god damn well know it doesn’t. The media will tell you it could cost .10 if XYZ existed…and the 47% that know the real answer is .05 but don’t want to hear it from a nerd in a bow tie will believe the fat 400lb bully, or midget in cowboy boots born in Canada with a communist father that the ball is .10 because he identifies with those guys
I hate them all
There is a willful ignorance out there; I don’t see how you can ever reach those people.
Excellent points. It is clear that half of the media is committed to confirming the bias that the bat is .10 and the other half is equally committed to the idea that there is no objective truth. It is frustrating as all fuck.
“limits of reason when confronting intuition”
Interesting thought, but I don’t think it is entirely applicable in the case of the GOP and/or the fringe.
Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. What the “they” suffer from is a reason and belief conflict. They have beliefs. Reason (and facts, information) conflict with those beliefs. Rather than change their beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary, they resolve the cognitive dissonance by disregarding, minimizing or attempts at refuting the evidence.
The crux of the problem is that their beliefs preceded the evidentiary process, it is that they even hold these things as a belief rather than conclusion reached based on logic, reason, common sense, and information. When faith is absolute, no data is required.
This is complicated by the fact that there is an entire industry built around spinning up false information and narratives and that industry is mostly legitimate in the eyes of the media. So that the Heritages, the Heartland Institutes, the CRIs can say pretty much any damn thing and it gets largely uncritical media space. In fact, many of these places are on the Rolodexes of reporters and producers indexed by POV — not necessarily information or expertise. But conservative political leaders point to this stuff as credible to both the media and their conservative voters and neither one of them holds them to any standard other than the party line of the day.
When your mind is already made up, facts only serve to confuse.
The media is complicit in misinformation when it feels it has to give credence to all viewpoints instead of calling nonsense the BS that it is.
Exhibit A — Rep. Steve King thinks that Iraq bought uranium from Niger.
This has long been definitively debunked, yet here is King repeating the lie — repeating it to an audience who can’t tell the difference between their resentments and reality.
@cm “yet here is King repeating the lie ”
But was Steve King lying or is he just stupid? Hard to tell.
Belief requires suspension of reality or rather an alternate reality. In his reality, he does not lie. Therefore, he is just stupid.
Oh, he’s stupid, all right. He claims to be in personal possession of the proof, but he won’t show it to anybody. Maybe it’s named Harvey.
Or Chip.
Complicity of media—truer words never spoken. When professional, professorial, articulate, and investigative media personalities turned into pop-culture celebrity runway walkers, America lost any contemplative insight of whatever issue–besides “Top 10 Baby Names”, or “KarTRASHian” minituae.
Check facts first was left at the door, with Lies Lead. Clean-up near impossible.
Very cogent, Jason. The Founding Fathers used to explicitly cite Reason in their great debates. But Rreason was a relatively new force in human affairs, and they were engaged in a new enterprise. Now America has new tribes, and competing myths to choose from as a source of intuition, and reason cannot compete. Also, there is broad access to the public debate, which now incliudes those who have bad-faith agendas as well as the low-information participants.