[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated?

Part of the reason, “facts” don’t change our mind is that a lot of “facts” aren’t really facts like physics, but are rather the result of statistical games.

Finally, and I think the biggest issue is that a lot of facts rely on trust, since they are practically impossible for the average person to fully verify. And I think, for a variety of reasons, trust has been lost. Think about vaccines. Say back in the 1950’s, you probably knew or heard of someone who died from polio. You mom, might have had a sibling that died from one of the other vaccine related illnesses. The doctor recommending the vaccines, was seen as a trusted friend. He(it was usually a he back then) probably spent his whole life in your town. He knew your grandparents. Maybe he delivered your parents. He would spend hours at the bedside of a sick child or a dying grandparent. Maybe he was the one who delivered your children as well. Now when he says that he recommends you give your child this vaccine, you are going to listen.

Now forward to modern times. You book your appointment. You go to the office where you wait for hours. The pediatrician comes in and rushes through a 15 minute visit. Says your kid should get vaccinated. On the way home you listen to an investigative report of how doctors are paid by big pharma to prescribe drugs. By the way, you have never heard of anyone you know getting one of these vaccine preventable illnesses.

Now the gap between the educated elites and regular people in this country is widening. They do t interact much socially. They do t even live together. In the United States, the non-college educated have seen a steady decline in their real wages and well-being. Of course they are going to distrust “facts” put out by the elite who are seen as out of touch.

I say this as someone who totally believes in vaccines and have persuaded many of my friends that they should have their children vaccinated. The growing gap between the rich and poor in this country is at the root of many issues.

[treeman79]

Trust is a big part of it.

Facts are closely related to statistics. It’s possible to be both true and a complete lie at the same time.

Abusive people will often use “facts” to control victims. You learn to be very mistrustful after awhile.

[zzzcpan]

Facts is a loaded term here. Facts cannot rely on trust, those are called authoritative opinions, not facts. And opinions about vaccination are still just opinions, not facts. If you say, for example, that it's hazardous not to vaccinate, like the article does, it's not a fact, it's a judgement and advertising judgements is the essence of propaganda, it's basically the opposite of a fact, dystopian use of the word fact. But actual decent factual picture about vaccines is complicated, it's about balancing many big and small risks: catching the virus while you live your life, catching something at the clinic while getting vaccinated, having complications from vaccination, being subjected to unnecessary treatments and drugs because doctors want to profit from you that may also cause complications, or just being able to afford it vaccination, and so on. Not to mention all the unknown unknowns and not knowing how to evaluate the risks involved. And poor but still factual picture would at least not advertise any judgement and would present the reasoning for everyone to make their own conclusions.

[ghthor]

Thank you, this is a well balanced comment and it's highly valuable to have this type of viewpoint in our world.

[simonh]

>First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated?

According to the article they have many times, yes, it describes many examples of similar experiments along these lines.

This evolutionary function of reason, and it's resulting flaws in our implementation of it supports my belief that in the grand scheme of things we are actually only just barely sentient. That is, we're at the very lowermost bound of the set of possible intelligences that are capable of technological civilisation. I think this because, well, we only just recently evolved enough intelligence to actually do it. If we'd become intelligent enough earlier, we'd have done it earlier.

If that's true then sure, it would be natural to expect that our reasoning powers are still impaired by flaws and fallacious tendencies. The scientific method then is a procedural set of rules we've invented to prevent our naturally somewhat irrational tendencies to mess up our ability to determine accurate actionable information. Yay us!

[andi999]

I am wondering why it is so hard for the article to properly reference the study. Then one could easily check through the citiations on google scholar for example. Probably it is Ross, L, Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 880–892.

[Majromax]

> Finally, and I think the biggest issue is that a lot of facts rely on trust, since they are practically impossible for the average person to fully verify. And I think, for a variety of reasons, trust has been lost.

That can explain non-movement of opinion when presented with contrary fact, but not movement away from the fact. The article here notes the experiment when students were presented with dueling articles on capital punishment: the ambiguous data acted to bolster their original position no matter the original stance.

A lack of trust in authority is one thing, but to use the authority's agreement with your pre-existing opinion to determine trust in that same evaluation is inherently circular -- even if it is human.

[byte1918]

> First of all have all these psychological studies been replicated?

> Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding.

[ghthor]

Do you believe that the vaccines contain mercury and aluminum and that those metals are causing problems in people who take that vaccines? Because that's a fact they contain those metals and they hurt people. I have a daughter who went from speaking to requiring 5 years of therapy to start speaking again. I not allowed to sue about that and no one in the medical establishment would acknowledge that the only cause of my daughters sickness could have been the vaccines. The medical establishment is a joke, I'm through with giving them any trust. There is propaganda about vaccines being harmless and it needs to end.

[dragonwriter]

> Do you believe that the vaccines contain mercury and aluminum and that those metals are causing problems in people who take that vaccines?

That’s a lot to unpack.

Yes, vaccines have very low concentration of compounds of those metals.

Yes, those metals at the concentrations in vaccines can cause minor side effects, though there is no evidence of serious side effects.

But, more to the point, vaccines more broadly than those ingredients occasionally cause serious injury. This is a rare but known risk.

> I not allowed to sue about that

It is true that one cannot sue in the US over vaccine injuries but presented alone in this context that is misleading to the point of dishonesty, since there is an alternative compensation program (one where, unlike with regular court where if you win you are still out legal costs without extra proof of particular egregious conduct, you can be awarded costs and fees even if you aren't eligible for compensation for actual harms.)

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

That's because the “medical establishment” doesn't view vaccines as perfectly safe, but instead that they are viewed as being safe in the same sense as other prescription medicines but, further, than the public health establishment—the relevant part of the government—feels there is sufficient public health benefit from vaccination that even harms which would not compensable for other approved drugs are compensable on a no-fault basis for vaccines, to encourage their use.

> and no one in the medical establishment would acknowledge that the only cause of my daughters sickness could have been the vaccines.

If no experts would agree with your claims of causation, then allowing you to sue would just be allowing you to incur a bunch of costs to no end. A more likely explanation for no experts agreeing that the one thing you've focussed on as the cause being the cause is that there is not evidence for the claim of causation.

> There is propaganda about vaccines being harmless

There may be somewhere, but it's not coming from the “medical establishment” or the government, both of which acknowledge that there are both the common minor and less common severe harms from vaccines.

[dennis_jeeves]

>Yes, those metals at the concentrations in vaccines can cause minor side effects, though there is no evidence of serious side effects.

How about this to ensure safety: demonstrate that they are safe at say 100 times the amount used in vaccines. Has this been done? No, is what I understand. ( if you do find a study to that effect please put it here or email me).If that can be demonstrated then we can be reasonably sure that 1/100 the massive dose will be relatively harmless.

The way it is normally put : that is no evidence of serious side effects is disingenuous. It's the other way round, it has to be demonstrated that it has no serious side effects.

[mistermann]

>> There is propaganda about vaccines being harmless

> There may be somewhere, but it's not coming from the “medical establishment” or the government, both of which acknowledge that there are both the common minor and less common severe harms from vaccines.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html

"Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism"

The CDC does not know if vaccines cause autism, they only know (assuming they are telling us everything they know) that a causative relationship has not found.

This is just one example of vaccine related propaganda that is asserted by authoritative bodies.

EDIT: Moving a conversation from the abstract to the concrete seems to be a reliable way to invoke this behaviour in many individuals, even in a thread devoted to the very topic. Surely there must be a name for this phenomenon, it would be interesting to read studies on it.

[dragonwriter]

> The CDC does not know if vaccines cause autism, they only know (assuming they are telling us everything they know) that a causative relationship has not found.

No, they also no that the controlled-for-other-factors correlation that would indicate the possibility of causation has not been found outside of research that has been established as deliberately fraudulent.

And they know that there has been extensive research into the question because of the popularity of the fraudulent research cited for the opposite conclusion.

If there is a mechanism by which vaccines cause autism in some specific cases, they must also prevent autism that would otherwise manifest in other cases enough to mask the effect in aggregate.

In any case, the evidence-based rejection that vaccines cause a specific harm is not equivalent to propaganda that they are harmless.

The existence of the compensation program is an explicit acknowledgement that they are not harmless, as well as an easier route to compensation for games than exists for most drugs.

[mistermann]

Let's try and unmuddy the waters here a bit....

"Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism"

Are you saying that this assertion is unequivocally known to be true? No uncertainty or possibility of future conflicting discoveries whatsoever?

> In any case, the evidence-based rejection that vaccines cause a specific harm is not equivalent to propaganda that they are harmless. The existence of the compensation program is an explicit acknowledgement that they are not harmless, as well as an easier route to compensation for games than exists for most drugs.

Scope expansion is an effective form of rhetoric (which some people classify as a form of propaganda in itself). Not saying this was intentional on your part, I tend to believe it is simply an innate/instinctual ability (System 1, in Thinking Fast and Slow parlance) of the subconscious. I am surely guilty of the same thing at times.

Also: how did you come to know what everyone working for the CDC knows?