[MaxBarraclough]

> I really dislike this narrative that facts don't change our minds and we are all irrational.

To mirror simonh's comment, it's rather ironic that you're responding to a claim of fact, with an opinion. Whether it's true or not is a question of science, not wishful thinking, and you've not given a solid reason to reject the findings of this research.

It's like the way the theory of evolution remains true whether or not some nasty elements of the far right try to use it to justify an atrocious ideology like 'social Darwinism'.

> people are using it to discredit democracy

Who does this? I don't see researchers like Dan Ariely [0] lurching to the far right when they make discoveries about our psychology. (It's odd that neither Ariely nor the field of behavioural economics [1] are mentioned in the article.)

Nothing about this research indicates that non-democratic systems of government are the best way to run things after all.

> truth does exert a pull on our beliefs

Broadly speaking mankind seems to get less ignorant over time, but sometimes the pull on our beliefs can act in the opposite direction. [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias#backfire_eff...

[rbecker]

> To mirror simonh's comment, it's rather ironic that you're responding to a claim of fact, with an opinion.

Are they? "But we are approaching the truth. Everything in history, and everything in our daily experience tells us this." sounds like a claim of fact. Do you disagree with it? Have we not, collectively, changed our minds on a great many things?

Evolution, heliocentrism, the importance of doctors washing their hands, the non-determinism of quantum physics - all of these are a result of people changing their minds when presented with new facts. Even the importance of car safety belts and harmfulness of smoking. You are literally surrounded by evidence of people changing their minds when presented with new facts, but choose to instead focus on a few experiments where some people didn't change their minds when presented with some evidence on certain topics.

How did the article call it.. confirmation bias?

[zzzcpan]

This is just a logical fallacy. Some people changed their minds when presented with new facts, sure, but only some, some didn't and most people likely changed their minds when presented and bombarded with opinions, propaganda, etc., but not facts.

[simonh]

Nobody has suggested humans are not capable of rationality, that's an absurd exaggeration. Clearly we are. The article even points out the scientific method as a valuable procedural tool we can use to help overcome the effects of biases, and suggests a method of self-reflection that has proved in studies to help obtain useful results. The better we understand those biases the better we are able to develop new approaches and procedures to mitigate them. But the first step is to understand ourselves and our limitations. Without that, we're a flailing bunch of tribal apes screaming at each other.

[rbecker]

> Nobody has suggested humans are not capable of rationality, that's an absurd exaggeration.

It's the title of the article.

[simonh]

If articles could be distilled entirely down to titles, we wouldn't have articles. The authors are clearly not saying humans are incapable of rational thought, we're just not perfectly rational and in fact rational thinking can be surprisingly difficult for us, that's all. You know that, everybody who has read the article knows that whether they agree with the article or not, so why say this?

It's exactly this sort of hit and run straw man argument the article describes as being behind a lot of fallacious thinking. Scoring a 'hit' on an opponent, no matter how absurd or irrelevant, or how much it distorts the opponent's actual position, grants an immediate dopamine shot. It feels fantastic.

That's a really crucial part of the puzzle. It's why asking participants in a debate to first state the position of their opponent in their own words, but in terms their opponent accepts is accurate, before arguing against them is such a useful tool. It eliminates retorts based on knowing misrepresentations like this, which are a serious impediment to productive discourse.

[rbecker]

The 'often' is missing not just from the title, but the entire article. It fails to draw any attention to the weaknesses or limited applicability of the experiments, and implies they're more universal, overstating their results.

I believe this is deliberate - "humans sometimes don't change their minds on some topics when given some types of new evidence" is uncontroversial, it generates few clicks, little argument. But "facts don't change our minds" (and nothing in the article text about the limitations of that statement), gets you a flame war with one side eager to embrace science, while the other struggles with the contradiction between the article and their own experience.

[simonh]

The article is about studies, not individuals. At the study level, they are pretty much universal. The effect is so strong that at this point demonstrating it is a routine entry level task for first year psychology students (my mother did a degree in child psychology when I was a teenager so none of this is new to me).

I'm surprised at your last statement, my experience is very much in line with the article. Presumably you think you have rational, logical evidence based reasons for many of your opinions right? So how come so many people with opposing views are completely intractable to your arguments? You must have noticed this. So either the subset of humanity that agrees with you on any given topic is all purely rational and objectively correct and all the rest are either up to no good or crazy, or theres something else going on. That's all this article is actually pointing out.