[simonh]

That's not a rejection of the claim at all though, even though OP dislikes it. Why should objective proof exert a 'slow force' on our reason? Surely it should be decisive. Saying it can take a generation is tantamount to admitting that objective proof can have to wait for the people who reject it anyway to literally die off before it gets accepted.

So what OP seems to be actually rejecting is an extreme version of the claim, along the lines that humans aren't rational at all, which isn't there in the article.

[waterhouse]

There are cognitive metastrategies that can look like irrationality in the small, but are pretty sensible for people with limited information and research time.

Consider: "a stranger makes a sophisticated argument, which seems convincing, whose conclusion is that you're wrong about something important". If you always respond to this by doing whatever the stranger advocates, you're likely to end up getting scammed or getting eaten up by a political movement or otherwise doing something you later regret.

Even if the argument is true as far as it goes, sometimes true facts are presented in a misleading context. One favorite tactic to discredit a group seems to be to find some of its worst members and do truthful reporting on them; one can also try to suggest "policy X is working/not working" by choosing the statistical measures that paint it in the best/worst light, and failing to mention the other measures that might portray it more accurately.

A general strategy of "remember new information, but don't let it affect your actions until you've had time to reflect / consult with those wiser than yourself / do further research" is useful in a wide range of situations. (And if you don't bother to do further research for years, it follows that either the new information sits in abeyance for years, or you take the risk of acting on it without having validated it.)

[simonh]

>If you always respond to this by doing whatever the stranger advocates, you're likely to end up getting scammed or getting eaten up by a political movement or otherwise doing something you later regret.

That's amazing, it's an excellent summary of the theory the article proposes for why we instinctively discount evidence against our preconceived opinions. Basically it's to stop us getting scammed, but in the hunter-gatherer context in which we evolved, not a modern society with robust systems for validating evidence.

The pre-conceived opinions the studies test aren't always even things the test subjects actually care about though. They can be opinions about things they were only just exposed to and wouldn't be expected to have any personal investment in, such as opinions about fictional characters that only exist in the test. We're not talking about proving to conservatives that liberalism is right, or vice versa, some of the tests are literally concerning beliefs about issues that only exist in the test. It doesn't matter, as soon as an opinion is formed it's incredibly hard to change it no matter how strong the counter evidence, and even if it's shown conclusively the initial opinion was based on false data.

[michaelmrose]

It takes generations because it takes generations to indoctrinate new generations in the truths gleaned by a small minority of experts in various fields have learned. This isn't strong a indication that people are rational. It's more like indication that societies can magnify the gains of a minority of rational individuals to improve the position of all including the majority not smart enough to have made those gains.