kate jack

There is so much information available nowadays. We are absolutely inundated with data from TV, radio, internet and print sources. On any issue, there is a plethora of contradictory viewpoints supported by seemingly contradictory facts.

Examples:

Climate change is real and driven by man vs. We can't even prove statistically significant temperature increase and man cannot influence climate anyway.

Oil is drying up vs. there is plenty of oil if we could just go get it.

Evolution vs intelligent design.

Big vs small gov't.

There are a million issues such as these where opinion seems evenly divided across the American polity.

My question is this: why do we hold the particular views that we hold on these topics. Few people are experts in any of these topics, yet most of us have beliefs about them and support a particular policy direction. What informs our beliefs?

I assert that most of our beliefs are simply inherited from our parents. And that most of our opinions about issues do not flow from actual understanding, but simply derive from the ideological lens through which we learned to see the issues.

All the discussion of climate change on this forum is a great example of this. How many people that have posted on the subject actually have any knowledge whatsoever about the subject? There may be some climatologists here, but I suspect 99% of the people weighing in know what they know from the media. The media they choose to believe is informed by their ideological sympathies. These ideological sympathies were inherited from their parents or other influential people in their environment.

I think most people choose what they want to believe, or have the choice made by their upbringing.

filtherton

I think that at some level, all people choose to embrace the beliefs in which they find the most aesthetic appeal.

Theists find the notion of god appealing, so they believe in god.

Atheists find the notion of no god appealing (perhaps indirectly), so they don't believe in god.

Most people who believe one way or another on global warming do so for reasons that have nothing to do with objective evaluation of scientific data.

I've come to the conclusion that when it comes to motivating people, empty sloganeering and shiny objects are 5x as effective as sound reasoning (exhibit a: the war in Iraq, exhibit b: SUVs).

tiger777

Uhm depends on the level of reasoning of the person. Simple minded people might believe what they want to, but logical people believe things based on evidence mostly anyway.

filtherton

Most everyone is "logical". I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who believes in things for which there is no evidence. Whether you happen to agree with the validity of said evidence is another matter altogether. Standards of evidence are arbitrary and are perhaps chosen to yield the most aesthetically pleasing result.

girldetective

I think I disagree with you a bit re choice by upbringing. I see that people are brought up with not only their parent's views, but those of their teachers, peers, and so forth. When one is young there might be a tendency to agree with the parents but as one ages there is so much info and exposure available that it would be hard not to take responsibility for one's own opinions and beliefs. In addition, I think there are those that look for a different answer than their parent's. Just look at adolescents.

*

I think this is an interesting question.

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luciferase75

HAHAHAHAHA. Haven't watched jerry springer lately, have you filtheron? That's a joke, BTW. Or is it?

I think there are alot of people who are logical and rational, but they tend to either forget or suppress it in daily life. Thus the vast masses are either illogical, irrational, or plain stupid.
Guy gets screwed by a horse and dies. Voluntarily.
Pregnant woman complains to city about jackhammer outside in the street, while she smokes ON CAMERA.
2 girls 1 cup
Nearly any video on break.com
Britney Spears
Jamie Lynn Spears
Tom Cruise
George W. Bush (the most powerful person on the planet says that God speaks to him...)
HEAVEN'S GATE CULT

People are logical? Really? In a college philosophy convention, maybe. In the middle of town? I highly doubt it. Celebrities are idolized, The world is nearly in a religious war, cocaine is still a powerful drug (Chappelle joke there), the internet is regulated by people that believed it is a series of tubes....the list goes on.

No, I truly believe the world, on the whole, has the IQ of a 2 year old.

Just my opinion, of course.

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Living in the United Socialist States of America.

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filtherton

The world has an IQ of 100 (or is it 125?) because that is how IQ is defined (ideally).

It's important to note that in discussions like this, the word logical is typically defined as "someone who has done something that doesn't make sense to the person who is using the word".

As in "x person is illogical because the stuff they do doesn't make sense to me".

The idea of logic is co-opted by folks who just want a fancy way of hoisting themselves up on a pedestal. Which is fine. Shit's colloquial.

The problem here is that using colloquial definitions for words is confusing when discussing them in their formal context. Try talking about energy in a colloquial sense in the middle of a conversation about power plant operations.

If you want to say that people do the things they do because they're dumb, then that's fine. If you want to say the same thing, but instead of using the word "dumb" you use the word "illogical" then that's something else entirely.

A great many people who do dumb things do them for completely logical reasons.

jewels

What gd said.

I do think our core beliefs originate in our youth and thus our parents' politics and morality would definitely come into play. But I think it's a mixture of exposure during that upbringing which includes education (including books, novels, films and all media exposure), circles of friends, peers at work, and personal experiences throughout life.

__________________
Politics is applesauce.


- Will Rogers

luciferase75

Maybe I should have left that in the quote. I don't think I have to explain the references here.
Again:
Heaven's gate
George W. Bush
Tom Cruise
and:
Any Christian
Any Creationist
Any person that puts faith first (in any deity)

The list goes on. I'm not bashing those people, in fact I am a part of a couple of those examples, to a certain extent (not creationist, I find the thought offensive). But to say that one would be hard pressed to find your example is, well, wrong. It's almost the opposite IMO. I'm not attacking or bashing, just that is what bothered me to begin with but I didn't really point a finger at it. And please don't say the bible proves the existence of God, because it comes nowhere near proving anything. You don't strike me as the person that would, but hey it's the web and you never know. To quote a friend's sig:
"If The Bible proves the existence of God, then comic books prove the existence of Superheros."
I don't know who said it first, but I applaud the statement it makes.

And I know I relaxed on definitions, but I don't feel like nitpicking them with you. Suffice to say that I did separate them in a sentence. I also know one could say "oh the average IQ is 100/125 because that is the basis of the test to begin with", but I was trying to exaggerate a little for humor. Try to get the joke, please.

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Entomologist, A+ certified

filtherton

I think if you asked the people in your list they could probably tell you why they believe what they believe, what evidence they have for it. The fact that other people find certain kinds of evidence compelling doesn't mean that you have to. The fact that you don't find their evidence compelling doesn't invalidate it as evidence, unless you happen to be examining it with respect to a specific standard of evidence. Don't confuse scientific evidence with other types of evidence.

I'm sure George Bush has convinced himself that the evidence justifying the invasion of Iraq was bullet proof, and as such did the things he thought made the most sense to do. He saw evidence and acted accordingly. Granted, his logic might not have been as solid as a mathematical proof, but it rarely ever really is.

FYI, one of the least funny things you can do is explain how funny your joke was after it bombs.

luciferase75

Uh huh. You're one of those that has to be right. You're good at it, have fun with that. Welcome to my ignore list.

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Baraka_Guru

I think people believe what they believe because they need some explanation for that which cannot be fully known. It's a simple as that. The human mind is curious, it suffers, it pines for knowledge. When it cannot have what it wants, it tends to fill in this void with the best substitute, which often consists of faith, contemplation, educated guesses, profound imagination, sublime thoughts, etc. It's in our nature; our brains are wired that way. This process is driven by the pursuit of knowledge and hope.

While pithy and humorous, this doesn't actually work. The Bible is a set of sacred writings that teach morality, while comic books are stories of varying themes. Both can teach us many things, but neither proves the existence of anything. That is not their function.

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"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

luciferase75

I know that. You basically agreed with exactly what I said LOL. I was making that same point

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Living in the United Socialist States of America.

Entomologist, A+ certified

Baraka_Guru

Oh, so I did. Sorry, my eyes are blurry from staring back and forth at manuscripts and computer screens. At least what I said offered some further explanation!

__________________
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer."

—"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

—"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

luciferase75

LOL been there myself. It's all good, man

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Living in the United Socialist States of America.

Entomologist, A+ certified

filtherton

Since you're ignoring me anyway...

Grow up. Don't be so dramatic.

I don't have to be right, and I'm not trying to be right. I am just a person with a perspective. I am open to other perspectives, and don't begrudge people who have them (unless they try to begrudge me). That being said, you may be right and I may be wrong, but we'll never know, because you went and got all sulky.

Atreides88

I disagree. I believe most people function on emotion far more than on objective, logical, reasoning. Individuals may be capable of objective thought and reasoning, but I find when dumped into the larger ocean of society, most individuals' thoughts are lost in the "group think" phenomenon. Those individuals who can rise above "group think" and maintain their rationality are the ones who end up controlling society. En masse, humans like shiny buttons and catchy slogans, and will believe whoever provides the shiniest button or the catchiest slogan.

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"There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school." -- Thucydides

filtherton

I don't necessarily disagree with you, Atreides88. I just think that a lot of those processes that we tend to deem irrational are rational, but function in a domain that isn't really suited to effective and thoughtful decision making. If people weren't rational in how they embrace shiny things then shiny things wouldn't be so predictably effective at motivating people. It doesn't seem the act of succumbing to group think is the result of a logical decision making process, but I think that in the short term it is. If it weren't, then group think wouldn't necessarily be so predictably commonplace.

Words like "irrational" and "illogical" are generally used to describe behaviors that don't make sense. But if you accept the notion that people generally only do things that they believe they have reason to do, then everything everybody does is rooted in some sort of rational justification, be it well founded or not. People do things when people feel like it makes sense to do them.

Aristotle, himself no stranger to logic, thought the concept of spontaneous generation was a very compelling explanation for how certain animals are born. It was a rational conclusion for him to come to. His problem wasn't that he couldn't think clearly or that he was irrational. It was that he lacked enough information to come to an accurate conclusion. His attempts at using logic to explain the world around him were doomed from the get-go.

Valid logic is very frequently based on bad information, regardless of whether that information is due to underdeveloped understandings of biology or the simple limitations of the human mind. One problem with the human mind (at least with my mind) is that there is a limit to the amount of information it can consider at one time. Every decision is made with limited focus and limited information.

I don't think that the problem of group think is one of rational versus irrational, it could also be a matter of "Hey, there are all these people who are doing this thing, and there's a lot of them and so maybe there's something to what they're doing, so I'm going to trust that there's a good reason and do it too." The desire to defer to the wisdom of the crowd trumps the desire to think independently and from there a rational decision is made to do what the crowd is doing. The decision isn't irrational because there is a clear line of reasoning throughout.

That doesn't mean it was a good decision to make. That depends on whatever is actually happening. Sometimes the crowd is right and sometimes the crowd is wrong.

In any case, I think the folks who can take advantage of things like group think can do so because they understand the logic of human decision making. Shiny things are useful because their shininess distracts us from how much they cost. A rational decision taking into account cost becomes a rational decision taking into account how great owning a shiny thing would be.

Atreides88

Re-reading it, I think I may have confused my point. I think we're saying the same thing, but two different ways. My main point, is that I find group think to be motivated by emotion, and how something makes the group or the individuals comprising the group feel, rather than is what's in their best interest. I will concede that sometimes the most objective of decisions can be made with poor knowledge or insufficient knowledge, but hindsight is 20/20. The very desire to follow everyone else is because that individual wants to feel like they belong, ergo happiness stems from being part of a group.

I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that subjective, or emotion driven, rationale is logical. While there are trends, and those trends are logical and can be exploited, I don't see how a process of reason can be based on emotion. If that were the case, we would no doubt still be stuck in the bronze age.

I base my world view on the fact that emotion clouds the mind and strips away logic and reason, and that the best decisions are made in an objective manner that weighs the pros and cons and then moves forward based upon that analysis. If I am to understand you, you weigh no judgment upon the merit of a decision, solely that every decision is a logical one and that it depends solely upon the POV of each individual, yes?

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"There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school." -- Thucydides

UKking

I find that particular notion absolutely frightening, and resist believing it in favor of faith in an individuals raw potential and equality.
But that's a derail.

filtherton

That pretty much sums it up.

I view logic as structural thing, and as such make no value judgments about the quality of a decision with respect to logic.

Certainly there are always poor decisions being made. I just don't think you can blame poor logical abilities for those poor decisions.