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Comment by godshatter | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the world has changed but when someone says something stupid and someone else calls them on it, backing it up with facts, and they double down on the stupid... shouldn't there be a population of people out there that see this as a desperation move on the part of the original poster? Or a sign of closed-mindedness?

Correcting someone in a public venue isn't for the audience of one that is spouting stupid things, it's for the rest of the world that is reading the thread. So a fact-based correction that causes more stupid to be posted is doing it's job, really.

If the response happens to reference the facts that were posted, well, now you've got a conversation going.

I would also like to point out that stupid is in the eye of the beholder sometimes. Something can sound stupid on first blush yet turn out to be true.

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I think a lot of people can't see through the noise. Find a video of two pundits arguing, and I guarantee that you can find videos which alternately claim that each side "destroyed" the other. It's not just that people can't integrate all the different information out there. (this is part of the problem, too, of course) Frankly, I think we have underestimated the degree (or at least I underestimated it quite a bit) to which many people never really understand the validity of an argument, but simply adopt it when it becomes "mainstream." Of course the problem now is that there is not really a "mainstream." There are many small competing and conflicting "mainstreams." And so people adopt many of these ideas.

>I think a lot of people can't see through the noise.

What if it's not about noise, but about complexity?

We live in a world that is orders of magnitude more complex than any other population of humans has ever experienced.

This complexity means that it's more difficult to know what is 'true' or not, and even that truth is not as universal as it once seemed. Are eggs good for you or bad for you? What's the best way to raise your kids? How do you deal with homelessness? Every single one of those questions have answers that are simple, obvious, and wrong. Every one of those questions needs to be answered starting with "it depends." We cannot treat truth in these cases as absolute, because we know better than that now.

Perhaps it's not surprising that we are not well adapted to dealing with that complexity.

Is the world really that much more complex? Our ancestors ate eggs, raised children, and dealt with the homeless. We can muddle through with suboptimal solutions.

It's even worse than that. I went to a evolution vs creationism debate once when I was in college (it was put on for the students there). Everyone in that auditorium was an atheist and everyone was a young earth creationist. The difference was in which speaker had just made a really good sounding point.

The people on the extremes each believe that their side won but as far as I could tell all the people in the middle believed in both as they crossed some "sufficiently cool" threshold.

Everyone was a creationist AND everyone was an atheist? It's a little unclear what that sentence was supposed to say.

What it sounds like is that the person relating the tale mistook cheering for a particular line delivered in a debate performance with agreement (even if momentary) with the broader position it meant to advance.

You understood my statement.

Also, seriously? This is just a smart sounding way to say that you think I'm dumb and that whatever is in your mind is the real truth.

If you're going to put words in my mouth at least be charitable enough to disagree with me before or after your translation.

> You understood my statement.

Well, I have and stated a tentative understanding, but if I correctly understand your present response you seem to disagree with it. So...maybe not?

> Also, seriously? This is just a smart sounding way to say that you think I'm dumb and that whatever is in your mind is the real truth.

No, there’s a difference between “your description sounds like you probably mistook X for Y” and “you are dumb”. Obviously, its a disagreement about the part of the description that seems to report an interpretation rather than observable facts.

> If you're going to put words in my mouth

I didn’t put words in your mouth.

> at least be charitable enough to disagree with me before or after your translation.

“sounds like ... mistook <thing> for <other thing>” is explicitly both a report of a tentative understanding of what you were trying to say and a disagreement with it, along with a specific alternate interpretation. So, inasmuch as I should have disagreed with you...I did.

Hi Verdex, I read your comment and don't understand what you meant either.

I think it's fine, opinions area fluid, there's little inherent truth.

Atheist too because it s the most likely, but I dont feel bad an unprovable fallacy gets some traction: after all maybe a loving designer is looking at me while I pooptype this.

The US gains more raising credit card consuming drones than revolutionary philosophers

Reasoning takes effort and people are lazy. So why not listen to my favorite <insert individual of note in society>. /s

IMO, it sounds like a lack of critical thinking skills. Instead of pondering validity, as one does to "think critically," as you stated, some people adopt a line of thought from their authority (be it a pastor at church, Tucker Carlson/Rachel Maddow/etc on TV, POTUS, news outlets, etc).

People aren't guided by critical thinking. They're guided by their trust network.

They believe whatever the smart person they trust the most.

I guarantee that you and I do that too. On occasion, we can and do critical thinking, and that's when we make progress.

One of the most important posts I read on here was on weirdness budgets. Most people want to speak with people with opinions +/- 5% of their own. If you go beyond that limit, people will ignore you and seek feedback from those within their circle.

If you are self-directed and discover your own truth, your going to have to overcome a lot of social stigma to get your points across. And in a comment on a message board where someone might not interact with you again, its guaranteed to fail.

> And in a comment on a message board where someone might not interact with you again, its guaranteed to fail.

So true! Though like advertising, the more you see it the more it sticks?

I think this is actually a large reason that the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon exists.

In this framing of Baader-Meinhof, it is something that appears constantly, but as it is to weird you ignore it. Then as you discover more things related to it, eventually it's close enough to your Overton window for you to be able to be ready for it.

Then once you learn it you see it everywhere.

It's interesting that you tie this with advertising, one of the things I learned watching The Social Dilemma was that the way that platforms like YouTube work is that they will attempt to funnel you into the most profitable content types.

For instance if you are watching Gaming content on YouTube, it will recommend PewDiePie, a Gaming YouTuber well known to every once in a while say racist things. Then if you watch enough PewDiePie, you'll start seeing more racist channels. At some point you'll get Jordan Peterson(whom himself is mostly harmless...). If you watch one Peterson video your recommendations will flip from whatever you were doing previously to 80% his content, and if you continue down the rabbit hole it will get as bad as you can imagine. YouTube does this because the people susceptible to watch these videos are also susceptible to buy things from advertisements, so they are their most profitable customers.

YouTube has unknowingly created a funnel that can move the Overton Window to turn people into extremists all so that they can make money from selling healing crystals to them.

A fun one is flat Earthism. People trying to deny it are so full of confidence because their entire lives everyone has been telling them it's round, but they never actually confirmed that themselves and don't know how. They make up "obvious" evidence like "Just stand on a hill and look at the horizon to prove it's round!". When people are too confident they're right, they tend to assume critical thinking is no longer required.

Nobody has the time to actually test everything they believe to be true, even if they knew what an appropriate test would be.

Sure. Not saying we should for normal life. But if you're going to argue with someone about a fact, then you should. Not necessarily personally of course, you could learn about other people's tests and how trustworthy they are and all that.

Often the words "I, you, my, your" are as bad as swear words when correcting someone. One sure way to anger someone and have the double down is to hurt their ego by using one of those words (e.g., your code has a bug, vs the code has a bug). Avoid those words and disagreements become a lot more productive.

Some years back, before I sold my business and retired, I tried something and I've stuck with it ever since.

I pretty much never say 'should', in the sense that someone 'should do' something. Instead, I use the word 'could.'

"Well, you could try doing it this way."

"As you're not having any success with this method, you could use this method."

The difference in responses was great enough for me to develop the habit and stick with it. I'd call it a success.

There are other things I don't say. I don't say "I understand." Instead, I say something similar to, "I can relate." Again, the differences in responses that I get from people have made it worth developing the habit.

Are you suggesting we could all try doing this too?

If you want people to be more receptive, you could try it.

Yes, I could. (Not sure if you missed the original joke...)

But I really appreciate your insight here. I've already suggested it to someone else and will try to use this myself.

It works all over the place...

Your buddy is over at your house and they're bitching about their significant other.

"Well, you could try listening to your SO's complaints, weighing them for validity, and consider acting on them."

Your drunk buddy will almost certainly take that better than if you told them they should shut the hell up and listen to the valid criticism levied against them by their spouse.

See the 1% rule:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

The vast majority of people are lurkers and only read the content.

It's certainly a sign of closed mindedness.

AFAICT most discussion on the internet is pretty closed-minded though, people have their preconceptions, and they argue them. Rarely is anyone enlightened, or are minds changed. It is common to see such a person be corrected on a point of fact but then go on to repeat the same falsehood in another place or on another day. This is likely because to them the narrative is important, the emotions, rather than correctness.

> Correcting someone in a public venue isn't for the audience of one that is spouting stupid things, it's for the rest of the world that is reading the thread.

I hope so, but I'm not sure it works like that either, as the legions of spouters seem to grow by the day :/

I suspect "spam filter heuristics" also contribute to close mindedness. If something is repeated ad nauseam and the observer finds it false every time then they mentally downgrade the reliability to "known bullshit, not worth listening to". The process is agnostic to any objective truth and could apply to stubborn flat-earthers taking "against intuition and the ability to easily comprehend like a flat map" as false.

Something missing in this type of analysis is the future actions of the person being corrected. One might say something wrong, be corrected, then argue (because being corrected makes you feel bad and angry). But the next time they say something, they might consider it more, or maybe not be as extreme, as they want to avoid the bad feelings caused by negative feedback.

It’s easy to see this in action on this very site — nobody likes to be downvoted, so the conversations stay somewhat more civil than other sites.

I thought that is exactly what the researchers were looking at

“Truth is so obscure these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” - Blaise Pascal

Unfortunately, the odds are against us. Lying is inherent in human nature. Even if you point out the facts, most people will be deluded again because the majority drowns everything, especially in an anonymous environment such as the internet.

But what are the facts? WMDs in Iraq and the myriad of other lies our governments throw at us. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me ten thousand times and shame on everyone.

>WMDs in Iraq

Some interesting reading regarding this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

It turns out that there really were some WMDs after all. I'm not sure they were enough to justify war, but I don't suppose that matters at this stage.

I don’t see any hard evidence there, only speculation on chemical weapons. But maybe I missed it?

There's a bunch of reports (keep scrolling and reading). I'm not sure what you want for 'hard evidence'.

You'll see things like - "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent" (among others).

As I said, I'm not really sure that justified the war, but they did exist. They also had a bunch of yellowcake and stuff like that.

> Maybe the world has changed but when someone says something stupid and someone else calls them on it, backing it up with facts, and they double down on the stupid... shouldn't there be a population of people out there that see this as a desperation move on the part of the original poster? Or a sign of closed-mindedness?

What you describe is pretty ordinary behavior. To the extent that standard books on negotiation and communication (going back decades) caution you about it. If you want to change someone's mind, throwing facts at them is, on average, a very poor strategy.

> Correcting someone in a public venue isn't for the audience of one that is spouting stupid things, it's for the rest of the world that is reading the thread.

Whenever I have seen this happening, the rest of the audience generally viewed the negative feedback as "unnecessarily punishing" the original poster. From their perspective, the original poster was "just human", and the one who corrected was just trying to "show off".

> shouldn't there be a population of people out there that see this as a desperation move on

This part of the population has left twitter a long time ago...

Did you miss the entire Trump presidency? People love that sort of thing. Facts are difficult, inscrutable things that have to be dug out of observations and carefully safeguarded. They often tend to be disappointing. Whereas lies and fantasies? Those are theatre.

Oh, and algorithmic timelines make this worse: correcting someone is promoting their original views to other people.

The problem is that there is too much information. For (almost) any position, there are some facts that support that position. There are other facts that oppose the position. The evidence (the sum of all the facts) often leans one way or the other - either supporting or opposing the position. But someone arguing in bad faith can often find enough facts to look somewhat convincing, which lets them persuade at least some others that their position is correct.

Our interpretation of what actually supports what is incorrect because of our limited perspectives

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