I'd similarly contest this, or at least part of this, on two, maybe three levels.
I don't think that your responses contest what I'm saying though.
One, people tend not to "seek verification" for much of anything, so saying people don't do it when they've been raised to believe X is, to me, overstating the importance of raising people to believe X. Inertia is powerful and most people don't care about most things, but it's hard to tell how potent X-raising is when any default tends to stick around until dislodged.
Ok, yes. I would agree that people rarely seek verification. In fact, that's a big part of my premise. That people don't believe what they believe for reasons of logic or evidence. If I'm "overstating" the significance of childhood learning as part of the mechanism for instilling belief...well, ok. Maybe. But I don't think a strongly held belief acquired at a time
other than childhood is exempt from the phenomenon we're discussing. Really, the "raise a child to believe" thing was more an example than central to my thesis. I think it's a
good example, and certainly a common case, but if you want to point out that the phenomenon occurs in other cases too, I'm certainly not going to object to that.
in my experience people are really only stubborn about things they care about- so usually instinctive and/or cultural things. Tell somebody their god is stupid and made up, and they'll get mad. Tell somebody that glass is not, in fact, a slow-flowing liquid, and they'll be skeptical but not angry, just dubious.
That might also be the case. What I'm saying does not contradict and is not contradicted by what you're saying. However, it has been my observation that in the specific case of dinosaurs, people tend to be
very angry if you ask them to justify their belief in dinosaurs. I've done it. So if dinosaurs are "things people care about" then there's no conflict between what you're saying and what I'm saying.
Unfortunately, it's also been my experience that an awful lot of people have difficulty distinguishing
"why do you believe in dinosaurs?" from
"I assert that dinosaurs are fake." And when you ask them to explain why they believe, rather than self-examining why they believe what they do, they tend to try to prove to you that dinosaurs were real. Which is completely missing the point.
I suppose we lack data here. Maybe the thing to do would be to pick something else people believe, like say...that the earth orbits the sun. And ask them why they believe it. Like dinosaurs, that's also something that people believe, but that's terribly difficult for the average person to have any relevant evidence of.
I predict that asking people to justify their belief in heliocentrism would also tend to make them mad. Even though it's something that they probably have less reason to care about than dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are "cool" to young kids. Planetary orbits probably aren't. And yet I predict that it will nevertheless make them angry to have that belief questions. I don't think it's about personal relevance, or how much they care about the topic. I think it's simple cognitive dissonance. People believe a lot of things simply because they've been told to believe them, and like you say, they tend not to verify things. I think that having firmly held beliefs questioned is painfully uncomfortable to most people, and I think that showing them that they don't actually have any good reason to believe the things they do, is also uncomfortable.
Three... honestly? In my experience, even when people do care, it often feels like they know the thing itself isn't the actual issue half the time. Religion is a big offender here- I mean, really? You want to tell me, with a straight face, that there's an entity powerful enough to create the entire world, who is deeply interested in your personal actions, and you're not learning original Hebrew and ancient Jewish culture to better understand what this terribly sky terror wants and is like? But even with social issues and the like, it often feels like the issue isn't that they genuinely believe that every scientific study that contradicts them is irrelevant or fraudulent, it feels like they just don't care because that's not the real issue. At a bare minimum, I'd wager a lot of people aren't nearly as convinced of their own arguments as they are concerned about what would happen if the other guys won.
Sports team favoritism or friendly trash talk would of course be the poster children for this concept
That might well be the case...in some cases. Sports teams being, as you say, the poster child. A guy might
know that his team is bad, but he'll angrily defend it anyway. Nationalism being another strong example. Question america, and americans tend to freak out.
But the phenemonon you're describing is not mutually exclusive with my premise. Again, heliocentrisism probably isn't something most people have any reason to "care" about, but it probably
is a thing that people genuinely believe. And again, I predict that people would be angry if you questioned it.
I might have to test that.
The fact that any shoe-confirming or Marhollygon-disparaging evidence is ultimately subject to the same problems doesn't mean they're both equally valid and likely notions
asking "and how do you know that?" repeatedly tends to result in earlier, more numerous, and more serious problems along the priest chain than the scientist chain.
Maybe. But the same problem does occur in both chains.
Please understand, it's not my ultimate intention to argue the merits of science vs religion. It's my intention to discuss the nature of belief. Dinosaurs, science and religion are merely good vehicles for that discussion.
Author
Topic: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof (Read 13601 times)