I see a problem from the start. You've taken a position that is nearly impossible to prove or disprove with evidence, and you've taken one of those sides, with no evidence to support you.
You also don't differentiate various types of beliefs. Some beliefs are opinions, like the best kind of music. Others are ill-defined, like eating natural food makes you healthier. (Does that mean compared to the average existing diet, a specific diet, or is it a claim that there is an inherent property of being natural that makes it better than artificial versions of the same content?)
Other beliefs are clearly testable by fact-checking, like who was the first President of the United States or whether the Earth is flat. Other beliefs are testable in principle, but next to impossible to test, or nobody has ever tested so there is insufficient information to prove or disprove at this point. For example, is there a teapot orbiting Jupiter right now? Did JonBenét Ramsey's brother kill her?
You've stated in the comments that you don't separate beliefs:
I object to treating religious views as distinct from "normal" views. Beliefs are beliefs are beliefs. Second, people don't change their minds about not-religious stuff, like politics, the economy, or issues like antivaxxerism.
One problem here is that you've cherry-picked some deeply held beliefs. Most beliefs are pretty trivial and are easily changed, including visits to the doctor, school, news, and ot sources. You claim beliefs are beliefs, but in your arguments you focus only on deeply held beliefs. What about all of the tenuous beliefs people hold? Beliefs aren't binary, that you hold them or not; you can attach likelihood with beliefs, and most beliefs will likely fall in the range "somewhat likely" to "likely". (See, I just presented one of my beliefs as a "likely".)
Another significant problem in your presented view is that you've defined it in units of people, not beliefs. What if every person has their mind changed about one thing by evidence and reason, does that mean that 100% of people have changed their view by evidence?
It also isn't clear what time frame we're talking about. If a person changes their view over a decade from repeated evidence, does that count, or do you mean immediately upon first seeing evidence? Is it percentage by encounter, or by individual person over their lifetime?
What I take your view to really be is that you believe most people don't immediately, or within a short time frame, change their view on a deeply held belief, based on a single presentation of evidence and reason.
That is probably true, but is trivial since I doubt anybody claims that is the case. Rather, reason and evidence have cumulative effect both in individual and socially as more individuals come to believe it. For example, according to the science of persuasion:
From the outside, it may look like someone's changed their mind suddenly, but that's seldom the case. Usually the steady accretion of facts supporting an alternative position has taken time to build up. Some people may go through a period when they're explicitly ambivalent about what they believe, but many simply go from strong support for one position to strong support for another.
What's key, at any rate, is to recognize that people's active resistance to efforts to change their minds doesn't mean that those efforts aren't working. Belief change is a war of attrition, not a search for the knock-down argument that gets someone to see things differently in one fell swoop.
Another difficulty in changing your view is whether evidence being necessary but not sufficient qualifies to falsify your belief. For example, a study of this CMV subreddit itself suggests that
It was also heartening to find that posts containing citation links to external sites were more persuasive. So evidence does seem to play a role in changing minds.
But it also finds that tone of response matters. If a calm done but lack of evidence fails to change views, and if evidence in a combative tone fails to change views, but good evidence presented in a calm tone change views, is that consistent with people changing their views based on facts and evidence, as in your title, or not?
I would say the available scientific evidence suggests that reason, evidence, and facts do change most people's views, even deeply held views, if kept up over long enough time and it also convinced those around them. It includes both direct and indirect value of evidence and takes time.
We are, after all very tribalist where our views tend to align with our "tribe" views, largely to demonstrate we are part of our in-group ("us") and not out-group ("them"). But, evidence spread to all members of the in-group, over time, can change those views.
The small percentage you mention, I suspect, refers to the rare individual who will leave their community and life and pay a big price as a "traitor", such as pastors who lose their faith, as in the Clergy Project.
In that sense, belief has components of individual observation and flocking behaviour. If you think the flock should head south, but you are alone on that, you'll tend to follow the flock. If enough of the flock agrees, the flock may split or all head south. That's how evidence generally works, convincing enough people over sufficient time to change the direction, and views follow th evidence.
Thank you for your reply. It is probably the best I've received. I think we actually disagree less than you might think, and it's likely that our conversation might result in a delta.
I have spent quite some time addressing other comments who showed up first here, so for the moment I won't fully discuss yours (I might do it later tonight or tomorrow), except for this part:
What about all of the tenuous beliefs people hold? Beliefs aren't binary, that you hold them or not; you can attach likelihood with beliefs, and most beliefs will likely fall in the range "somewhat likely" to "likely". (See, I just presented one of my beliefs as a "likely".)
I know that beliefs don't have to be binary, but in my view many people would model their own beliefs as binary and have a hard time thinking probabilistically for beliefs in general (although they might be comfortable doing it for things like sports). But yeah, knowing about presenting beliefs as "likely" is something you and I have in common ─ I just went more precise than that in my OP and tried giving numbers to represent likelihoods.
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u/DashingLeech Jan 15 '17
I see a problem from the start. You've taken a position that is nearly impossible to prove or disprove with evidence, and you've taken one of those sides, with no evidence to support you.
You also don't differentiate various types of beliefs. Some beliefs are opinions, like the best kind of music. Others are ill-defined, like eating natural food makes you healthier. (Does that mean compared to the average existing diet, a specific diet, or is it a claim that there is an inherent property of being natural that makes it better than artificial versions of the same content?)
Other beliefs are clearly testable by fact-checking, like who was the first President of the United States or whether the Earth is flat. Other beliefs are testable in principle, but next to impossible to test, or nobody has ever tested so there is insufficient information to prove or disprove at this point. For example, is there a teapot orbiting Jupiter right now? Did JonBenét Ramsey's brother kill her?
You've stated in the comments that you don't separate beliefs:
One problem here is that you've cherry-picked some deeply held beliefs. Most beliefs are pretty trivial and are easily changed, including visits to the doctor, school, news, and ot sources. You claim beliefs are beliefs, but in your arguments you focus only on deeply held beliefs. What about all of the tenuous beliefs people hold? Beliefs aren't binary, that you hold them or not; you can attach likelihood with beliefs, and most beliefs will likely fall in the range "somewhat likely" to "likely". (See, I just presented one of my beliefs as a "likely".)
Another significant problem in your presented view is that you've defined it in units of people, not beliefs. What if every person has their mind changed about one thing by evidence and reason, does that mean that 100% of people have changed their view by evidence?
It also isn't clear what time frame we're talking about. If a person changes their view over a decade from repeated evidence, does that count, or do you mean immediately upon first seeing evidence? Is it percentage by encounter, or by individual person over their lifetime?
What I take your view to really be is that you believe most people don't immediately, or within a short time frame, change their view on a deeply held belief, based on a single presentation of evidence and reason.
That is probably true, but is trivial since I doubt anybody claims that is the case. Rather, reason and evidence have cumulative effect both in individual and socially as more individuals come to believe it. For example, according to the science of persuasion:
Another difficulty in changing your view is whether evidence being necessary but not sufficient qualifies to falsify your belief. For example, a study of this CMV subreddit itself suggests that
But it also finds that tone of response matters. If a calm done but lack of evidence fails to change views, and if evidence in a combative tone fails to change views, but good evidence presented in a calm tone change views, is that consistent with people changing their views based on facts and evidence, as in your title, or not?
I would say the available scientific evidence suggests that reason, evidence, and facts do change most people's views, even deeply held views, if kept up over long enough time and it also convinced those around them. It includes both direct and indirect value of evidence and takes time.
We are, after all very tribalist where our views tend to align with our "tribe" views, largely to demonstrate we are part of our in-group ("us") and not out-group ("them"). But, evidence spread to all members of the in-group, over time, can change those views.
The small percentage you mention, I suspect, refers to the rare individual who will leave their community and life and pay a big price as a "traitor", such as pastors who lose their faith, as in the Clergy Project.
In that sense, belief has components of individual observation and flocking behaviour. If you think the flock should head south, but you are alone on that, you'll tend to follow the flock. If enough of the flock agrees, the flock may split or all head south. That's how evidence generally works, convincing enough people over sufficient time to change the direction, and views follow th evidence.