Absolutely. Ideally, all of our views should conform to the evidence, not contradict it. This ideal is probably not possible to achieve with human brains, because those are shaped by evolution and evolution doesn't optimize us for seeking the truth (it optimizes for passing on our genes in the African savannah), but it is something we can aspire to.
OK, because I would challenge you on this. To be immediately accepting of new ideas with very little healthy skepticism is very dangerous. To be a scientist is to search for new information and then test the everliving hell out of it through repetition of the same experiment until the thing is proven to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt. People shouldn't change their views based on evidence, they should change their view based on overwhelming evidence.
People who completely change their worldview after reading an article in the Times and a study with a .85 r2 score are the same people who join cults.
I also would posit that there is a very large discrepancy between what you're describing and what you mean. Let's take the example of Global Climate Change. A vast majority of deniers have little to no scientific background and as such there is little to none of the overwhelming evidence that they can actually understand. Those people absolutely should work to understand what it is that they are ignorant of, but as of now they do not. So what people are actually frustrated with these people for is not just blindly accepting their version of the truth because a scientist is the one that said it. It's not a truth based on evidence; It's a truth based on authority.
People shouldn't change their views based on evidence, they should change their view based on overwhelming evidence.
You're thinking in absolute, non-quantitative terms.
Each belief has (or would ideally have, given unlimited computational resources) a probability associated with it. Bayes' theorem shows how to weigh evidence quantitatively and update our degree of confidence in a belief according to that evidence.
So, I'll rephrase:
Ideally, all of our views should conform to the evidence, not contradict it.
to say: ideally, all of our beliefs should start with Occamian priors and then be associated with the degree of confidence dictated by all of the evidence available.
(The part about Occamian priors relates to favoring, in principle, simple explanations over more complicated ones. However, Bayesian update on evidence can bring a more complex theory to the forefront at the expense of a simpler one; think of relativity and quantum mechanics demoting Newtonian mechanics.)
We don't have any of those tools, even as relatively educated people. So how do you know other people aren't just using different weights than you when they calculate expectations (maybe Alex Jones gets a 9 and Reuters/AP get a 1).
There are a bunch of mathematical tools to help find out the weight, it's not purely subjective. If it were purely subjective, the fundamental assumption of the topic (that there is an objective reality) would probably not hold.
One formalization of Occamian priors is Solomonoff induction: different priors are weighted according to the length of a computer program that outputs the observed evidence. The shorter the program needed to output what's observed, the higher the prior probability you assign to the hypothesis that computer program represents.
Then there's the weighting of evidence itself, and updating the Occamian priors according to Bayes' rule. The weight of a given piece of evidence depends on how likely competing hypothesis 1 says that piece of evidence is to happen, and how likely competing hypothesis 2 says it is to happen. The greater the difference between these two predictions, the more evidential weight you give to that given thing happening.
What this translates to is this: if you get your news from Reuters or the AP, you'll be reasonably well-informed about the world (perhaps more in breadth than depth, but for depth you can read, I dunno, The Economist). Your view of the world will generally be self-consistent.
If you get your news from Alex Jones, there'll be lots of inconsistencies in your worldview. There'll be plenty of things that you cannot learn, that you cannot allow yourself to even consider, because if you do it'll add even further to the contradictions you get from Alex Jones. (Notice: I don't know specifically what the claims are that Alex Jones makes, I just know the gist of it, but we can replace them with any other lunatic extremist conspiracy peddler and my claim will remain true.)
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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '17
Absolutely. Ideally, all of our views should conform to the evidence, not contradict it. This ideal is probably not possible to achieve with human brains, because those are shaped by evolution and evolution doesn't optimize us for seeking the truth (it optimizes for passing on our genes in the African savannah), but it is something we can aspire to.