The Cellar - We need to be right

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We need to be right

In this TED Talk, Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting and embracing being wrong. The following bit I pulled out and posted separately on YouTube. Because you see people doing this all the time on the Internets!

You sir are ignorant, an idiot and malevolent.

You people are like that all the time.

I love the TED series of talks.

Very good video UT. I sent it to my mom. Thats exactly how my mom and dad treat me. I will not bring up politics or religion and try not to talk to them about it. One day I was refusing to discuss an issue with my dad (I don't even remember what it was) he started telling me how ignorant I was and that I must not know anything about it because I wouldn't discuss it. Made me feel awful. But discussing these things with them always turns into a fight, and I don't want that. Which that time it turned into a fight anyway.

I would so bang her. I'd fuck the right right out of her. yeah.

wait, how come it doesn't say anonymous for my user name?

I had no idea Christopher Atkins had found a new career. Bravo!

I like how only half of me is right, and the other half is left. Otherwise I'd go round in circles the whole time and I'd get awfully dizzy.

Ms Schulz larger point is that we fight admitting our wrongness because it's psychologically difficult. How many times have you heard someone say "You just can't admit you're wrong!"

This morning we see how this works. Yesterday, Obama released his "long form" birth certificate. His short form was plenty of legal proof of his place of birth. But birther conspiracy theorists continued to say that until Obama released this long form, it was major evidence they were right.

Now suddenly the long form is released, devastating their position; and suddenly, the long form is not enough. Top birther Orly Taitz simply moved the goalposts. She can't admit she's wrong, even in the face of devastating evidence.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...ot_african.php

Quote:

"In those years ... when they wrote race, they were writing 'Negro' not 'African'," Taitz says. "In those days nobody wrote African as a race, it just wasn't one of the options. It sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961 when they wrote white or Asian or 'Negro'."

Are these mistakes limited to the right? No, this is a psychological problem for everyone. On the left we have Trig Birtherism, the theory that Sarah Palin is not the real mother of her son Trig (the one with Down Syndrome). This week the long form showed up: a beat reporter in Alaska revealed that he saw Palin's "baby bump" when Trig was 7 months along. That was still not enough for lead Trig Birther Andrew Sullivan, who moved the goalposts to media's terrible failure to cover what he can't admit is not a story at all:

Quote:

You mean while she was promoting a book detailing bizarre details of the story, was regarded for months as the top GOP opposition leader, and commanded massive media attention, there was no need to investigate this? And the stakes were so low? You mean the exposure of possibly the greatest hoax in American history would have had no impact on the MSM or the RNC or McCain or Harper Collins? This is now just perverse hostility to journalism.

This is pundit-speak for "Sorry, I was wrong about this for over a year. My bad."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad (Post 728389)

Ms Schulz larger point is that we fight admitting our wrongness because it's psychologically difficult.

How human....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad (Post 728389)

Ms Schulz larger point is that we fight admitting our wrongness because it's psychologically difficult. How many times have you heard someone say "You just can't admit you're wrong!"

OK. I'll bite. Footfootfoot was wrong/ is wrong. He wouldn't actually bang her. Not that it was ever an option, but...

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science

Quote:

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

We're not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn't take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that's highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.

Its a good read - check it out.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011...e-chris-mooney

Fascinating. Thanks Classic.