Why facts don't change our minds.

[Spicy McHaggis]

This is a great article about confirmation bias and why facts don't change our minds:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/ ... -our-minds

I've shared this video before (on the old NOM board) but it still applies. The truth about lies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X2QrWwRyRM

Sadly humans are more comfortable with our biases. We probably all know TBMs who refuse to be challenged. I've read where a lot of bishops and TBM spouses refuse to read the essays published on LDS.org for fear of it challenging their beliefs. The truth sounds too painful for them to think about.

For those of us who are NOM or worse, agnostic/athiest like me, something happened so we were able to challenge our beliefs. It's a shame it's so difficult to get others to let go of the confirmation biases.

[SeeNoEvil]

Great article Spicy! I enjoyed your comments too.

Sadly humans are more comfortable with our biases. We probably all know TBMs who refuse to be challenged. I've read where a lot of bishops and TBM spouses refuse to read the essays published on LDS.org for fear of it challenging their beliefs. The truth sounds too painful for them to think about.

And why are we more comfortable with our biases?...... because it will ruin our story! We all have them. Stories we have told others and told ourselves about who we are and what we believe in. Stories that the church told us and then they became ours .... Stories that are our own personal truths. We all want that fuzzy feeling inside that tells us something is true but what we don't always realize and which I certainly didn't was that just because something makes us feel good doesn't mean that it is truth. So when people don't like what we are saying about the church we are messing with their story. It becomes uncomfortable and uncomfortable is not warm and fuzzy so must be lies!

It took me a long time to get my bearings after my shelf fell. I was looking for new truths that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But guess what....

I have come along way from that day I got curious and turned around to see what was making the shadows in the cave.
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html. I have never looked back. I often wonder why people like us figure it out and have the courage to get out of the boat. Hindsight I can see I was stuck on spin cycle for a long time, spinning around and around and never getting anywhere and never finding answers. I knew I needed to change course but never in my wildest imagination did I see myself landing where I am today.

For those of us who are NOM or worse, agnostic/atheist like me, something happened so we were able to challenge our beliefs. It's a shame it's so difficult to get others to let go of the confirmation biases.

What happened for me was that I learned to ask the right question. I don't know about your experience in church but mine was that I was told, "sure, ask all the questions you want... it is good to study and question, but just following the prophet.... he knows the way." Better yet, here is a list of books you can look up the answers in but don't go to the internet, it is all lies. It is a shame that it is do difficult to get others to let go of the confirmation biases which is why I have spent the last 5 years learning how it was that I was duped in the first place. I never want to be duped again.

Good catch Spicy! I enjoyed the YouTube video too. I missed it the first time around.

[FiveFingerMnemonic]

What is the secret sauce that finally crushes the confirmation bias? Is it an overwhelming wave of cognitive dissonance that finally breaks the pattern? I'm still trying to figure out the hack that works. One major factor that got the ball rolling for me was viewing people outside of the church who were perfectly happy and blessed. My own sense of empathy and envy (probably envy moreso) for outsiders caused huge amounts of internal conflict, more than historical facts.

[Corsair]

What is the secret sauce that finally crushes the confirmation bias? Is it an overwhelming wave of cognitive dissonance that finally breaks the pattern? I'm still trying to figure out the hack that works. One major factor that got the ball rolling for me was viewing people outside of the church who were perfectly happy and blessed. My own sense of empathy and envy (probably envy moreso) for outsiders caused huge amounts of internal conflict, more than historical facts.

If there was an easy way to crush confirmation bias, the LDS church would have collapsed within minutes of Emma discovering Joseph in the barn with Fanny Alger. John Larsen of Mormon Expression once commented that every problem with LDS history, doctrine, scripture, or policy was spelled out in the pages of "Dialogue" magazine in the 1970s. Entering public consciousness took decades until it was easier to reach more people. Even then, confirmation bias keeps the majority of believers right where the LDS church wants them.

[LaMachina]

Below is a link to a pretty great podcast I enjoy. He did a 3 part series on the Backfire Effect. It seems facts cause retrenchment disturbingly often but he talks about ways to combat it.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/

[Vlad the Emailer]

In Jeremy Runnels' "Court of Love" video Jeremy asks the stake pres if he had read the CES Letter. The pres gives the usual "I started to, but I got a dark feeling" response. I don't remember what Jeremy said to that, but I remember thinking a great response would have been, "Oh, me too. I used to get a very dark feeling when reading through that information. The feeling even has a name. It's called cognitive dissonance".

[fh451]

I think I've talked about this before (on the old NOM), but not changing our mind is an evolutionary adaptation that makes us much more efficient (as I understand from reading people like V.S. Ramachandran). According to neurologists, the mind has an area for gathering and evaluating information, and another for "modeling" our world. In between there is a filter of sorts that keeps the information-gathering center from constantly messing with our world-model center. Because, frankly, 99.99% of all the raw information we gather doesn't matter to our model of the world in the slightest, and it would be an immense waste of time and resources to continually rebuild our world view. However, this also makes it hard for pertinent information to get through and re-wire that model. It can take a traumatic event to shock us into new ways of thinking, or diligent application of our higher-level rational mind over a long period of time to influence that model in a significant way. Yes, things are way more complicated than that, but that's one way to think about it.

fh451

[document]

My mind hasn't changed.