Logic vs. emotion

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I for one believe nature wastes nothing,
It depends on what level you speak of, eg "why do men have nipples" or "energy cannot be created or destroyed".
I hadn't read much of the original link, so I went back to it. I regret it now.
Since then, similar results [to a capital punishment study] have been found for how people respond to "evidence" about affirmative action, gun control, the accuracy of gay stereotypes, and much else. Even when study subjects are explicitly instructed to be unbiased and even-handed about the evidence, they often fail.
This isn't science as in "natural philosophy". This is social studies as in liberal pet policies. And given a "people responding to scientific discovery" camouflage. I can't laugh because it's so utterly sad...
I say jet this whole stinking thread.
 
Yeah, well, the Mother Jones article stinks on a number of levels but the topic is very interesting and some OK questions have been raised. As a conversation, the thread is not hopeless.

Wish I had more time - gotta go to work.


It depends on what level you speak of, eg "why do men have nipples" or "energy cannot be created or destroyed".
I hadn't read much of the original link, so I went back to it. I regret it now.

This isn't science as in "natural philosophy". This is social studies as in liberal pet policies. And given a "people responding to scientific discovery" camouflage. I can't laugh because it's so utterly sad...
I say jet this whole stinking thread.
 
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the Mother Jones article stinks on a number of levels

Can't say I agree with that, only read the general idea and skipped the examples. Nothing new in the article, I thought these things were well known. I can understand why people don't like it just as you wouldn't like someone telling you that the reasons why you love your woman, country, political party, sport team, etc, have nothing to do with reason. So what?There's a logic behind it, it is only logical for you but who cares about the rest anyways? :D

Yes, a lot of madness, wars, crimes, injustice comes out of this way of "thinking". There's no solution to this. You can't change your system so there's not much point trying to. Some people are more passionate than others and they usually pay for that. A more balanced system is always happier. Read J. Swift instead of reading rehashed articles, at least you'll be entertained. OK, human condition may be a sad thing, but if logic and reason were the rulers of our lives imagine what would be like....I'm not gonna say because this was meant to be a jovial post.
 
OK, the original article is journalism, if you can stand it the research it was based on is here: https://motherjones.com/files/kahan_paper_cultural_cognition_of_scientific_consesus.pdf
It's a big read, 72pp, if you want to cut to the chase I suggest reading sections 1, 2, 3.1, 5. Note that it's an academic paper, and requires careful reading & a knowlege of Stats (& how these are used in research) - probably beyond many here.
 
OK, the original article is journalism, if you can stand it the research it was based on is here: https://motherjones.com/files/kahan_paper_cultural_cognition_of_scientific_consesus.pdf
It's a big read, 72pp, if you want to cut to the chase I suggest reading sections 1, 2, 3.1, 5. Note that it's an academic paper, and requires careful reading & a knowlege of Stats (& how these are used in research) - probably beyond many here.

Given that none of the science in all 3 questions used by Kahan and colleagues is a "done deal" in the way, for example, the efficacy of vaccinations is, (150 yrs of empirical evidence), and that folk are asked to do a risk assessment of issues arising from those questions, why would one expect different conclusions from the study?

Folk work with what they've got. In many cases what they've got is not adequate.

The researchers say as much in the last section.

If a person does not have well grounded analytical/empirical evidence, then they must fall back on their "big picture" and that necessarily includes just about "everything".
 
Claiming that anything (where that thing is words rather than matter) 'stinks' is itself a clear sign of bias.

Bleu Cheese(freaky fungus) "stinks" , but tastes good on hot wings. :D

Because it is from liberal media perhaps?

They are paid to tell you what to think. No bias or rationalization in play , just the "bottom line" $$ (I suppose that is a form of bias). On the receiving end of this , the public acts as a independent "creature" , allowing emotions to go with the "spin". I see this on fox and CNN played to the max.

I suppose while pursuing something yet to be proven , one must believe that it "can" be true. A fine line between logic and emotion.

OS
 
I think the cognitive phenomena discussed in the study is not inherent to the human race itself. It's a product of our current culture and education trends (I don't mean school education, I mean behavioral education, which is mostly a passive process involving children observing adult behavior and responses and imitating them later).

The way in which we learn new things (our knowledge system, the filters our brain passes information through and the kind of data that the brain selects and collects or discards) is something learned, not defined by genetics.

It all starts probably when children are allowed to play with toys representing real objects and told a lot of lies about what life is and about how humans are supposed to behave and think, who they have to trust, who they should love, etc... This creates a powerful and very harmful myth-handling system in our brain.

Later, as adults, they will play with real objects as if they were toys, they will believe all sorts of unrealistic myths and they will treat most people as s*it and will insist in loving the wrong ones in the wrong way.

Children should be educated for accurate perception of reality from the first day, but this requires accurate adult parent brains behaving in an accurate way all the time, which are scarce :D
 
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, if you can stand it the research it was based on

I'm afraid I can't afford more tedious reading (for today). I've had my fill. Are logic and emotion modern things? Do I have to read that "research" to understand how they work? Has the mind of modern man changed that much? Just tell me how a few stats can compete against two thousand years of well documented history. I'm all ears.

Can't see the forest for the trees? No problem, let's chop them down and count them one by one. Then we may be able to understand what forests are made of. :D The pattern is always the same, nothing has changed nor will it. Unless some radical mutation in the gene pool happens. Come, come, come nuclear bomb. :D
 
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I suppose while pursuing something yet to be proven , one must believe that it "can" be true. A fine line between logic and emotion.

OS

Examples can be found of science papers using emotional language & fear-mongering as a means to convince it's readers of a yet to be proven connection. This disingenuous use of science is not just practised by the media in pursuit of readership but by "scientists" themselves in pursuit of $.
 
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