Why do we belive what we belive?

[Nique]

You probably have heard (of) you are not so smart.

In case you haven't, 'You Are Not So Smart' is a journalist's blog which offers up a bleak, but fascinating, perspective on human psychology. Reading any of the some dozens of articles is bound to, perhaps ironically, cause a little bit of cognitive dissonance. This is probably best explained by the site's own 'About' section;

Originally Posted by youarenotsosmart.com

The Misconception: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is.

The Truth: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that’s OK, it keeps you sane.

You Are Not So Smart is a blog devoted to self delusion and irrational thinking.

So; Why do you believe what you believe? According to this site, even the most open-minded & contemplative of us have likely succumb to a number of mental tricks that 'put the cart before the horse', so to speak.

Consider The Backfire Effect - The idea that, when your convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your attention is drawn towards ways you can argue or undermine the opposing viewpoint regardless of it's validity, and your beliefs get stronger as a result.

Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” can linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this and the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time considering information you disagree with than you do information you accept. Information which lines up with what you already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when you come across something which threatens your beliefs, something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how the world works, you seize up and take notice.

The Illusion Of Asymmetric Insight suggests that we may more readily form opinions based more on our group identity and shared behavior, rather than facts and recognition of different perspectives.

The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view.

The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others.

...You too can become preoccupied with defining the essence of your enemies. You too need the other side to be inferior, so you define them as such. You start to believe your persona is actually your identity, and the identity of your enemy is actually their persona. You see yourself in a game of self-deluded poker and assume you are impossible to read while everyone else has obvious tells.

These are just two of the articles that describe what might be happening in the background of our mind when we attach ourselves to particular beliefs and ideologies, among other things. I don't know if I completely believe that my worldview has been shaped strictly by such mechanical responses or if that is even the message of these articles (though perhaps I am further deluding myself in order to maintain my sanity), but these are certainly thought-provoking. It's easy to think 'well, I don't do this but other people do' when you talk about stuff like cognitive dissonance but it isn't really that simple and there seem to be a lot of subtle ways that we may 'trick' ourselves into believing something, justifying it only after the fact.

Can you identify a belief or opinion you may have adopted due to such biases or delusions? I probably couldn't even count the number of times I have fallen for more subtle variations of Fine Wine (though thankfully I have avoided the gold-plated HDMI cable variant). What about Learned Helplessness? Subjective Validation?

Even though, as we are capable of recognizing such delusions, we must have some ability to form objective opinions on important subjects, I think that it's important to take a step back and consider why we like something, why we vote a certain way, hold certain viewpoints on social issues, or why we think something sucks. It's easy to see delusion in others - What about ourselves?

[Token]

Less Wrong is also a pretty good read in that regard. (Yes, the Methods of Rationality Less Wrong, if you weren't aware.) How To Actually Change Your Mind is fantastic.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The best thing are these studies is how much of your memory is pretty much completely made up. A: Massive fuckloads of it.

[Nique]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

The best thing are these studies is how much of your memory is pretty much completely made up. A: Massive fuckloads of it.

Which is funny because it seems like everyone remembers things more or less the same (or at least similar), but that is probably only becuase everyone is riding the same process.

[Grimpond]

Because we fear the dark

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Nique

What about Learned Helplessness?

This was kind of a stupid, point-missing article.

Like learned helplessness is an interesting phenomenon, it's just that the author is caught up trying to shoehorn it into his YOU ARE DUMB schtick and misses that the phenomenon is actually an intelligent, reasonable reaction to terrible shit. If you tie a dog down with a fucking harness and repeatedly shock it with electricity, "terrible shit is gonna happen to you and you can do literally nothing about it" is a completely reasonable lesson to learn.

It's an interesting phenomenon but shoehorning it into a PEOPLE R DUM framework really doesn't work, lots of psychological phenomena are actually entirely reasonable reactions to a given set of circumstances.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Nique

Which is funny because it seems like everyone remembers things more or less the same (or at least similar), but that is probably only becuase everyone is riding the same process.

Or when one person mentions their account of the event your brain then remembers it that way.
There is classic studies where they show volunteers the same film clip of a car crash but then by asking the right questions or by listening to other peoples account of the crash they can completely change its severity, who caused it, the colour of the cars involved, prett ymuch anything.

[Nique]

Originally Posted by Fifth

This was kind of a stupid, point-missing article.

Yeah on closer inspection this was a weird one and I kind of wish I had made a bigger deal of the fact that this guy is a journalist and not a psychologist. Like this -

Originally Posted by youarenotsosmart.com

Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn’t matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn’t count? Yeah, that’s learned helplessness.

is a pretty weird thing to say becuase I don't think reaching the conclusion that voting might not really be worth your time for perfectly sound reasons has anything to do with giving up on controlling your life. Anyway the whole thing was a bit disjointed and difficult to follow after the Misconception/Truth bit.

...And at the end was it just me or was he saying the way to fix this issue was to distract yourself with meaningless activities?

EDIT: Also, the later articles seem to be more purely analytical and just... kind of better, where earlier ones are a lot shorter with more blatant/obnoxious morals at the end.

Originally Posted by Barrelman

Or when one person mentions their account of the event your brain then remembers it that way.

I also liked the Subjective Validation one - Kind of similar process. There was a neat video about 'Cold Reading' at the end of that one, which ended up tying into another delusion wherein psychics start to believe in their own "abilities".

[phil_]

Originally Posted by "Who writes all this?" page

I am a journalist who loves psychology,

How?

[Nique]

Maybe he wasn't very good at journalism?