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Comment by orblivion | Hacker News Reader

That thing you thought was true all your life is actually false.

1 year later: That thing you thought was false for the last year was actually true.

At every turn trying to make us feel stupid. It's almost like somebody is trying to drive us crazy.

Understanding is a process. Believing what we have the best evidence to believe is not stupid. If the evidence changes and you shift your belief you are not stupid.

I think the reality is that humans are very complex, especially how we relate to each other. Studies that try to boil down our behavior and provide actionable results are highly demanded, but are very difficult to prove.

Be like water. You can believe, just don't attach yourself to those beliefs. Simple in concept, not so much in execution. Worth practicing.

I agree, but "attachment to belief" is not solely in the mind. Your beliefs are also "attached" to all of the decisions you make based on those beliefs. Those decisions alter the "position" of your life- with that position being highly dimensional (the city you live in, the kind of house you have, how your transport yourself, how many kids you have, what kind of diploma you have, how you raise your children, etc). And changing position often comes at a great cost.

Assume you have a belief that fluctuates frequently (perhaps due to changing scientific or expert consensus). Also assume that this belief is attached to the position of your life in a highly costly manner. It is entirely reasonable to insulate your beliefs, and thus the cost of altering the position of your life to match the external belief, from the frequent external fluctuation of this belief. I'd imagine this is the fundamental (non-politicized) driving force behind conservatism.

I see this strategy playing out as illustrated in the graph below. The straight line is your internal belief. The fluctuating line is external belief. Effectively, you are running a filter on external belief, making you slow, but eventually able to react to the changing external belief. However, since your sentiment fluctuates less than external sentiment, your costs are kept low.

  s
  e|
  n|    /\      /\      /\
  t|  _/__\____/__\____/__\__
  i|  /    \  /    \  /    \
  m| /      \/      \/      \
  e|___________________________
  n       time
  t

Everyone practices this strategy to some degree. Some are more mindless about it than others. Some practice it with a greater emphasis than others. Let's call this strategy an "insulated belief system". Conservative viewpoints are traditionally associated with an insulated belief system since insulating oneself implies confidence in oneself as an isolated individual. Liberal viewpoints do not associate with an insulated belief system since liberals tend to rely less on oneself and more on the community. Despite this, it isn't impossible to be a liberal who owns an insulated belief system. It would just be rare.

Believing the best evidence is not a good idea if the evidence is weak. One thing that many science journalists are not very good at is conveying how strong the evidence is.

It's a good idea as long as the belief is proportionately weakly held.

But his is not the way most people think about things. For most people it's white or black, it is or it isn't. Speaking of degrees of belief makes you look like an indecisive fool at times.

If I were running for office I might be a bit careful about how I expressed such things, but having a degree of belief proportional to the degree of evidence appears the opposite of foolish to me. I hold that belief moderately strongly.

Do you change your diet based on weak science? If you tell someone you weakly believe a paper about diet science, do you think they might change their diet?

If, a priori, food A and food B seem equivalent to you, and you're currently eating food A, and then you get a weak report that food B is better, then it seems like an ok decision to switch to B. If your prior belief was that food A was a little bit better, then you might switch or not depending on the exact magnitudes of "weak" and "a little bit". If your prior belief was that food A was moderately or significantly better, then the weak report would not be sufficient evidence to switch (though it could be good reason to do more research).

You have a lot of faith in people! What I observe is that people change their diets all the time based on weak science.

There is a subtle false dilemma there. That we have to believe one way or the other.

A better policy would be to assign some degree of belief to both possibilities.

> The current conventional wisdom is that checking backfires.

And a not so subtle imputation which probably has a much larger effect on the willingness to look at facts in the first place. But I want everyone not sharing my opinion to be irrational too.

Yes, but there's always narrative driving the change of thought.

Once we go back and forth a few times, it strains the credibility of those driving the narrative.

So Vietnam War, 'Low fat' diets of the 1980's (which led to high carb/sugar) diets etc..

When dealing with humans, the likely answer is that the relationship is far more complex and based on variable that are beyond our ability to adequately grasp and measure. So what appears to be the same study done multiple times can get different results. As time progresses, social change can lead to what was once consistent result of outcome A becoming inconsistent results and eventually becoming consistent results of outcome B.

Also, many studies are done primarily on college students, so trends that may well be true for them may not apply to the general population. So as studies become better at getting a representative cross section of the population results can appear to change despite early studies being correct.

A large part of this is that results are extremely overstated in the social sciences. If not by the scientists, then by the media and popular culture.

Hopefully at the end of the day you believe less conclusively in things that are not on scientifically 100% certain.

Well, both get clicks and impressions... Water still wet, does not.

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