"the backfire effect"--us conservatism and the problem of dissonant information
 

i think this is kinda interesting:

The Backfire Effect | Mother Jones

you can get to the paper this is a summary of & other stuff cited by chasing the link above.


i think the findings here are interesting, but i am not sure about the psychological interpretation that drum basically dismisses either. nor do i think his own interpretation goes quite far enough...

i think this is an ideological effect which has the curious effect of making conservative political statements seem non-falsifiable amongst conservatives--at least amongst the group that participated in the study. i think it linked to collective dispositions which are shaped by the way conservative ideology operated---"experts" were assimilated into a cluster of signifiers of persecuting Others, which of course stage conservatives--at least populist conservatives--as Victims. it enables a reprocessing of dissonant information as an aspect of this Persecution, which seems quite central to the construction of conservative identity at the level of how the ideology works in general.

contemporary conservatism used a form of identity politics---the device was what a french theorist called interpellation--which refers to the way a sequence of images or statements positions you as a spectator/part of the audience/part of the political demographic. the idea runs that if you find a sequence of statements or images compelling, you typically do so not only on the basis of the content, but also on the basis of how you are placed in relation to others & to the world by them. so it refers to the ways in which statements are (or are not) processed by folk and positions it as a social phenomenon rather than as a psychological one (in the end, it's a mix of both in the way most social phenomena are---if people didn't invest in them psychologically, they wouldn't be particularly social phenomena...but anyway)

i think we got to see alot of examples of this effect about in the world during the bush period, and you still see some of it around. it's continuous, happens all the time.

but what do you make of this piece?
if you have time to look at the paper, what do you make of that?
if you accept the argument/analysis, what do you see as it's consequences?

Lost me right there. Explain to any 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist (almost completely left wing), you will find the same stubborn conviction as those people who refuse to believe Obama is a legitimate citizen.

Calculate into this equation the head-nodding mentality of many liberal and television hosts when it comes to scientific data which support their beliefs, and the ostracizing of any scientific data which opposes it as propaganda, you can quickly find a reason to question what is shown to you.

Too many times the media which is to provide us with unbiased knowledge is proven wrong. For every report that comes out incorrect for the right (WMD's in Iraq), you find an equal report which is pure propaganda which is shown to be factual. For example, the photoshopped images of Lebanon and the staged child killings (research the Green Helmet Guy) yet are constantly stonewalled to be factual.

The truth is there is no difference in this situation between left and right. It's a mental process we ALL have and ALL use, no matter how opened minded you think you are. It's correlation and multiple categorization the mind develops to make sense of the world. When things don't fit properly, instead of reorganizing your mental grasp of what is reality we mold the new "thing" to merge with what is our proper sense. If Iraq was a good war, and this guy is saying the reason for this good war was an incorrect belief (a belief repeated by Dem & Repub for 10+ years), then something must have occurred to make that true belief appear false.

I think that what the study found was that there was a difference in this situation between right and left.

It's all about the distribution of liberals vs. conservatives in this regard. Just how many liberal conspiracy theorists are there? Does this study reflect on the average conservative? Do conspiracy theorists reflect on the average liberal?

I think it wasn't actually scientific and was a factor of people finding what they're looking for.

How about the study that came out a few years ago that 25% of Americans thought there was a conspiracy behind 9/11, and 40% of Democrats thought so. Much higher than the average American.

Pot <=======> Kettle

I no longer believe that 9/11 was an inside job. It was probably carried out by radical militants. I'm not saying we have all the information, but I'm no longer a "truther".

Anyway, the only reason truthers are liberal is because Bush was in office when it happened. If Obama were president on 9/11, you can bet your ass most truthers would be conservatives, the same conservatives now convinced that Barack Obama had a fake birth certificate created in order to bypass section 1 of Article 2. Or that universal healthcare is a first step to the one-world government. Or that FEMA is creating concentration camps. Or that the government is going to take anyone's gun.

Edit: In response to the article, it's consistent with what I've experienced. There IS a mistrust of experts and verifiable data growing on the right, and I'm not just imagining things. I've witnessed it first hand, in fact.

my basic contention has for a long time been that there's something particular and kinda curious about contemporary american conservatism as an ideology (worldview in this case)...that it operates with a particular way of staging relations to that worldview one effect of which is a peculiar relation to information. i've been interested in how the discourse works. so i see it as a sociological and political phenomenon. it's obvious that there are variations within any group of people in how investments in that ideology happen, but that doesn't mean that there aren't constants at the level of patterns within the ideology and patterns that are repeated by alot of folk who hold this political position as consumers if you like.

second, i don't know what conservatives are talking about when they refer to the left. typically it is little more than a phantasm, the mirror image of conservatism, something that is constructed politically as an imaginary referencepoint which positions conservatism along some spectrum that apparently has therapeutic value, and which serves to conceal just how peculiar contemporary american conservatism really is. because it provides something to point at and enables the claim "whaddya mean, we're just doing what they're doing"

but the fact is that there is no left as conservatives like to imagine it and that conservatism in the states is a peculiar entity.
luckily, i don't think it matters so much any more.
but it could matter again, so it's good to keep track of just how strange it is.

Wait. What makes you say that 9/11 theorists are left wing? Do you have any proof to back up that assertion?

From my very non-scientific observation, conservatives are far more prone to 'the crazy' than liberals.

o Obama birthers
o Global warming deniers
o Young earthers (ok, the correlation with evangelical christianity takes care of this one)

You get the idea. What left-wing specific reality denial do we have? I disagree with the 9/11 guys being almost completely left-wing, but I could be wrong.

I'm wondering why you no long believe 9/11 was an inside job but that's for another thread or private messages. However, I've noticed more 'truthers' on the right than the left in my own experience. I think many left wingers associated with Fahrenheit 911 and thus consider themselves to be 9/11 truthers. Personally, I don't fee like that movie even began to touch on the issues many have with what happened that day.

My point is that some of the left attached itself to the idea of 9/11 being an inside job and blamed the republicans, but the idea stops dead in its track when it shows the left's culpability.

If you have any specific critiques of the study's methodology I'm all ears.

I always find it amusing when people try to "debunk" peer-reviewed studies with anecdotal experience. It's also particularly ironic that presenting this 'expert' research on the matter seems to have had the precisely described affect on those who were already 'convinced' about the "bobble-head" media.

Put simply, there's too much of a vacuum of evidence supporting something.

Goddamn. I'm just floored at how you packed so much irony into such a tiny little space. Congratulations for validating the claim of those conservatives of yours who only look like they're bursting with straw because american conservativism is a peculiar animal and it's not overgeneralizing if you do it without caps and have some hokey study to back you up kinda if only you'd ever bother to use even a half-sufficient qualifier like 'many'. There, you happy? I normally only have run-on thoughts like that when I'm subjected to the worst of conservative punditry.

And it looks like Jinn discovered the self-defending nature of the study's working theory: if you attack it, you probably fit it.

How is Limbaugh still on the air with competition like this?

What I find is that my basic views on a subject are, shall we say, dormant. When I am presented with information that I eventually conclude is b.s. in attempts to refute my basic views, they become accentuated, I get a bit defensive. I look for the holes in the b.s. arguments, I find conflicting information, etc. Fundamentally, I defend my basic views, an exercise in critical thinking in my view, my basic views become stronger or I change them. In most cases they become stronger. I did not need a study to tell you that, all that was needed was for someone to ask.

He's really not off track. While generalizations of conservatives as a whole aren't fair, if the mouthpieces of the conservative "party" are to be believed, liberals are an entirely different beast than they are in reality. I've recently been reading Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" ( ) and it's entirely based on a straw man of liberalism. In it, he posits this group of people called "Statists," who he goes to link directly to contemporary liberalism and the Democratic party, and then subsequently blames nearly every government misstep on the Statists desire for "control" and "tyranny." He creates an entire group of people concerned only with increasing federal power, revoking personal property rights, redistributing wealth, concerned with creating Supreme Leading organization. It's entirely a misnomer, and as an extreme liberal who values the national government I can't even identify with this liberal facade he's creating.

And Levin isn't alone among the pundits, speakers, and Congressman of the so-called "conservative" party.

I think the point is, that's not critical thinking. That's justifying the rightness of an already-held position. There's no real thinking there, that's just reaction. It's very very automatic. A well-written web spider could do about as well. I think any statement that begins with some version of, "Oh yeah? Well...." is pretty much devoid of actual thinking. Thinking means considering your viewpoint as just one viewpoint.

In other words, you don't conclude that the contradicting information is BS; you start from there, and your "thinking" and behavior flows from that preconception. I think that's what this study is implying.

The "you" in this post IS ace, but is also all of us. I think it's interesting that conservatives seem in this study to show this reaction more strongly than others--that is a surprise to me, because I've always thought of this as a fairly fundamental human being phenomenon.

fta:

i thought i made the argument pretty clearly.
but you picked out what you wanted to see. this doesn't interest me particularly, nor does the facile logical trick which you followed it with, you know, the one that amounts to "i know you are but what am i?"

i am not talking about individuals who happen to be conservative as such---i'm talking about the way the field of conservative discourse operates, how it stages relations to information. that many folk repeat this staging is obvious, just as is the fact that not absolutely everyone who find conservative positions compelling repeats this staging. but that not every last person repeats the particular ways relations to information are staged doesn't mean that therefore there is no staging.

it's not that complicated.

if you want to debate me, at least make an effort to talk about the same thing.

But the left has no such staging as accused by your conservatives. The left is better than that. Conservatives have intellectually dishonest patterns and honest exceptions, while liberals enjoy the reverse.

Agreed, it's actually very transparent.

You first. Use better - or any - qualifiers next time.

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On there being a lot of Republicans who enjoy strawmen? Sure, I agree with that part. That's about as far as my agreement goes.

so when you talk about this left business, what exactly are you referring to?

this is an organizational and discursive matter so you should be able to point at specifics.


and spare me the snippy flourishes.

If I have a basic view or belief that it is softly raining outside, I may be indifferent to that fact, but it is a basic belief that I hold at that particular moment. If the weather man comes on TV and says it is not raining, creating a challenge to that basic belief, I may go to the window or go outside to check, I have a rain gauge that I may check to see how much it had been raining, I might look at the cloud pattern to see if the rain is isolated, I might check some other sources I have for weather. After all of that my basic belief will be enhanced or changed.

You suggest that process is not critical thinking? I disagree.

Perhaps you should speak for yourself. I know what I do, and I described it.


I don't disagree with the study, from my point of view it is true. I have observed the pattern described in my own thought processes. Like I said, I did not need a study for that and if asked I would have given an honest answer. I do not know if the pattern shown actually applies more to "conservatives" than "liberals", my gut based on the examples shown is that the person who did the study approached it with his own biases. Aw shucks, there I go again!:paranoid:

Not a good example because it can be empirically proven by stepping outside and holding your hand up. Try again with Iraqi WMDs as the matter in question. Assume you can't personally get on a plane to Baghdad and check the country for WMDs your own personal self. Go.

well yes. it's a study. if it were some absolute Truth, there wouldn't be much point in discussion, would there? i mean, what would be talk about?

yes this is self-evidently correct yes it is.

personally, i think the data is more interesting than the interpretations offered of it--which is frequently the case.
so i floated an alternate riff that i thought erased some of the interpretive problems above. but it substituted different ones.

back in the day before it ate itself, the conservative media apparatus was pretty easy to delimit. things got trickier in the dismal period after 9/11/2001 for a while because the ways of framing issues and relations to them particular to that apparatus migrated into the mainstream press, which for all it's problems at least hadn't up to that time adopted the language of the contemporary right.

what seems in retrospect to have snapped this was the judith miller business at the ny times, which put the paper's institutional credibility in jeopardy and it was on that basis that the times began to back away from the simple repetition of administration infotainment and the language it was couched in both at the levels of stuff quoted and "analysis"---this ebbing away of conservative discourse from this point accelerated through the second bush term. if you wanted to, you could document the process.

the point is that it's much easier to talk about political language that shapes a given socio-cultural space than it is to talk about a collection of individuals who operate within that space---the language gives you something to talk about, it's sources enable you to define a space or region.

so i don't particularly think that as human beings conservative folk are more or less rigid than anyone else, really--i suppose there's a segment that is, just as there's a segment of any other population---but the degree to which a political language, once internalized, creates regularities, and that these regularities include particular types of rigidity of thinking---that we can talk about.

the problem really is not letting yourself slide off this way of framing things.
it's easy to do it if you're motivated to in any event, if you don't like the argument or information. once you slide off, it becomes a matter of political groups who don't like each other's politics calling each other names.

there are maybe problems of method in the study as well--but to get there you'd have to read it.

My support of the war had little to do with Iraq having WMD or not. My support was based on their capability of obtaining or developing them and them having a leader who I think would have been willing to use them against innocent people. Sadaam had used WMD (chemical) in the past, he killed massive numbers of his own countrymen, he waged aggressive war, he had a goal of disrupting the region perhaps causing WWIII by bombing Israel; he has a proven track record of deceit, dishonesty and ruthlessness. Based on those considerations, if I were presented with a "report" that Iraq had no WMD, I would be all over that report, as Ali would say - "like white on rice". My rational and emotional response would reach a peak level simply based on being presented with the "report".

Right, but even that isn't based in reality. All the crap about Saddam pursuing this and that was nothing but bullshit. We got nothing but lie after lie from the Bush administration, and among those lies were things like "chemical weapons" and "yellowcake", all of which have been verified as completely wrong. WE have a track record of deceit, dishonesty, and ruthlessness.

Like I have stated in the past concerning your analysis - In some cases I don't think it is that complicated, and in my case I doubt I am as "deep" as your analysis suggests. In spite of what you may think, I am not easily influenced by media, talking points, ideology of others, etc., as I have become to understand how I think, reach conclusions, and respond, it has been consistent throughout my life. Perhaps, "conservatives" are born and not made.

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Of course it is not your reality. I accept the fact that different people reach different conclusions (or alternate realities) based on a number of factors. I respect those differences, do you? I would never tell you that things from your view point are not reality after agreeing that we do not and will not see an issue the same way. We know I thought Iraq under Sadaam was a threat and you did not.

There's only one reality, Ace. Different opinions can occupy it, but not contradictory facts. The facts are these: the US government, under the leadership of the Bush administration, created a story about Saddam getting yellow cake, and when someone tried to call them on their lies, they outed his spy wife.

A bunch of liberals that somehow demonstrate a systemic problem with the American left.

How many specifics do I need to point out before I get to say I know you are but who am I?

Spare me the silly overgeneralization dressed up as some serious critique.

so what you're telling me, fool them all, is that you got nothing but you don't like what i'm saying.
that's fine.
i think we're done now.

Wrong.

Using an example: Homsexuality. There is one reality for one group and another reality for the other. Given the same, pardon the pun, stimulus or shall we say input, the responses given those different "realities" will be very different. I believe that if a homosexual was presented with a study that was in conflict with their basic view on sexuality, they may go from an indifferent response to a question to a very opinionated response.

Makes sense to me that conservatives don't trust experts. After all, they still believe that an imaginary backwoods jew had all the answers 2000 years ago and that his ideas tell us how to handle politics, science, education, people relations, sex, and so forth.

Anyone after him who claims different is obviously not an expert, and probably works for the devil.

The only way I'm wrong is it you're moving from politics into physics, in which case one reality would be debatable.
If you showed a homosexual a study about how homosexuality didn't exist, the study would be wrong. If I showed you a study about how caucasians don't exist, the study would be equally wrong. No such study can exist, therefore it can't really be used in an illustration.

Speaking for myself, I don't trust anybody, with only a few exceptions.


Just for the record - I don't insult a person's religious beliefs. And I don't belong to any specific religion. Try again.

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A non-homosexual can not possibly understand the reality of homosexuality and the opposite is true. As a non-homosexual, I don't know if homosexuality is real, what it is, what it means, other than how it is described to me. I simply respect the reality of what others say in that regard. I accept that there are different "realities" when it comes to sexuality. The difference in "reality" molds political views on the subject.

A person who sees potential threats the way you do can not possible understand the reality of the way I see potential threats. I have come to understand our difference. the difference in "reality" molds political views on the subject.

When I know how I factor in the implications of taxation in my business decisions, and if perhaps you don't- you may not understand the reality of how tax policy can impact business decisions - then how we have the different perspective when challenging or accepting "reports" that could lead us to very different conclusions based on "reality" even given the same data.

People bring who they are and what they have experienced to the table, that in-part defines their reality. As a child I was intrigued by a fact that in different languages some people did not have words for certain concepts that others had words for. In no way does that mean that certain concepts are not real.

you don't have to get to questions about what "reality" is--hell, i'm not always sure i know and the more i think on it the less i know about what "reality" is and how many of them there are----this is a matter of statements. in the study, you had a series of statements issued by the administration and a series of demonstrations that those statements were false. the problem is the evaluation of these statements--how do you do it? what factors shape that? one way of thinking about that would be to analyze, to the extent that one can, the projections as to the world that each series of statements triggered. another would be to ask about relations toward these statements---that's the route this study went in. what constitutes compelling evidence? what constitutes a convincing argument? what elements or assumptions get introduced that shape these judgments? to what extent can these factors be grouped? once you group them, how to you evaluate that grouping?

like that.

Oy vey. Global climate change is real. Isn't time people extricate their heads from the sand?

What do you mean you don't know if homosexuality is real? Do you think everyone is playing a joke on you? Some men are attracted to other men sexually. Some women are attracted to other women sexually. These states can be observed and can be verified via observation. It's not unreal or in some Schrodinger state of real/unreal simply because you've not witnessed or experienced it. There's a point at which perception becomes so abstract that communication breaks down. You're there.
I'm not talking about opinion, I'm talking about fact. It's your opinion that Iraq was a threat to the US. It's not an opinion but rather verifiable fact that the administration fabricated the story about Saddam seeking yellowcake in Africa. It's not subjective, but objectively verifiable.
Not understanding something doesn't mean it's not real. I don't understand precisely how the universe came into being, but here we are.

Never underestimate the power of ignorance.

ace has conflated "world-view" or "perspective" with "reality".

I'm forced (jarringly) to understand something about conservatives from this bizarre collapse of concepts.

I think the ultimate question this thread implies is: how can this be treated? What can be done in order to prevent what could be a serious consequence for this widespread perception condition?

Moderate Republican Congressman Mike Castle was one of only 8 Republicans to vote for the Cap-and-Trade bill. Then he went to a town hall forum in his home district. This is what he encountered:

Nobody doubts that there are lots of Americans who believe in crazy things (about 10% of people believe in UFOs, etc.). Furthermore, nobody doubts that many of these people are liberals. But let's be perfectly honest - no Democratic congressman would ever face a Democratic crowd saying as many things as crazy as this. These conspiracy theories and flights of fancy are not exclusively conservative, but they are predominantly conservative. Even on a smaller, slightly less crazy level - John Kerry didn't really deserve his purple heart, etc. - conservatives seem more willing to swallow false information that conforms to preexisting prejudices.

After all, how many chain emails making highly charged and unusual (and usually debunked) political claims have you received that were liberal?

The more I think of it, the more I'm relieved that Canadian conservatism is an entirely different creature from American conservatism.

I'd rather deal with my Tories, thank you. And to think that these conservatives actually have a legitimate left-wing politics to contend with. You know, elected politicians who are members of parties that float out in left field, with little concern about the centre. We even have sovereigntists sitting in national seats.

The way the political spectrum is discussed, I'm assuming many Americans have no idea what it's like up here in the Great White North. It's all really quite fascinating contrasting our two nations. It always has been.

The problem is in the opening of the quote above. Your assumption is that there was a series of demonstrations that statements were false. You can not legitimately go any further unless there is agreement on the "demonstrations".

---------- Post added at 02:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:39 PM ----------

Let's take a different approach.

How is the reality of the color blue defined to a man who is color blind and has been from birth? You can not. The man who is color blind has to accept on faith the alternate reality that a color known as blue exists.

The concept of threat is subjective. Each person has their own threshold for what they would deem a threat.

Some things not understood require faith.

uh..yes you can, ace. that question turns up inside the game. in fact it's one of the main things that's at issue--how the counter-claims (if you like) are processed.
all that would be required for a demonstration to be one is that there are axioms that are not problematic, rules for processing variables, and variables. to be a demonstration doesn't mean it has to be correct. so if you call something a demonstration, you're only characterizing it's features, not it's content. another way: an incorrect demonstration, or one based on problematic features, doesn't stop being a demonstration.

An honest person never really knows if ignorance applies to them or those they disagree with when there is less than absolute certainty. Most issues in politics are decided in an environment of less than absolute certainty.

I find it ironic that, me, a hard ass conservative is displaying more empathy to differing points of view than bleeding heart liberals.

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A) There is disagreement on what WMD are. Some say they are only defined by nuclear weapons, others don't.

B) Tax rate cuts, all other things being equal will not increase taxes collected by the government, but we know all thing were not equal. Those who understand that, know certain assumptions have to be made when analyzing the consequences of tax cuts. Those assumption can have a dramatic affect one way or the other. so the real question involves understanding the assumptions, rather than accepting them on faith.

There is a big difference in being ignorant and willfully ignorant. When I don't understand something people are talking about on this forum I just lurk and hope to pick stuff up. What I don't do is make shit up or push something that I know is likely false.

Over the last year there have been many willfully ignorant positions taken by conservatives in the main stream. Here are a few of them:

Obama is a terrorist, Obama is not a US citizen, Obama's suicide bill, Obama wants to teach my kid how to have sex, Obama had a gay orgy (i'm seeing a pattern here)

The right has so much hatred in them that they don't care how false something is they will preach it like fact because it fits their position. That is willful ignorance.

Really?

What are the consequences of both? I don't think in the end there is a difference. If a person is ignorant of a spouse having an affair, and another person is willfully ignorant, what is the difference? Or, how are you defining "willfully ignorant?

I do not dispute there are people who do what you suggest. However, I do not think conservatives are more or less guilty of this than liberals.

Ignorant is not knowing the truth, willfully ignorant is knowing the truth but choosing not to believe it.
Ignorant is not knowing what you are saying is false, willfully ignorant is knowing what your saying is false but saying it anyway.

No, that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is you're arguing against the existence of an objective reality. Which is one of the criteria for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, by the way.

Before we do, just for my own edification, you believe that homosexuals are real, right? You understand (note: I didn't say "believe") that some men are sexually attracted to men and some women are sexually attracted to women?
I'm colorblind, oddly enough. I have trouble with certain hues of blue and purple, and certain reds and greens. According to my doctor, there are some colors that the average person can see that I can't, and there are probably some colors that I see that other people can't. Here's the thing, though: the actual color can be objectively verified. (I've actually done this before) All I have to do is take a photograph with a good camera, upload the picture to your computer, open it in an illustration program and then use the sample tool. The sample tool then shows you where on the color palate the color is located. It's an independent and verifiable method of determining color that I can trust.

I know this just seems like I'm skirting your illustration, but I'm trying to illustrate something myself: many things in our lives can be independently verified to a high degree of likelihood through deduction and use of methodology that's been developing for thousands of years and will only continue to be more precise and reliable. One can discover, through such methodology, the most likely reality in a given situation. Reality isn't purely subjective, if you don't believe me, take a picture of something, move it to your computer, and verify it's color.
Threat might be subjective to a point, but eventually it can become something most people agree on. If I have a gun in your face and am in the process of pulling the trigger, in that instant I suspect most if not all people would agree I'm a threat to your well being.
This isn't some abstract debate about god. This is about very real and objectively verifiable facts.

---------- Post added at 09:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 AM ----------

Again, this is objectively verifiable.
Federal Bureau of Investigation - What is a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Considering the term weapon of mass destruction came from the government, the responsibility of defining it is theirs. Anyone that doesn't agree with this definition isn't holding a different opinion but an incorrect definition.

http://www.duke.edu/~bjn3/nyhan-reifler.pdf

thought i would make this a little easier. i had glanced at the paper before i put up the thread, but only just now read it kinda carefully.
the link above takes you to it direct-like.
the paper itself is 26 pages and outlines 3 trials--the sections about iraq are relatively short. the experimental data is reproduced in the appendices both at the level of the fake articles used and responses.

have a look.
maybe we can chat about this.

I have been in self treatment for a number of years. I have been making progress, however I have been questioning the qualifications of my mental health care provider lately. I think I am going to start self treatments with someone else. Someone more qualified.

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I don't understand it. I accept it.

I understand my sexuality.

I am beyond my ability to communicate or explain this.

I do find it interesting that I have and continue to say that I may be wrong on some issues, like the Iraq "threat" question. I have stated my bias to error on the side of being overly defensive against any potential threat from Iraq, but you have never admitted that you could be wrong, or that you have a bias to error on the side of giving Iraq the benefit of the doubt.

This is not beyond your ability, you're a smart guy that's being stubborn.

I, colorblind man, seeking an objective color, use demonstrably verifiable methodology to determine that which otherwise I can't perceive due to a disability. It's blue; I can't see the blue, but I can demonstrate that it's blue objectively. The blue exists regardless of whether or not I can perceive it. I can't think of a better illustration for independent verification.

Let me help you Will.

I have never seen oxygen yet I believe it exists.
I have never seen pluto but I believe it exists.
I have never seen an honest politician but I believe one could exist.... ;)

The color blue elicits an emotional response with me. I don't know how that works for you, and I don't know how to communicate what that emotional response is or what it means. I simply don't know where to go with this.

Whether or not Saddam was seeking yellow cake uranium in Africa is not a matter of emotion, but rather a matter of demonstrable, factual evidence. How you feel about it isn't important to me, whether or not it happened is.

Here is how we differ.

I agree Saddam seeking yellow cake uranium in Africa is a matter of fact (we may not know the whole truth, only what the evidence suggests is the truth, but there is a known truth), however the way "I" feel about it may be very important to you even if you don't want it to be. If "I" have the power to act on my feelings/emotions, in a manner that impacts you, you may find my feelings/emotions are important. Given the numbers of people that responded to a series of things involving Iraq that may or may not have turned out to be factually accurate (again we are limited by what the evidence suggests and our predispositions regarding evidence presented - and given the importance of studies like the one referenced in the OP understanding how people respond to "reports" puts a interesting value on such studies) the way that I do or did, you may be in a minority and suffer serious consequences. All of this can create a reality involving you, that you would not accept as rational relative to your belief of what reality is. So, you can accept this new reality that you don't think is rational, or you pretend this reality does not exist, or you find some other way to reconcile this unrational reality.

You mean it's a matter of fact that Saddam was not seeking yellowcake, that in fact the story was fabricated to justify the war, yes? The documents have been repeatedly demonstrated to be forgeries. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Or in the case in the same reality.

Emotion plays no part in truth. Facts, reached using established and demonstrable methods of deduction, lead to truth. You may feel one of myriad ways about the Niger uranium documents, but those emotions have no bearing on whether or not they were fake. Either they were fake or they were not. We've discovered, via factual evidence, that they were fake. This is objective truth, not subjective interpretation.

[QUOTE=aceventura3;2673962]I have been in self treatment for a number of years. I have been making progress, however I have been questioning the qualifications of my mental health care provider lately. I think I am going to start self treatments with someone else. Someone more qualified.[COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]

Ace.
You are not talking about Schizophrenia.
Here, this might help.

schizophrenia is not multiple personality disorder

Carry on people,
I'm sorry for the thread jack.

Stopping at this point, do you think you know that with absolute certainty?

Assuming less than absolute certainty, how can you conclude the story was fabricated? If the proof is 99% certain and I act on the 1% of uncertainty, why do you take on an air of superiority regarding your judgment? Certainly the odds are in your favor, but factoring in the consequences of being wrong it is possible there is greater value in the 1% choice.

We are not. We will never be on this subject. I understand why, but I can not explain it to you.

This point of view seems to suggest that emotion is not real. If emotion is real and exists, can it influence "truth"? Perhaps not, but "truth" is rarely known with absolute certainty. I have the opinion, especially in politics, emotion is more important than "truth". I have found the same to be true in business and many others aspects of human existence.

In most cases it leads to what we believe or accept as truth. Truth is pretty elusive.

My emotional response is that the documents are not relevant.

I am repeating myself in different ways, and it is not connecting with you. That is why I say I am beyond my capacity to communicate with you on this. My words seem to have no meaning to you. You simply do not accept my "reality". Your position seems to be that if "it" doesn't fit your view of a rational reality, it is not real.

The issue is not the documents, the issue is - Saddam attempting to develop or enhance his capacity to destroy innocent life.

---------- Post added at 06:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:13 PM ----------

[quote=ring;2674562]So, you are saying when I go to my self-treatment appointment this afternoon, that I should simply fire my mental health care provider and possibly sue for malpractice? See, I knew I should have been self-treating with a more qualified practitioner. But, then again, the term schizophrenia never came up in the discussions. Aghhh, I am so confused!:confused::confused::confused:

It's worth mentioning that this is noticed, and despite ideologically agreeing with roach, Will, et. al., I'm very impressed with the civility of your discourse, particularly so since you've been called no less than an a willfully ignorant schizophrenic in the last page or so. I respect you much more, even if I do disagree with your conflation of worldview with reality and your unpopular opinion about Iraq.

I know beyond a reasonable doubt. Very few things can be known with true absolute certainty. The only thing I know with absolute certainty is that I exist. Je pense donc je suis. After that, everything is about following established and verifiable methodology to determine a thing. I've been saying this all along.
This is the strangest incarnation of Pascal's Wager/Fallacy-esque thinking I've come across. By your logic, we should always act as if the least desirable outcome will happen, regardless of it's likelihood. Moreover, you're also assuming that there is only one least desirable outcome (the same mistake Pascal made). What if the least desirable outcome isn't Saddam getting yellowcake, but in his search for yellowcake finding a biological weapon that can devastate an entire continent? It's incredibly unlikely, but it's not totally impossible. And it's certainly worse than Saddam only having a small piece of nuclear material of questionable purity.
You don't understand why, seriously.
Show me where I said that.
I'm talking about objective verification. Do you understand what objective verification is? Can you grasp the concept that there are methods that can establish facts and likelihoods omitting human bias?
That's not my position at all. My position is that, regardless of personal bias, there is an objective reality which can often be verified objectively using proven methodology. You don't get to have your own reality just like I don't get to have mine. When I'm wrong about something I can be proven wrong. I have to adapt my understanding of the world to objective and verifiable facts regardless of how I feel about them. If it hurts my feelings, tough shit.
Do you have objecvtively verifiable information that Saddam was attempting to develop or enhance his weapons, or do you simply have the claims of known liars?

No, this is basic probability and statistics. For example the probability of heads or tails given a random coin toss is 50%. The value of heads appearing compared to tails appearing is equal. If you own a 1,000,000 home and (for the sake of argument) the probability of it being destroyed in a fire is 1% in a given one year period, would you pay to insure the home and if so how much? In my view the true value of insuring the home is $10,000. I would pay that price or less. So, given the 99 to 1 odds of not having a fire and risking a $1,000,000 is a decision I would compare to taking the action to insure the $1,000,000 for $10,000. In both cases the "value" is the same even though the probability is 99 to 1.

Yes.

I used the word "suggest"s. You did not expressly say it.

Yes.

I will try another approach.

Scientifically we can establish the normal physical limitations of the human body, i.e. pain tolerance, endurance, strength, heart rates, blood pressure to generate expected results given certain stimuli. We can generate a set of scientific norms and theoretical limitations. We can do all of this absent emotion and/or human bias or aversion to certain stimuli. However, when we introduce "emotion", all those known scientific facts and theoretical finding are worthless. We introduce fear and 40 year-old mother can move a weight x% more than science would predict possible. We trigger "survival" and a person can tolerate levels of pain that would normally render them unconscious.

I never omit human bias or human emotion.

I wonder if other conservatives would claim ace as one of their own. That'd be interesting to ask both before and after showing them this thread.

This thread is downright ALARMING, people.

I don't understand your point.

In business I would much rather deal in an environment without emotion/bias. I simply realize that is not realistic. I accept it. I accept things in some cases that I don't understand.

Also, I am a borderline libertarian. On most social issues I am not, what many consider to be a bible quoting conservative. I do however think aborting viable fetuses is wrong in all circumstances - having empathy for the unborn.

ace: That comment wasn't directed at you. I will say, I now understand why having a conversation with you is like trying to grab steam. Why you can shift positions and side-step the corners you get backed into, and then deny any shift. I now completely understand why it's been so frustrating to interact with you.

For you, a thing is true if you believe it. For most of the rest of us (I won't say "all", because I don't know that to be the case, but for sure it's most), there's the facts about a thing, and then our opinion, and we can separate the two. For you, the facts ARE what you believe. Evidence is seen through the filter of your existing beliefs, and nothing anyone can say to you can be heard in any way but through that filter.

I guess that's where you started this thread from, and what you've been up to since then is to justify that. I could have just listened to you when you said that right up front. But I didn't--I assumed SOME level of rationality and objectiveness over there, and I now see I was completely in error about that.

Her we go, from one of my favorite Boondocks episodes the "known unknowns", this summarizes where I am at this point:



---------- Post added at 08:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 PM ----------

Like making a decision understanding to odds, consequences, assigning an objective value to action or inaction and then being honest about it.

And, I am the one who has a problem. I got it.

OK. Except in this case, the war in Iraq, we're not talking about a house.
Even if we were talking about a house, the example is so irrelevant, so isolated from any other factors and, in general, absurd, that it doesn't really hold.
But, fuck it, let's take this house example.
Are you arguing that the alleged "risks" and threats that Saddam caused America, even if they were 1%(again, I'm typing this, and it makes no sense, but your example), were reason enough for going in there?


Damn it you make my head hurt. Please don't give me a "well, it's my reality" type answer. Please don't dodge it. Please try to explain it to me.

I guess this is the bottom line.

I think a person wants to kill me, and I tell you.

You present factual evidence that he did not go to Africa to buy a gun.

I think the person still wants to kill me and I tell you.

You present factual evidence that he does not have a gun.

I think the person still wants to kill me, and I tell you.

You present factual evidence that his wife likes me.

I think the person still wants to kill me, and I tell you.

You present statistics showing that the odds are 99 to 1 that he won't kill me.

I think the person still wants to kill me, and I tell you. I take action.

You say I ignored all of your facts.

I tell you that your facts were not relevant. I tell you that I thought the person wanted to kill me.

I tell you that I am prepared to live with the consequences of my actions. Because I know that I would rather deal with the consequences of my actions than be a victim to the person who I think wants to kill me.

You conclude I am not rational, out of touch with reality, ignoring facts, ect.

I ask you, who really is in denial?

Determine within a +/-2% margin of error the odds that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake, and please show your work.
Emotion does not give one greater physical strength, it simply motivates one to access the potential that was already there but that one was not previously motivated to reach. The real maximum capability has not changed, simply the resolve.

The woman often cited as lifting a car off her son, Angela Cavallo, said that she lifted the car less than 4 inches, which suggests that the suspension had all four tires on the ground. She didn't lift the car off the ground, she just moved it up far enough to get her pinned, unconscious son out. I can provide a link verifying this if you'd like. As an experiment, go out to your car and pull up on the back bumper (or even front bumper) and see if you can move your car three or four inches up. I'll bet money you can, even without the emotional motivation of having a loved on trapped underneath.

Well, maybe because this isn't about your life, only, it's about civilians in Iraq, and soldiers in Iraq, dying, and most of whom probably didn't want you dead in the first place.
And tons of taxpayer money, sunk into a war that was unjustified, and that has no guarantee of leaving Iraq in a better place.

What I am in denial about? I see that this war was never justified, the reasons stated were untrue, and it ended up hurting both nations with consequences later on that we still don't understand or can predict.

You're free to promote your convictions/thoughts/perceptions/faith, but when it hurts other people, yes, you bet we're gonna fight back.
And if you think conservatives in America (as a whole) are more about belief than fact, and I'm not saying you said that, then there is truly something wrong.

Consider the fact that, in your little scenario there, the jury would probably fry you. You committed premeditated murder (I assume that's the un-named "action" you "take"). Despite council from others not to, you operated on un-substantiated gut feelings, and those gut feelings will only demonstrate your savageness and lack of fitness to continue to participate in society, when displayed in court.

You said you're willing to live with the consequences of your actions. Are you prepared to die as a consequence of your actions? I understand you're more committed to being right (actually, more like "having been right") than to almost anything else. Would you die to demonstrate your certainty that you were right?

You are. But you'll never hear anyone else, when they say it.

The value I place on innocent human life = googol or 10 to the one hundredth power x (the probability that Saddam intended to kill innocent people, which is a number greater than zero, minus the probability a normal person has intents of killing innocent people) = a number greater than zero. Any number greater than zero requires some kind of action.

I think you missed the point. Scientifically you may think we know the "facts". Personally, you may think you know your limitations, the "facts". But in reality, do you? No.

I guess you know, and you know you know, and there are no unknowns knowns, or known unknowns. Must be nice to have all the answers or to know all the answers are known based on facts.

---------- Post added at 09:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:12 PM ----------


Gee., I think you missed my point also. See, this is clearly my inability to communicate on a level that you folks understand.

---------- Post added at 09:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:14 PM ----------


I told you I accept the consequences of my actions. I would rather die being proactive than being a victim. That's just me, I know others see it different. And, for the record I would not just act for no reason.

ace the probability that any person in the world will hurt someone else during there life is greater than 0. Does that mean we should kill every other person in the world because any chance means we need to take action?

The action brings with it loss of life. If the statistical probability for the loss of American lives you've found is 0.000000000001% and an invasion of Iraq brings with it a 96% chance of Iraqi civilians dying, what does that do to your equation? If the invasion of Iraq brings with it a 76% increase in the chance of being attacked by terrorism instead of lowering it, what does that do to your equation? What purpose does oversimplifying serve you?
I'll make this very simple for you:
Scientific method - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Logic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You do yourself a great disservice by thinking in absolutes.

There are things I know beyond any doubt, things I know beyond a reasonable doubt, things I know are by far the most likely, things I strongly suspect are likely, things I suspect are likely, things I suspect are possible, things I know are less likely, etc. There are myriad shades of gray. The yellowcake being fake thing is probably "things I know are by far the most likely". Whether or not Saddam Hussein was a threat to us is in "things I strongly suspect are likely". I can actually present evidence for these, which can be verified. It's that evidence that supports my opinions, which gives them weight. That evidence isn't something subjective, something from a human bias, it's something outside of us, which can be objectively verified.

since the argument here seems to be grinding to a halt, maybe it'd be good to go back to the paper for a minute.
what the study is concerned with responses to types of statements.
it asked participants to self-identify on a political scale.
there was no way to exclude or control for contexts like information--so no way to know how much any particular respondent knew about iraq--to stay with that one.
what they were shown were fake newspaper articles, one of which contained a statement attributed to george w bush, another of which contained statements attributed to other sources which refuted the claim attributed to george w bush.
so at issue here really is the relation to types of statements based on assumptions about the speaker, refracted through the dominant media.
questions about the validity of the claims were relegated to background conditions, which is one of the features of the study that makes it problematic. but anyway.

what they basically show is that the respondents who identified as conservative were even more likely to believe the claims attributed to george w bush after reading counter-claims, attributed to other sources presumably outside the administration.

this was nothing like the results obtained for other political affiliations.

the second part of the study tried to subdivide conservatives around questions specifically about the iraq war. this part happened *after* cowboy george had been obtained a second term. the first happened during the campaign.
with that subdivision in place, there was less of a backfire effect except amongst those who claimed a strong committment in support of the war in iraq and who identified as conservative. (i could be wrong about this, it's been a couple days since i read the paper--but i think it's the case)

so the overall conclusion of the study linked this change back to contextual shifts, which the study can't and doesn't really account for.

so what you have is a curious result. self-identified conservatives in the context of the campaign around what turned out to be bush's second term (um...yeah) exhibited this backfire effect. after the campaign, with a differently defined group of conservatives, a variant on the same effect was exhibited amongst the subset that identified as having a strong committment to the iraq war.

so what is this about then?

well, it does reveal a curious phenomenon that is characteristic of how conservative forms of identity politics operate---but one which is necessarily linked to a highly polarized context (as a strong feature anyway)...this characterstic has to do with the ways in which various speakers/sources are weighted---which is an ideological effect.
what the article doesn't really account for are contextual features either during the campaign or--especially--afterward. the second is interesting because it wasn't long after cowboy george's investiture for that second go-round that the real devolution of populist conservatism as a mass political phenomenon started to really take hold.

so it may well be that the study reflects the passage from ascendancy into devolution of populist conservatism as a mass political phenomenon.
so it may well be that what the study is about is something that's tied to a historical conjuncture.
political science types like to count things and feign a degree of transcendence for the results of their experryments because they've counted things, so in the way these results are presented this possibility is downplayed.
but i don't think it should be.

at the same time, the study does speak to something that is a regularity in what remains of conservative identity politics.
strangely enough, much of the thread turned into a demonstration of this.
the reason i find it strange is that the thread is about this backfire phenomenon, so you'd think would be the last place we'd get to read a performance of exactly what the study is about particularly one that is framed as a refutation of the study's conclusions.

go figure.
it pays to read the material, i guess.

I would really, really like to see the outcome from those that self-identified as liberals, to compare to the results in the article. I think it could provide a clearer context.

the data's in the appendix, which starts around page 26.
i think it's all there anyway.

Excellent, I hadn't noticed the second update.
Sounds like “Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions.” by Larry Bartels might have that information.

http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/bartels.pdf

Page 133-137 are there.

I'm trying to decipher my way through it at the moment.

It seems that there is some bias on "Strong Democrats", but it's not as pronounced overall as it is in "Strong Republicans".

I did not use the word "kill", I said "take action". One of the actions societies have taken is to criminalize intentional harming of innocent people. there are consequences.

---------- Post added at 01:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:21 AM ----------

I would never have the intent of harming innocent people. My goal would be to do the most good.

I understand you wouldn't intentionally do so, but you're discounting other variables in your process. Like I said, if Saddam presented a minuscule risk, something greater than zero, but not by much, you seem to think we're justified in defending ourselves. The problem is that by defending ourselves from a possible minuscule threat, we've ended up killing a lot of Iraqi civilians in reality. Just as you propose there could be consequences for not acting, there are consequences for acting. Do you see what I mean?

I am not sure who you think has been refuting the study's conclusions, but I (starting with my post #14) attempted to put the finding of the study in the context of my thought process. As illustrated in my post #67, no matter how clearly I present my thoughts relative to my emotional response to "facts", it fall on deaf ears. The key is in addressing the proper question. Until you do that, everything else is simply an exercise in futility. so, on the question of Saddam and Iraq, my guttural, feeling is he was a threat. Will is presenting his "factual" arguments saying he was not a threat. I tell him he is not responding to the correct question, and even if it is not rational to him, he tries to ignore the reality of what drives my decisions and my responses. On the other hand, I accept his point of view even though I think it is as irrational as he thinks my point of view is. I conclude I have a more empathetic and open point of view than he does, although liberals live with the pretense of the opposite.

---------- Post added at 01:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:34 AM ----------


I don't ignore them or unduly discount them, neither did Bush. Many things were attempted prior to military action. The risks of not acting were too high, the consequences of doing nothing were not reversible, not fixable.

Let's say Obama felt some country was a threat, and attacked it, in the process losing thousands of civilian and military lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars.
If evidence came out later that the country never was a threat in the first place, or a minor one, wouldn't you be pissed?

Yes.

---------- Post added at 03:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:53 PM ----------

I thought about this, and I have come to a different conclusion and I think my conclusion is insightful regarding this whole discussion.


I think some see these exchanges in terms of winners and losers. Some see these exchanges as opportunities to better understand opposing views. People who try to "win" an exchange with me seem to be the one's who get the most frustrated.

In many instances I will clearly state the most important core element forming my view. I do engage in the elements of an issue that are not at the core, this may be the basis of what you call grabbing at steam because eventually I will go back to the core element. The core elements are often indestructible. However, it is interesting that the people who can actually have an impact on changing my views are people who have actually invested time and effort into understanding how I think.

So, Roach's OP on this subject is interesting in the fact that someone is actually trying to understand "conservative" thought processes, but in doing so those who read the conclusions interpret the results the wrong way and actually lessen their ability to influence "conservative" thought. For example, using a few recent topics:

*I say that I felt Iraq under Saddam was a threat. I am told my "feelings" on this matter are not important - but I act on those feelings by working on Bush's campaign, voting for him and supporting our military action in Iraq. If, peace loving liberals wanted to influence me, the approach would not be to hit me with a bunch of facts that may or may not be proven true, but to focus on why I feel Iraq under Saddam was a threat.

*I say that as a small business owner in California that I felt like the enemy. I am told my "feelings" are wrong - but I act on those feelings by moving out of the state. If liberals in California wanted to influence me, the approach would not to be to hit me with a bunch of facts that may or may not apply to my experience, but to focus on why I felt like the enemy as a business owner.

*I say that as a conservative the more I feel that the liberal media unfairly attacks Palin, the more she will have my support. I am told there is something wrong with me for supporting her. If liberals really wanted her to go away they should stop the attacks understanding how and why people respond in certain ways regarding the attacks.

Some simply get a good laugh at how irrational they think I am or "conservatives" in general. After the laughter they are often amazed that we have engaged in a war, that we don't have national health care, that we have done nothing regarding "global warming", that investment banks report record profits within months of receiving billions in bailout money, etc, etc, etc.

I again ask, who is in denial?

ace....I do understand that there are those who firmly believe that emotions should rule over objective judgments...and clouding the facts be damned.

Unfortunately, the result is often as ratbastid described it....attempts at discussions with such persons are "like trying to grab steam"... attempting to converse when the emotional "feeling" party will consistently "shift positions and side-step the corners" to avoid the facts...and then "deny any shift."

Perhaps that is why it is so humorous to some. :)

added:
Not a personal attack...simply an observation of discussion styles.

This is another example of my point. This comment implies that what has formed my core belief has no basis in facts and that I have no respect for facts. In my mind this comment sets the tone of what follows. I simply become more entrenched in my view. I perceive this as an attack on my view. And as roach's study suggests in my view when a conservative's core view is attacked that view becomes more entrenched. Given, the learning opportunity and given the number of times I have pointed this out to people here on TFP, I can only assume there really is no interest in increased understanding, perhaps only an attempt to score points and make others look irrational.


I rarely shift positions. Perhaps you folks should come up with a better way to describe what you mean.

{added}

Also regarding "facts" - The Prof. Gates arrest proves interesting. There was only one set of facts, but given those facts - two people responded in very different ways - both with foundational legitimacy and both can be interpreted as being irrational.

Also, what makes you think your emotions aren't even more open to manipulation? Really, LITERALLY, all I have to do is float an American Flag graphic behind something to make a significant portion of the country agree with it. Appeals to fear, terror, nationalism, etc... These are all emotional manipulations.

To say "I feel something, and therefore to hell with facts" seems to me an inherently blind way to live.

---------- Post added at 12:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:55 PM ----------

Go re-read the sex education portion of the Sara Palin Quits thread. In that thread, you were staunchly for Palin's sex education policy, and also described how you thought sex ed should be conducted, and yet you were for Palin's policy with is the polar opposite of what you thought it should be, except that you support real sex ed, and also support Palin's policy, except where it might turn out to be in conflict with your views, which you don't know about, and even when pointed out to you, you see no conflict.

How is a reasonable, fact-based person supposed to interact with such bobbing and weaving?

They are open to manipulation. That is the first stage of controlling the issue, acknowledgment. I acknowledge this "fact" do you?

Recognizing that I can be manipulated and recognizing that I have been manipulated in the past I looked at what happened, how and why.

What I have learned is the following:

Stay away from women who can cry at will.
Don't negotiate anything in the presence of the aroma of cinnamon.
Make important decisions in the morning after a good night sleep.
If I get angry, walk away or at least try.
If what I hear sounds to good to be true it is.
Trust must be earned.

Or, as a lady selling crafts said to me once. She said she could sell anything, all she needed to do was glue big eyes on it. I did not buy one of the rocks she was selling with big eyes glued on it, but I did watch as others did.

I agree.

But, I am assuming you are suggesting that is the way I live. To the contrary and all I said was that I never ignore "feelings" or emotion. It plays a major role in what happens in the world. However, some have taken the position that "feelings" or emotions are not important and want me to believe that all they do is act on the "facts" without any emotional content.

Like I said at one point, the color blue elicits an emotional response in me, I know it does, I don't understand why, but I don't pretend that it is not real.


I thought I was clear on that issue. I support abstinence only for children, so does she. I do not support "explicit" sex education, based on what I assume it means, she does not either. I support science based sex education and so does she. We differ on some of the subtle points as it relates to sex and marriage. But, I don't think teens should get married. And I don't think they should be engaging in sex. The question of sex and marriage is for adults and is a personal issue. Palin would support teaching children that marriage should come before sex. I simply believe trust comes before sex. I would leave the question of marriage for a home or church discussion, not a school discussion.

{added} Speaking of emotional manipulation I came across this little cartoon. Simply say it pays to understand "emotion":

Video - Clip: Warren Buffett's "Secret Millionaire's Club" - WSJ.com

Let's break down the ability to assess risks. There are two factors:
Risk: the chances of something going wrong
Hazard: the consequence of something going wrong
If you are barbecuing, you have a relatively high risk of being burned by a small ember on your skin, but a relatively low hazard as the injury is temporary and doesn't reach a high level on the pain scale. On the other hand, if you go swimming in the ocean there is a very low risk of being attacked by a shark, but the hazard is quite high.

For each of these, I can gather and process information to determine likelihood:

I know that on average there are only 69 shark attacks per year resulting in an average of 4 deaths. Compare this to the annual number of people that are in oceans that might have sharks in them, and I can attain a rough estimate of the statistical odds of being attacked. They're quite low. Is this number subjective? Not at all. It is based completely in reality, the reality we both share. If 4 people died last year in shark attacks in my reality, 4 people died last year in shark attacks in your reality. While small factors can altar the statistics, such as diving in shark invested waters with an open cut and several raw steaks, for the sake of argument let's just say I'm your average Pacific swimmer.

The hazard, on the other hand, is severe. Even minor shark attacks can bring with them severe lacerations, damaging an individual severely.

It should be noted that hazard cannot determine risk and risk cannot determine hazard. They are independent. Risk can be high along with hazard being high, Risk can be high with hazard being low, risk can be low with hazard being high, risk and hazard can both be low, and everything in between.

In order to determine the best response, you must asses the risk using both hazard and risk. If risk is quite high and hazard is quite low or nonexistent, you would be more likely to continue on. If risk is quite low or nonexistent and hazard is quite high, you would be more likely to continue on.

My point:
The hazard of nuclear war is extremely high, but you need an objective methodology in order to determine risk. Without that objective determination of risk, one cannot make a determination.

The best methodology of determining the risk of Iraq seeking, finding, attaining, enriching, creating a delivery system for, and firing a nuclear weapon at the US can be determined using available evidence. Were they seeking nuclear materials? So far there is at best circumstantial evidence; US officials say he was looking for them, but they didn't provide evidence and they've been caught being dishonest before. Did Iraq find and attain nuclear material? Again, there's really no direct evidence for this at all. While it's been suggested that Iraq may have moved some weapons into Syria before the invasion, this was never verified. Did they enrich uranium? There is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq had the ability to enrich uranium. Not even the administration claimed this was happening. Did they have a delivery system that could reach the US? There is no evidence that Iraq could even reach Jerusalem, let alone develop advanced intercontinental delivery systems. Obviously such a nuclear missile was never fired.

These are the facts. They include nothing subjective and nothing based in emotion.

Your analysis fails to address the human response to the "facts" as you presented them. An individual response to assessed risk and hazard are subjective. Clearly, given the same information, lacking absolute certainty, your individual response is and will be predictably different than mine. You have to answer this question for your analysis to be complete - my answer is "emotion". My answer is that emotion plays a more important part than the math. In fact most people don't do a systematic mathematical approach to risk and hazard assessment further lessening the importance, most people go on "gut" or intuitive assessments of risk and hazard.

Given what you presented above, I am surprised at your response to my point about the odds of an occurrence relative to the value, which is basically what you have presented above in a more professorial manner. But, what you present above failed to make the connection with real human decision making. I must say that I am impressed.

Human response is neither a factor in risk nor hazard. They are each attained through objective fact. Once you have them, you have enough information to determine the appropriate response. If emotion makes you act in any way contrary to the evidence, you've made a mistake.

Interesting.

When considering risk and hazard, using the laws of large numbers, two informed individuals would logically be expected to arrive at the same conclusion on how to respond to risk and hazard. If that is a given, then a single super computer could be used to solve all of our risk and hazard questions. Human input would not be required because there is a theoretical "correct" answer. However, there are far to many variables, even for a super computer to take into consideration. Subjective assumptions have to be included into the equations. These subjective assumptions have an emotional basis.

For example, in life insurance. At birth the risks and hazards can be calculated for expected mortality. Further more demographic analysis, psychological testing, intelligence testing and some other factors can project things like expected income. Macro economic analysis can project things like CPI, taxes, personal consumption patterns, etc. We could plug all that information into a computer and when a person finishes school we should be able to come up with the "correct" amount of life insurance that person needs and we should be able to come up with the "correct" premium to be paid to provide the "correct" amount of coverage. But, what actually happens? And when we look at all that "factual" data and apply it to the decisions being made by an individual, how does it become meaningful to that particular individual? Oh, and keep in mind this is just on simple decision to be made on a person looking at risk and hazards to buy a life insurance policy.

Subjective assumptions do not necessarily have an emotional basis. They may carry with them bias, but to assume that bias is always emotional is incorrect.

What is a bias as you see it? I see having a bias as something subjective that distorts a persons view of objective information.

For example, continuing with the life insurance example: If you decide to purchase half as much life insurance as I do (assuming we fit in the same categories that should objectively lead us to the same amount), who am I to say your choice is wrong? who are you to say my choice is wrong? Assuming we both looked at the same information, I think it is reasonable that we may come to different conclusions. We are different, we have different biases, we have different emotional responses to risks and hazards.

Making the link to our favorite topic - the Iraq threat or non-threat. If your choice is to take no action to insure against the risks and hazards presented by Iraq under Saddam, who am I to say you are wrong? If my choice is to take action to insure against the risks and hazards presented by Iraq under Saddam who are you to say I am wrong? Theoretically, you get one vote and I get one vote. If I get the majority of people to see it the way I do, something gets done. I get people to see it my way, certainly by including facts, but I have to make an emotional connection to those facts. It seems Bush understood that, he even got liberals to emotionally connect to his arguments. And, he has people like me who will argue the point ad nauseam. Roach's study seems to try to understand why - and I am giving you my understanding of why.

Bias is simply being prone to a particular perspective or ideology. It something we all have, but the less we have of it, the more objective we can be. It interferes with the ability to be impartial and objective. In order to overcome personal bias, we (humans) have developed various verifiable methodologies to determine objective facts about the world.
I don't the the life insurance example fits well, but for the sake of argument I'll use it. Assuming you've been tested using various verifiable methods, methods that have been demonstrated to provide a certain reliability, that there is an outcome based on these methods, it is logical to trust these methods taking into account their reliability of success. If a certain test has an 87% likelihood of being correct, you can trust that outcome 87%. If it has a 99.9999% likelihood of being correct, you can trust that outcome 99.9999%. Should something happen that is unlikely, it would automatically be a part of whatever percent is incorrect, something you can take into account as an unlikely but possible outcome. If your life insurance says you're about 96% likely to live to be 83 and likely won't have a heart attack, and you have a heart attack, your insurance isn't wrong, you're simply in that 4%. Still, if the methodology that determined that 96% likelihood was based in sound methodology, nothing outside of that methodology or to disprove that methodology has occurred. It's all a simple matter of likelihood.

If, in your hypothetical situation, we were presented with the exact same figures of likelihood and one of us chose to agree with them and one did not, it's likely a bias came into play. Here's where it gets funny: it's entirely possible that the person with the bias could end up making the right decision ultimate, but he will have made that correct decision accidentally, which means it was the wrong decision. It was a gamble where the bias was put up against verifiable methodology, and in such a gamble the smart money is on the latter.

Let's say that you were to wager me that you could toss a coin and get heads 5 times in a row. If you win, you get $100. If I win, I get $10. Simple math tells me that the odds of 5 consecutive head tosses are one in 32, which means the odds are strongly in my favor. I will make the bet, even knowing that there's a chance I lose I will lose much more than I stand to gain simply because the odds favor my outcome more than yours even to the point of superseding the factor of 10 difference between risk/reward. There may be some outside factor I cannot perceive, but based on all the information I have, I'm making the prudent and logically defensible choice.
I'm the one using deductive reasoning. If there is little verifiable evidence that Saddam is a threat, how can I conclude that the risk is higher than the absolute risk of losing soldiers if we go to war? That's simple enough. As soon as objective methodology is adopted by one side and not the other, the side with it gains a logical upper hand. Ruling by rough approximation and bias cannot be as reliable as verifiable methodology.

I'll put it in different terms. One man says the earth is 4.7 billion years old. Another man says the earth is 6,015 years old. The first person is using verifiable geological and physical methodology to determine the age of the earth, the second person is using the biased source of the Bible. As science isn't a democracy, there aren't two votes to be counted, there are two theories to be tested. Both are processed using the verifiable methodology of the scientific method, and the crucible burns away the fallacy of the young earth so that only the truth remains.

In your example, the fair bet for me is $3.125 to win $100. I would not $10 to win $100 when the odds are 1 in 32 against me winning. However, people make those bets all day and night long, knowing the "facts", knowing the odds - why? Your position on this subject has no reasonable explanation for Las Vegas. Mine does - emotion. Your position has no reasonable explanation for financial and commodity markets. Mine does - emotion. Your position has no reasonable explanation for profits and losses in the insurance industry. Mine does - emotion. Your position has no explanation for why people like me don't care about the 47 million without health insurance. Mine does, emotion (my emotional response to the statistic is to explain it away, i.e. things like 18 million of them could buy health insurance if they chose to, while advocates don't make the emotional connection of why the statistic should matter to people like me. So, again I give you a practical application of what is at issue regarding the way people form opinions and take certain actions on issues. It all about emotion. Come on, say it with me - e m o t i o n.

It has been fun.:thumbsup:

Proper methodology doesn't exclude the factoring in the emotional and biased thinking. We have more than enough data on Saddam to determine within certain margins of error his actions. Just because something is emotional doesn't mean it cannot be predicted. Casino's have careful and incredibly accurate data on people making emotional and biased decisions, so much so that they can plan complex budgets around income from gambling. If they can create methods of deduction from something as flippant and illogical as gambling, you don't think that such methodology can be applied to the actions of world leaders?

Here:
Game Theory .net - Resources for Learning and Teaching Strategy for Business and Life

This will come in great handy for you, I hope you use the resource.

For me being adamant is a blessing and a curse, or as some of my closest friends say - Ace...you are a stubborn, bull headed, SOB, who doesn't know when to leave well enough alone...why can't you just walk away! My reply - Gee, I don't know...

Proper methodology???
Factoring in the emotional and biased thinking???

What is the "proper" methodology for applying emotion to a question or problem? Isn't that purely subjective or intuitive? Isn't that the intangible that makes Warren Buffet, Warren Buffet? Isn't that the intangible that made Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great? Isn't that the intangible that makes some men great and others failures when they all have the same "facts"?

While as individuals you and I should seek to be rid of biases that might cloud your judgment*, you must also realize that the rest of the world might not be the same way. To not factor that in is to ignore a fairly substantial set of variables.

I can't answer your question easily at all. The short answer has a lot of it has to do with previous actions and a lot has to do with the ability to put yourself in another person's place and frame of mind and predict based on what you believe the person would do. This takes a lot of practice, I'm still not even all that good at it, but I was able to predict what Saddam would do: he was always going to run and hide. It doesn't take a maestro of game theory to read a dictator like that, just the ability to play chop sticks. I feel like I'm getting off topic, though. The bottom line, the simple truth is that Saddam didn't have the capability to launch an attack on the US, and there were tremendously significant obstacles in attaining or developing the technology to do so even if he wanted to. All of this can be demonstrated through citing articles full of factual information and deducing the situation based solely on those facts. All of this has been demonstrated on TFP repeatedly.


*I don't mean become Vulcan, though. Emotions provide the flavor of life, and are necessary for contentment and balance. It's just important to ensure that emotion doesn't prevent you from making important decisions which have serious consequences.

Sing the praises brother.:thumbsup: