Comments on: Do We Believe Everything We’re Told?

By: Philosophical Fortnights

Philosophical Fortnights — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:10:01 +0000

Comment

This is one of those cases where in the interest of bringing out a philosophically worthwhile distinction in points of few people tend to exaggerate the differences among philosophers.

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:22:28 +0000

I, for one, found the color changing text completely persuasive.

By: Tim Freeman

Tim Freeman — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:01:24 +0000

Hugo Mercier’s citation above for “Believe it or Not” by Hasson et al. wants money to give you the article. The article is available for free from Hasson’s home page at:

http://home.uchicago.edu/~uhasson/

The direct URL is:

http://home.uchicago.edu/~uhasson/Belief.pdf

By: Gordon Worley

Gordon Worley — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:40:17 +0000

Between teaching mathematics to freshmen and spending most of my time learning mathematics, I’ve noticed this myself. When presented with a new result, the first inclination, especially depending on the authority of the source, is to believe it and figure there’s a valid proof of it. But occasionally the teacher realizes that they made a mistake and may even scold the students for not noticing since it is incredibly obvious (e.g. changing something like ||z – z_0|| to ||z – z_1|| between steps, even though a few seconds thinking reveals it to be a typo rather than a mathematical insight).

Sometimes (and for a few lucky people, most of the time) individuals are in a mental state where they are actively thinking through everything being presented to them. For me, this happens a few times a semester in class, and almost always during meetings with my advisor. And occasionally I have a student who does it when I’m teaching. But in my experience this is a mentally exhausting task and often leaves you think-dead for a while afterwards (I find I can go about 40 minutes before I give out).

All this leads me to a conclusion, largely from my experience with what behavior produces what effects, that in mathematics the best way to teach is to assign problems and give students clues when they get stuck. The problems assigned, of course, should be ones that result in the student building up the mathematical theory. It’s certainly more time consuming, but in the end more rewarding, in terms of both emotional satisfaction and understanding.

By: nick

nick — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:07:48 +0000

“Spinoza suggested that we first passively accept a proposition in the course of comprehending it, and only afterward actively disbelieve propositions which are rejected by consideration.”

Whether this view is more accurate than DesCartes’ view depends on whether the belief in question is already commonly accepted. When in the typical situation a typical person Bob says “X is Y, therefore I will perform act A” or “X should be Y, therefore we should perform act A”, Bob is not making a statement about X or Y, he is making a statement about himself. All the truth or reality that is required for Bob to signal his altruism is that it be probable that he believes that X is Y or that X should be Y. The probability of this belief depends far more on what else Bob and his peers believe than it does about the reality or truth of “X is Y”.

By: Nick Tarleton

Nick Tarleton — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:04:48 +0000

In addition to advertisements, should we avoid fiction when we’re distracted?

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:44:59 +0000

If people are that much more trusting when they’re distracted, then it’s important not to multi-task if you need to evaluate what you’re looking at. Maybe it’s just important to not multi-task.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:00:29 +0000

I have heard that advertising mainly shifts consumers from one brand to another. In that sense it is wasteful and an economist could give an argument for taxing it. I happen to like the subsidy of media by advertisements, so I wouldn’t advocate it.

By: Constant

Constant — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:57:58 +0000

Contrary to what many seem to believe, I consider advertising to be one of the least harmful sources of unreliable information. For one thing, the cacophony of advertisements send us contradictory messages. “Buy my product.” “No, buy my product.” One might argue that even such contradictory messages have a common element: “buy something”. However, I have not noticed that I spend less money now that I hardly ever put myself at the mercy of television advertising, so I have serious doubts about whether advertising genuinely increases a person’s overall spending. I notice, also, that I do not smoke, even though I have seen plenty of advertisements for particular brands of cigarettes. The impact of all those cigarette advertisements on my overall spending on cigarettes has evidently been minimal.

For another, the message itself seems not all that harmful in most cases. For example, suppose that advertising is ultimately the reason that I buy Tide detergent rather than another brand of detergent. How much am I harmed by this? The detergents all do pretty much the same thing.

And in many specific cases, where people’s behavior has been blamed on the nefarious influence of advertising, what I generally see is that the accuser has curiously neglected some alternative, very likely explanations. Smoking is attractive because it delivers a drug. Smoking was popular long before it was advertised. I suspect that no more than a very small fraction of smokers started smoking because of advertising.

By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:35:52 +0000

What about statements that are so loaded to their listeners that they’re rejected outright, with seemingly no consideration? Are they subject to the same process (and have such outrageous implications that they’re rejected at once), or do they work differently?