04-05-2010, 11:05 PM
Dean,
I have had hundreds of email exchanges with Judyth and have now interviewed her for nine YouTubes and a two-hour "The Real Deal"
program. I have dealt with a vast number of people during my lifetime and devoted my career to logic, critical thinking, and scientific
reasoning. I am probably the most accomplished professional scholar on this thread if not the entire forum. I have published more
than 150 articles and my 29th book, THE PLACE OF PROBABILITY IN SCIENCE, will appear shortly, possibly even this month. Based
upon my interactions with her, she is completely sincere, knowledgeable about science, and dedicated to truth, not just about her
experiences in New Orleans about about a wide range of other subjects. She has an IQ of around 160 and is superb at research.
Her knowledge of these events is too specific and too detailed and cannot possibly be the result of fantasizing or fictionalizing. Of
this, I have absolutely no doubt. Conveying that to others, such as her skeptics on this forum, however, is another matter entirely.
My knowledge and experience with her, alas!, cannot be transferred to anyone else. Moreover, my confidence in logic and evidence
to persuade others who are predisposed to not believe her has taken a serious hit during the course of this thread. Today, moreover,
I was sent an article that analyzes a phenomenon that, I believe, illuminates and clarifies what has been going on here, where all the
studies support the same finding: if a dodgy fact fits with your prejudices, a correction only reinforces these. If your goal is to move
opinion, this depressing finding suggests that smears work and, what's more, corrections don't challenge them much: because for
people who already agree with you, it only make them agree even more. I have talked about prior probs and posterior probs, but
not about the human tendency, apparently widespread, to disregard evidence contrary to your probs and selectively reinforce them
My failure, I believe, is not of logic or of evidence, but my inability to appreciate the nature of human psychology in a case like this.
Henceforth, therefore, I intended to emulate Jack's practice of presenting the results of his research without engaging in debate or
defense. I have some important evidence yet to present, but I am going to abandon any pretense of trying to convince anyone of
anything when it comes to Judyth, because logic and evidence cannot overcome the reinforcing power of attempted corrections. It
pains me to conclude that my professional career has been devoted to attempting to correct or compensate for a widespread and
powerful entrenched psychological tendency (which has the character of a predisposition for "special pleading", which is selecting
the evidence that supports a predetermined conclusion and ignoring the rest) but, based upon my experience with this thread, the
studies cited in this article from The Guardian explain what has been going on and I have simply been unable to see it. My appeals
to logic and evidence are largely in vain. So I have, after all, been dealing with human psychology rather than with rational minds.
Jim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...election-smears
How putting the facts straight entrenches deeply-held prejudices
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
1 May 2010
Elections are a time for smearing, and the Daily Mail's desperate story about Nick Clegg and the Nazis is my favourite so far. Generally the truth comes out, in time. But how much damage can smears do?
Daily Mail splash on Nick Clegg days after he was favourably compared to Winston Churchill The Daily Mail story on Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg days after he was favourably compared to Winston Churchill.
An experiment published this month in the journal Political Behaviour sets out to examine the impact of corrections, and what they found was more disturbing than expected: far from changing people's minds, if you are deeply entrenched in your views, a correction will only reinforce them.
The first experiment used articles claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction immediately before the US invasion. The 130 participants were asked to read a mock news article, attributed to Associated Press, reporting on a Bush campaign stop in Pennsylvania during October 2004.
The article described Bush's appearance as "a rousing, no-retreat defence of the Iraq war" and quoted a line from a genuine Bush speech from that year, suggesting that Saddam Hussein really had WMD, which he could have passed to terrorists. "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks, and in the world after September 11," said Bush, "that was a risk we could not afford to take."
The 130 participants were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions. For half, the article stopped there. For the other half, the article included a correction: it discussed the release of the Duelfer report, which documented the lack of Iraqi WMD stockpiles or an active production programme immediately prior to before the US invasion.
After reading the article, subjects were asked to state whether they agreed with the statement: "Immediately before the US invasion, Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction programme, the ability to produce these weapons, and large stockpiles of WMD, but Saddam Hussein was able to hide or destroy these weapons right before US forces arrived." Their responses were measured on a five-point scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
As you would expect, those who self-identified as conservatives were more likely to agree with the statement. More knowledgeable participants (independently of political persuasion) were less likely to agree. Then the researchers looked at the effect of whether you were also given the correct information at the end of the article, and this was where things got interesting. They had expected the correction would become less effective in more conservative participants, and this was true, up to a point: so for very liberal participants, the correction worked as expected, making them more likely to disagree with the statement that Iraq had WMD when compared with those who were very liberal but received no correction.
For those who described themselves as left of centre, or centrist, the correction had no effect either way. But for people who placed themselves ideologically to the right of centre, the correction wasn't just ineffective, it backfired: conservatives who received a correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMD were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD than people given no correction. Where you might have expected people to dismiss a correction that was incongruous with their pre-existing view, or regard it as having no credibility, it seems that such information actively reinforced their false beliefs.
Maybe the cognitive effort of mounting a defence against incongruous new facts entrenches you further. Maybe you feel marginalised and motivated to dig in your heels. Who knows? But these experiments were then repeated, in various permutations, on the issue of tax cuts (or rather, the idea that tax cuts had increased national productivity so much that tax revenue increased overall) and stem cell research.
All the studies found the same thing: if a dodgy fact fits with your prejudices, a correction only reinforces these. If your goal is to move opinion, this depressing finding suggests that smears work and, what's more, corrections don't challenge them much: because for people who already agree with you, it only make them agree even more.
[quote name='Dean Hagerman' post='191506' date='May 2 2010, 02:43 PM']
[quote name='James H. Fetzer' post='191505' date='May 2 2010, 01:38 PM']
There's nothing "hysterical" about my posts.
In my opinion, there is no chance in the world she is fabricating, fantasizing, or making these things up.[/quote]
Jim
I will take the time this morning to watch all of the Youtube videos that you posted
Can you read that last line I quoted and ask yourself if you are being fair to the "Cult" (Myself, David, Jack , Doug, Barb, Glen etc By the way who is the Jim Jones/Marshal Applewhite of this Anti Judyth Cult? :lol: )from this lat statement you dont seem to have any room for other opinions ?
[/quote]
I have had hundreds of email exchanges with Judyth and have now interviewed her for nine YouTubes and a two-hour "The Real Deal"
program. I have dealt with a vast number of people during my lifetime and devoted my career to logic, critical thinking, and scientific
reasoning. I am probably the most accomplished professional scholar on this thread if not the entire forum. I have published more
than 150 articles and my 29th book, THE PLACE OF PROBABILITY IN SCIENCE, will appear shortly, possibly even this month. Based
upon my interactions with her, she is completely sincere, knowledgeable about science, and dedicated to truth, not just about her
experiences in New Orleans about about a wide range of other subjects. She has an IQ of around 160 and is superb at research.
Her knowledge of these events is too specific and too detailed and cannot possibly be the result of fantasizing or fictionalizing. Of
this, I have absolutely no doubt. Conveying that to others, such as her skeptics on this forum, however, is another matter entirely.
My knowledge and experience with her, alas!, cannot be transferred to anyone else. Moreover, my confidence in logic and evidence
to persuade others who are predisposed to not believe her has taken a serious hit during the course of this thread. Today, moreover,
I was sent an article that analyzes a phenomenon that, I believe, illuminates and clarifies what has been going on here, where all the
studies support the same finding: if a dodgy fact fits with your prejudices, a correction only reinforces these. If your goal is to move
opinion, this depressing finding suggests that smears work and, what's more, corrections don't challenge them much: because for
people who already agree with you, it only make them agree even more. I have talked about prior probs and posterior probs, but
not about the human tendency, apparently widespread, to disregard evidence contrary to your probs and selectively reinforce them
My failure, I believe, is not of logic or of evidence, but my inability to appreciate the nature of human psychology in a case like this.
Henceforth, therefore, I intended to emulate Jack's practice of presenting the results of his research without engaging in debate or
defense. I have some important evidence yet to present, but I am going to abandon any pretense of trying to convince anyone of
anything when it comes to Judyth, because logic and evidence cannot overcome the reinforcing power of attempted corrections. It
pains me to conclude that my professional career has been devoted to attempting to correct or compensate for a widespread and
powerful entrenched psychological tendency (which has the character of a predisposition for "special pleading", which is selecting
the evidence that supports a predetermined conclusion and ignoring the rest) but, based upon my experience with this thread, the
studies cited in this article from The Guardian explain what has been going on and I have simply been unable to see it. My appeals
to logic and evidence are largely in vain. So I have, after all, been dealing with human psychology rather than with rational minds.
Jim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...election-smears
How putting the facts straight entrenches deeply-held prejudices
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
1 May 2010
Elections are a time for smearing, and the Daily Mail's desperate story about Nick Clegg and the Nazis is my favourite so far. Generally the truth comes out, in time. But how much damage can smears do?
Daily Mail splash on Nick Clegg days after he was favourably compared to Winston Churchill The Daily Mail story on Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg days after he was favourably compared to Winston Churchill.
An experiment published this month in the journal Political Behaviour sets out to examine the impact of corrections, and what they found was more disturbing than expected: far from changing people's minds, if you are deeply entrenched in your views, a correction will only reinforce them.
The first experiment used articles claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction immediately before the US invasion. The 130 participants were asked to read a mock news article, attributed to Associated Press, reporting on a Bush campaign stop in Pennsylvania during October 2004.
The article described Bush's appearance as "a rousing, no-retreat defence of the Iraq war" and quoted a line from a genuine Bush speech from that year, suggesting that Saddam Hussein really had WMD, which he could have passed to terrorists. "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks, and in the world after September 11," said Bush, "that was a risk we could not afford to take."
The 130 participants were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions. For half, the article stopped there. For the other half, the article included a correction: it discussed the release of the Duelfer report, which documented the lack of Iraqi WMD stockpiles or an active production programme immediately prior to before the US invasion.
After reading the article, subjects were asked to state whether they agreed with the statement: "Immediately before the US invasion, Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction programme, the ability to produce these weapons, and large stockpiles of WMD, but Saddam Hussein was able to hide or destroy these weapons right before US forces arrived." Their responses were measured on a five-point scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree".
As you would expect, those who self-identified as conservatives were more likely to agree with the statement. More knowledgeable participants (independently of political persuasion) were less likely to agree. Then the researchers looked at the effect of whether you were also given the correct information at the end of the article, and this was where things got interesting. They had expected the correction would become less effective in more conservative participants, and this was true, up to a point: so for very liberal participants, the correction worked as expected, making them more likely to disagree with the statement that Iraq had WMD when compared with those who were very liberal but received no correction.
For those who described themselves as left of centre, or centrist, the correction had no effect either way. But for people who placed themselves ideologically to the right of centre, the correction wasn't just ineffective, it backfired: conservatives who received a correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMD were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD than people given no correction. Where you might have expected people to dismiss a correction that was incongruous with their pre-existing view, or regard it as having no credibility, it seems that such information actively reinforced their false beliefs.
Maybe the cognitive effort of mounting a defence against incongruous new facts entrenches you further. Maybe you feel marginalised and motivated to dig in your heels. Who knows? But these experiments were then repeated, in various permutations, on the issue of tax cuts (or rather, the idea that tax cuts had increased national productivity so much that tax revenue increased overall) and stem cell research.
All the studies found the same thing: if a dodgy fact fits with your prejudices, a correction only reinforces these. If your goal is to move opinion, this depressing finding suggests that smears work and, what's more, corrections don't challenge them much: because for people who already agree with you, it only make them agree even more.
[quote name='Dean Hagerman' post='191506' date='May 2 2010, 02:43 PM']
[quote name='James H. Fetzer' post='191505' date='May 2 2010, 01:38 PM']
There's nothing "hysterical" about my posts.
In my opinion, there is no chance in the world she is fabricating, fantasizing, or making these things up.[/quote]
Jim
I will take the time this morning to watch all of the Youtube videos that you posted
Can you read that last line I quoted and ask yourself if you are being fair to the "Cult" (Myself, David, Jack , Doug, Barb, Glen etc By the way who is the Jim Jones/Marshal Applewhite of this Anti Judyth Cult? :lol: )from this lat statement you dont seem to have any room for other opinions ?
[/quote]