lukeprog comments on Open thread, November 2011 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 02 November 2011 06:19PM

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Comment author: lukeprog 02 November 2011 11:04:19PM 6 points [-]

There was a recent LW discussion post about the phenomenon where people presented with evidence against their position end up believing their original position more strongly. The article had experimentally found at least one way that might solive this problem, so that people presented with evidence against their position actually update correctly. Does somebody know which discussion post I'm talking about? I'm not finding it.

Comment author: Manfred 06 November 2011 07:30:18PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: lukeprog 06 November 2011 08:23:36PM 0 points [-]

'Twas!

Comment author: VincentYu 03 November 2011 03:27:06AM *  2 points [-]

I'm not sure about the LW discussion post, but the phenomenon that you describe closely resembles Nyhan and Reifler's 'backfire effect', which I think reached a popular audience when David McRaney wrote about it on You Are Not So Smart.

ETA: Googling LW for "backfire effect" and nyhan doesn't turn up any recent post, so maybe this is not what you are looking for.

Comment author: dbaupp 03 November 2011 08:05:17AM *  1 point [-]

I'm not in a position to Google easily, but "belief polarization" is another term for this, I think.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 November 2011 02:05:52PM 1 point [-]

The article had experimentally found at least one way that might solive this problem, so that people presented with evidence against their position actually update correctly.

Are you thinking of the one where people updated only to consider dangers less likely than their initial estimate?

http://lesswrong.com/lw/814/interesting_article_about_optimism/

Comment author: lukeprog 03 November 2011 03:16:57PM 0 points [-]

That's not what I was thinking of, but interesting nonetheless.