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Manfred comments on Please do not downvote every comment or post someone has ever made as a retaliation tactic. - Less Wrong Discussion
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So the hypothesis is that if a group of people have a belief because of the absurdity heuristic rather than the evidence, if you show them one piece of evidence that goes against their belief they'll rationalize something like "but what about all the other evidence?"
But if a group of people have a belief because of the evidence, and you show them one piece of evidence that goes against their belief, won't they also say "but what about all the other evidence?"
This is problematic, since it means that "confronting" people is a bad way to get information about them, even to give them information about themselves. Rather than zigging or zagging, try zogging. What sort of tests can you think of that differentiate well between people who are thoroughly biased and people who used evidence?
First of all, thanks for the constructive argument!
One that I have thought of long ago is asking the basic question of rationality, "Why do you believe what you believe." The result can be seen here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/5kz/the_5second_level/4c68 and here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ww/undiscriminating_skepticism/4c63
Needless to say, both questions were also ignored.
I don't know what other tests could be performed, considering that the people in question are apparently not willing to participate in any.
Well, that's still the "confronting" test. Given that people answered "because of the other evidence" in various places, either you're wrong about people deciding irrationally, or people are rationalizing a lot (which would make it a non-discriminating test). What sort of test would discriminate between a rational-ish person and someone who originally chose because of some bias ("bias X") and then rationalized, without requiring examination of the annotated bibliography of all the evidence someone ever considered ever?
I don't know, do you have any suggestion?