I’ve written before about the discouraging studies that illustrate the Backfire Effect. If someone has a belief that is objectively wrong—that is, a belief that an unbiased observer equipped with all relevant facts would judge as false—giving the correct information isn’t likely to get them to change their mind.

But it feels so right! The other guy has come to the wrong conclusion, and once I give him the correct facts, he’ll cheerfully thank me and switch to the correct opinion, right? That sounds reasonable, but no—he will instead very likely double down on the false belief. Changing one’s opinion is painful, and this response to his error only makes the problem worse.

I explored approaches that minimize the Backfire Effect, but a recent article, “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” by Elizabeth Kolbert, has an approach that should be more productive. But more on that shortly. Getting there is an interesting journey.

Study 1: biased weighing of data

The article gives a number of studies that reveal the embarrassingly inept way our minds sometimes work. In one study, half of the participants were in favor of capital punishment and half not. Each participant was given two studies that argued the two sides of the issue. These studies were actually made up, but they presented data that was equally compelling. Participants reported that the one that supported their own opinion was far more compelling than the other (this is confirmation bias). Afterwards, they were asked about their views. Unsurprisingly, they were more entrenched than they’d been at the start. This is the Backfire Effect.

Why are we susceptible to poor thinking?

This human failing enables America’s new vogue of alternative facts. But since this thinking isn’t logical, why do people do it? Why are they biased toward confirming evidence, and why does presenting disconfirming evidence force them to double down?

Since this is pretty much universal, it’s an evolved trait, but what value could it have to outweigh the downsides? Some researchers say that it developed in a society where humans had to work together. A cooperating society wants to encourage members who contribute, but it must punish freeloaders—possibly even to the point of exile. That’s a substantial punishment because, in a primitive society, living on your own is much harder than being a contributing member in a tribe.

Human reason didn’t evolve to weigh economic policy options or evaluate social safety nets, but, according to this theory, it evolved to defend one’s social status. Winning arguments is important, and self-confidence helps. Doubting your position is not a good thing. The thoughtful tribal member who says, “Well, that’s a good point—maybe my contribution to the group has been sub-par” risks exile.

(Another area of thought where we are surprisingly poor is probability—surprising because we seem to bump into simple probability questions all the time. I’ve written about the Monty Hall Problem here and about simple puzzles that reveal our imperfect thought process here.)

Study 2: explain your answer

In this study, graduate students were first asked to evaluate their understanding of everyday devices—toilets, zippers, cylinder locks, and so on. Next, they were asked to write a detailed explanation of how the devices worked. Finally, they again rated their understanding of these devices. Being confronted with their incompetence caused them to lower their self-rating.

It’s easy to think of the user interface alone and overestimate our understanding of how it works inside. This encapsulation is important for progress—you don’t understand how a calculator works but you know how to operate it. The same is true (for most of us) for a car, a computer, a cell phone, or the internet. We know how to buy hamburger or a suit, but we don’t understand the particulars of how they got to the store. This encapsulation extends into public policy—we (usually) don’t understand the intricacies of policy proposals like cap and trade or trade deals like NAFTA or TPP. Instead, we rely on trusted politicians and domain experts to convince us of the rightness of one side of the issue.

Study 3: policy questions

That brings us to one final study, modeled on the last one. Participants were asked their opinions on policy questions like single-payer health care or merit-based pay for teachers and then were asked to rate their confidence in their answers. Next, they were asked to explain in detail the impact of implementing each proposal. Finally, they were asked to reevaluate their stance. Having just struggled to explain the details of their favored proposal, they dialed back their confidence.

This finding may be relevant to our interactions with people arguing for scientific or historical claims like Creationism or the Resurrection, or for social policies like making abortions illegal or “natural marriage.” Instead of pushing back, ask them to explain their position. Let them marinate in their own confusion. Avoid the snarky retort (tempting, I know), which would trigger the Backfire Effect.

This research is equally applicable to ourselves. Find or create opportunities to explain how your favored policy, if implemented, would work and then ask yourself how this exercise changes your opinion. Is it still a no-brainer? Or have you uncovered obstacles that might make success more elusive?

Let me end with one final cautionary observation. When you ask someone, “Do you accept evolution?,” you may see this as a straightforward question about opinion or knowledge. For some, however, you’re asking about who they are. “I am a Christian,” they think, “and my kind of Christian rejects evolution.” Your straightforward question becomes in their mind, “Do you reject Jesus Christ as Lord and savior?,” to which the answer is, obviously, No. Other personal questions potentially fall into the same trap—questions about abortion or same-sex marriage or even climate change.

There is security in obscurity.
Precision invites refutation.
— Walter Kaufmann

Image credit: Wesley Eller, flickr, CC

In a recent post, I responded to the Creationist challenge, “DNA is a program, programs demand a programmer, and that programmer is God” Let’s turn to a related idea, that DNA is too complex to have evolved naturally.

DNA (or RNA) becoming more complex, from the first simple cells four billion years ago to humans and other animals today, is explained by evolution, but conservative Christian groups often dogmatically reject evolution. They say that it is incompatible with God creating life in Genesis (in two incompatible stories, but never mind that). Adam didn’t evolve from earlier apes, they tell us—that would be yucky. No, God created Adam from dirt, which is far more dignified. And we know that Eve was made from Adam’s rib because it’s right there in Genesis (leading to the belief, which survives, that men have one fewer ribs than women).

Curiously, they never seem to be troubled by quantum physics, which is far more counterintuitive.

Let’s explore a few examples besides evolution where complex comes from simple. The well-known Fibonacci sequence is very simple. Each term is the sum of the two previous terms: F(n + 2) = F(n + 1) + F(n). After {1, 1} as the first two terms, we get:

1 + 1 = 2

2 + 1 = 3

3 + 2 = 5

5 + 3 = 8

8 + 5 = 13

And so on. It’s trivially simple, and yet entire books have been written on this simple series and its applications. As one example, the ratio of consecutive terms in the Fibonacci series becomes an increasingly good approximation to phi (φ), the golden ratio. Expressed formally:

And then phi itself is a fascinating number about which entire books have been written. To take just one example of many, phi (φ = 1.618 . . .) is the only number that if you take off the initial one (0.618 . . .) and then invert it (1/0.618 . . .) you get the original back: φ – 1 = 1/φ.

There are many more examples of complex coming from simple, some of which you are already familiar with.

• Crystals and snowflakes are complex but formed from simple physical principles and laws.
• Simple equations can form beautiful, complex, fractal artwork as Julia sets.
• The harmonograph (typically, a pen is controlled by two pendulums as it draws on paper) was invented in the 1800s. A Spirograph creates similar art.
• John Horton Conway’s Game of Life is a two-dimensional cellular automaton with three simple rules. The general category of cellular automata also create complex patterns with simple rules.
• The members of social insect colonies—ants, termites, bees—don’t have large brains for complex algorithms, and yet they still create complex hives and nests. “A single ant or bee isn’t smart, but their colonies are,” as National Geographic put it. Starlings are famous for their swarms (“murmurations”) that appear to act as a single organism, and many fish swarm. Simple rules govern both.
• A piano has 88 keys but can create a vast number of pieces of music.
• The Periodic Table has 94 naturally occurring elements. From these millions of compounds are possible. Only 19 elements are essential for human life, but these make the thousands of chemicals that are metabolized as food and converted into thousands more to make a healthy human.
• Mathematics has a small set of axioms (a statement declared true because of evidence, not because it derives from simpler axioms) from which derive its fantastic complexity—algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, topology, group theory, linear algebra, probability and statistics, number theory, and so on.
• Pulsars emit a beam of radiation at very precise intervals, measured in milliseconds or seconds. From our vantage point, they’re like a lighthouse. The pulses were so curiously regular that an intelligent source was considered, first as interference from the earth and then as a signal from an alien intelligence. We now know that pulsars are rotating neutron stars that emit beams of radiation from their poles.

That the complex can come from the simple is no proof that DNA wasn’t made by God or that there is no God, but it does illustrate that complexity can be nicely explained with natural means.

Creationists are forced to the very brink of accepting evolution when they agree that antibiotic resistance is caused by random mutation and natural selection acting on bacteria. Add more time (not just years but millions of years), and you get the diversity of life that you see on earth. Somehow Creationists imagine an unexplained shield that prevents one species from eventually becoming another.

At best, they propose an argument from ignorance: Wow—look at how DNA works. What could’ve caused that?? This is no evidence for God. And what does it say of their arguments that this argument from incredulity is in their arsenal? A god worth believing in wouldn’t be hidden.

If you pretend that your problems are already solved,
you have no motivation to solve them.
— Scathing Atheist podcast #76

Image credit: Wikimedia