The Magic Feather

"... People gravitate toward information that confirms what they believe, and they select sources that deliver it." - Charles Taber

In my previous blog post I revealed a brief history of my personal journey from being a Believer to becoming a Skeptic. It was a long and sometimes difficult process; but I can never go back. I often think of the scene toward the end of “The Wizard of Oz” where Dorothy and company are terrified of the specter of the great and all-powerful OZ – until little Toto pulls back the curtain, revealing the hoax. We Skeptics are Toto.

Recently the curtain was pulled back on the widely-held belief that President Obama is not a legally born US Citizen. Up to this point, facts had not dissuaded the “Birthers” strongly held beliefs. So will the stark confrontation from presenting Obama’s actual birth certificate settle the issue once and for all? Not likely – people tend to hold strongly to their beliefs, and even more surprisingly, tend to grip them even tighter in the face of contradictory facts. What’s going on here?

As I pointed out previously, belief is the “default option”. Evolution has favored the tendency for humans to generally believe what we presented. Belief can, and often does, exist outside of the truth of that belief.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:
“[Belief is] a mental attitude of acceptance or assent toward a proposition without the full intellectual knowledge required to guarantee its truth. Believing is either an intellectual judgment or, as the 18th-century Scottish Skeptic David Hume maintained, a special sort of feeling with overtones that differ from those of disbelief. … Belief in someone or something is basically different from belief that a proposition is true.”

“Seeing is believing” is a common idiom, though the belief may be incorrect. In the case of performance magic, magicians deliberately make use of this causality to our delight by making us think that the laws of physics can be suspended. The same impressions can also be employed by people, such as convicted swindler Bernard Maydoff, to cause us to part with our money to disastrous result.

Our eyes and brain, fortunately, are not movie cameras which objectively record and retain every image. I say “fortunately” because, without our outward awareness our brains sort, prioritize, evaluate and weigh for significance, all of millions of bits of input we experience every day. Most of this information is discarded; your brain has forgotten the number of traffic lights you went through on your way to the mall, the faces of the people in the store, and the Musak tunes played as you shopped. What we do remember are those things that have significance and value to us – and for this we require an emotional component.

Emotions, how we “feel” about what we experience, are a strong influence on the conclusions we derive from our perceptions. We weight these experiences against our values and decide if they are worthy of acceptance, of belief.

Internal conflict arises within us when we are confronted with information contrary to our beliefs. This can create discomfort and stress and can even feel threatening when one’s values are at stake. There are few alternatives available to us; acceptance of the belief, rationalize it, or outright dismissal. The surprising research is that, when confronted with opposing input, we often reinforce the original belief.

"[People] retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs... and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing." In other words, when we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing.
... People rejected the validity of a scientific source because its conclusion contradicted their deeply held views... And that undercuts the standard notion that the way to persuade people is via evidence and argument. In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.” [1]
- Charles Taber, Stonybrook University

Skepticism is a process which requires effort if we are to ensure we are correct in our assumptions, something few people do. Without exercising that extra effort, we can continue to expect that half of the conservatives in this country will believe our President is a Muslim and a significant number, even in the face of outstanding proof, will continue to believe that he was not born a US Citizen.

Many hold certain beliefs, primarily religious beliefs, because they find comfort within them. But is the comfort and confidence in these beliefs not unlike that of Dumbo, holding onto our “magic feather” falsely convinced that it is the reason we can fly? But I think there is something of greater value to be gained by venturing outside one's comfort zone, in questioning one's beliefs. For me it is never enough to just believe; I have to "know". The Truth - I can deal with the truth.

Next: Can we separate emotions from our decisions and beliefs?

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1. The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, Mother Jones, April 18, 2011

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Finally for a bit of fun: Can you trust what you're seeing to be true?
Watch this Japanese magician pull a salt shaker through a solid glass table top: