2007-08-26

Persuading people

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

One of the mistakes of the Enlightenment view of humanity is that we are essentially rational — I don’t like that being a mistake since I like to think I’m very rational and persuaded only by facts and reason. But I have to admit the facts tell me it ain’t so. Trying to recall those brain experiments where they demonstrated that people gave rational explanations for their choices that the experimenter could see were nothing more than confabulations. Will try to track down and post some of the details here.

But meanwhile, a journalist I like, Mark Colvin, has prepared a nifty article about more facts coming out of recent research: it’s about Professor of Psychology, Drew Westen‘s new book, The Political Brain. Check out the article here.

Looks like it is something, in part at least, of a more researched basis for Lakoff‘s Don’t Think of an Elephant.

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https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
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Neil Godfrey on Review of R. G. Price’s book on the Christ Myth theory — and a review of Richard Carrier’s to come: “If you are persuaded by the kind of evidence cited then you might also be interested in a major city…” Dec 22, 23:57
Henry Cobb on Review of R. G. Price’s book on the Christ Myth theory — and a review of Richard Carrier’s to come: ““Mark’s Geography and the origin of Mark’s Gospel with Professor Richard Bauckham” shows that parts of Mark is based on…” Dec 22, 21:58
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “A troll is someone who ignores what is being said and continues their own agenda without engaging with the logic…” Dec 21, 03:26
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I am still once more responding, so that you do not think that I am impolite or that I am…” Dec 20, 07:22
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I re-read my earlier reply and can see how you took it as “emotional” — but I can assure you…” Dec 18, 02:43
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I simply asked you to tell me what it is that you think I misunderstand or what, specifically, I am…” Dec 17, 20:26
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Neil, I have no interest to engage in an emotional discussion. I felt indebted to you, since I read many…” Dec 17, 19:21
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Why do you ask? What are you trying to argue? I agree and acknowledge that Bayes theorem is a valid…” Dec 16, 09:22
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “My sentence “I voice several assumptions, testing if we all agree on them:” was meant as a yes/no question; let…” Dec 16, 08:57

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