Elizabeth Kolbert's article, “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds,” in the New Yorkers February 2017 issue looks at some main ideas in three different psychological books about patterns in human reasoning and attempts to connect them to today’s politics. Her explanation of the studies and their outcomes were superb, though she could have done a better job at connecting these points to her political conclusion. It is difficult to distinguish what her main point is.
She starts the article by describing a couple experiments done at Stanford on human reasoning. In these experiments the subjects were exposed to some false knowledge. After that they were told it was false and then asked to form their own opinion on the matter. They found that people …show more content…
It’s key focus is on shared views. We as humans tend to think we’re smarter than we are because things like the toilet are easy to use. When it comes down to it we don’t really know all the inner workings, we’re just led to believe we do when really it’s someone else’s knowledge we think we have. It also touches on how we find comfort in having the same beliefs as someone else. One person could have a belief with absolutely no evidence and it wouldn’t seem reasonable, but if a couple others have this same belief it suddenly seems …show more content…
When talking about a lack of knowledge she mentions Sloman and Fernbach saying it’s okay not to know how a toilet works, but there’s a problem when you don’t know about politics. Then she mentions Trump a couple times saying that he dismisses all evidence that doesn’t support his opinion and that he and that he is almost one of the people that won’t accept that immunization helps. Then again, at the end she has one small paragraph she says it feels like today the whole country is a “vast psychological experiment.” Nothing in the title or first paragraph would lead the reader to think that she is going to be talking about politics, in fact it isn’t until that last paragraph that it becomes clear there was supposed to be any political meaning in it at all. If she would have just talked about the books or if she had added a bit more about how today's politics actually tie into this psychology of humans not being able to reason correctly then it could have had a more concise
She starts the article by describing a couple experiments done at Stanford on human reasoning. In these experiments the subjects were exposed to some false knowledge. After that they were told it was false and then asked to form their own opinion on the matter. They found that people …show more content…
It’s key focus is on shared views. We as humans tend to think we’re smarter than we are because things like the toilet are easy to use. When it comes down to it we don’t really know all the inner workings, we’re just led to believe we do when really it’s someone else’s knowledge we think we have. It also touches on how we find comfort in having the same beliefs as someone else. One person could have a belief with absolutely no evidence and it wouldn’t seem reasonable, but if a couple others have this same belief it suddenly seems …show more content…
When talking about a lack of knowledge she mentions Sloman and Fernbach saying it’s okay not to know how a toilet works, but there’s a problem when you don’t know about politics. Then she mentions Trump a couple times saying that he dismisses all evidence that doesn’t support his opinion and that he and that he is almost one of the people that won’t accept that immunization helps. Then again, at the end she has one small paragraph she says it feels like today the whole country is a “vast psychological experiment.” Nothing in the title or first paragraph would lead the reader to think that she is going to be talking about politics, in fact it isn’t until that last paragraph that it becomes clear there was supposed to be any political meaning in it at all. If she would have just talked about the books or if she had added a bit more about how today's politics actually tie into this psychology of humans not being able to reason correctly then it could have had a more concise