I think I get the point you’re trying to make–that making people do more of the work of thinking on their own (forming ideology-based opinions on unsourced facts being true or untrue, and looking them up themselves) makes it more likely that they will change those ideologically-motivated beliefs if it turns out they were wrong about the facts.
I agree that the more time people spend thinking about a topic, the more likely they are to change their mind. That’s what curiosity is. However, I don’t know if your specific strategy (presenting controversial unsourced facts instead of citing the sources in your articles) would actually work. What is your evidence that incorrect factual assertions will quickly be challenged on the internet?
Also, people whose beliefs are ideologically motivated are not likely to be curious. Deciding that a controversial fact conflicts with their beliefs and thus must be untrue won’t necessarily lead to them looking it up and then updating...it seems, based on my experience with this kind of person, that they would be more likely to ignore the facts because “the author didn’t cite his sources, therefore is poorly educated/low-status/stupid, therefore I don’t have to listen to him.” On the contrary, an easy-going person with no particular opinion on a topic (like I’ve been guilty of in the past) might simply absorb the facts as written without bothering to look them up, since they don’t conflict with any other beliefs and therefore aren’t very interesting.
In my experience, most arguers bite the bullet, and actually do make assertions that facts are false. Political ones especially so. They see ‘dangerous enemy propaganda’, they go on to counter regardless of how curious they are, first thing to attack is the facts. Then their political motivation effectively slaps them on their nose. Instead of rewarding them with feeling of dopamine rush for having cleverly countered a complex argument.
Furthermore, this is not for complex stuff. This is for basic domain specific knowledge.
Regarding incorrect factual knowledge, well the correct factual knowledge sure always gets challenged by someone if there’s no source attached, so why incorrect wouldn’t? Everyone loves to be right. It’s easy to be right about facts. (of course excluding edge cases, i.e. highly biased audiences)
Furthermore, it is poor form to learn domain specific knowledge from someone’s argument, cited or not. One should use a textbook. Compiling bits from many sources needs to be done carefully, and that’s what a good textbook does. Learning bits of info about complex topics out of context just for sake of processing an argument, is an approach that leads to much misunderstandings of the basics.
In my experience, most arguers bite the bullet, and actually do make assertions that facts are false. Political ones especially so.
I’ll take your word for it. Maybe we argue with different sorts of people. I’m not really an arguing kind of person either, especially not on political subjects (blah blah blah boring...), so we may well have just had different experiences.
Regarding incorrect factual knowledge, well the correct factual knowledge sure always gets challenged by someone if there’s no source attached, so why incorrect wouldn’t?
I see no reason why this should be universally true. True most of the time in many kinds of Internet forums, maybe, but that’s not as strong an assertion as saying it’s always true.
Furthermore, it is poor form to learn domain specific knowledge from someone’s argument, cited or not.
Agreed. But we’re not talking about the ideal, perfect knowledge-acquiring human being here, we’re talking about people as they are. (Or I assume we are, anyway, since ideologically-motivated, non-curious individuals are not exactly models of rationality either.) I consider myself an unusually widely-read person, and still in terms of domains that I don’t care much about or don’t find interesting, lots of ‘facts’ come from other people who do care about those domains bringing them up in conversation. This isn’t a good thing, or any kind of model to hold up. It’s just true about me, and probably about lots of other people. Of course it leads to misunderstanding of the basics, and that sucks, but that doesn’t make it not true...and refusing to cite your sources in essays won’t do anything about it either.
I think I get the point you’re trying to make–that making people do more of the work of thinking on their own (forming ideology-based opinions on unsourced facts being true or untrue, and looking them up themselves) makes it more likely that they will change those ideologically-motivated beliefs if it turns out they were wrong about the facts.
I agree that the more time people spend thinking about a topic, the more likely they are to change their mind. That’s what curiosity is. However, I don’t know if your specific strategy (presenting controversial unsourced facts instead of citing the sources in your articles) would actually work. What is your evidence that incorrect factual assertions will quickly be challenged on the internet?
Also, people whose beliefs are ideologically motivated are not likely to be curious. Deciding that a controversial fact conflicts with their beliefs and thus must be untrue won’t necessarily lead to them looking it up and then updating...it seems, based on my experience with this kind of person, that they would be more likely to ignore the facts because “the author didn’t cite his sources, therefore is poorly educated/low-status/stupid, therefore I don’t have to listen to him.” On the contrary, an easy-going person with no particular opinion on a topic (like I’ve been guilty of in the past) might simply absorb the facts as written without bothering to look them up, since they don’t conflict with any other beliefs and therefore aren’t very interesting.
In my experience, most arguers bite the bullet, and actually do make assertions that facts are false. Political ones especially so. They see ‘dangerous enemy propaganda’, they go on to counter regardless of how curious they are, first thing to attack is the facts. Then their political motivation effectively slaps them on their nose. Instead of rewarding them with feeling of dopamine rush for having cleverly countered a complex argument.
Furthermore, this is not for complex stuff. This is for basic domain specific knowledge.
Regarding incorrect factual knowledge, well the correct factual knowledge sure always gets challenged by someone if there’s no source attached, so why incorrect wouldn’t? Everyone loves to be right. It’s easy to be right about facts. (of course excluding edge cases, i.e. highly biased audiences)
Furthermore, it is poor form to learn domain specific knowledge from someone’s argument, cited or not. One should use a textbook. Compiling bits from many sources needs to be done carefully, and that’s what a good textbook does. Learning bits of info about complex topics out of context just for sake of processing an argument, is an approach that leads to much misunderstandings of the basics.
I’ll take your word for it. Maybe we argue with different sorts of people. I’m not really an arguing kind of person either, especially not on political subjects (blah blah blah boring...), so we may well have just had different experiences.
I see no reason why this should be universally true. True most of the time in many kinds of Internet forums, maybe, but that’s not as strong an assertion as saying it’s always true.
Agreed. But we’re not talking about the ideal, perfect knowledge-acquiring human being here, we’re talking about people as they are. (Or I assume we are, anyway, since ideologically-motivated, non-curious individuals are not exactly models of rationality either.) I consider myself an unusually widely-read person, and still in terms of domains that I don’t care much about or don’t find interesting, lots of ‘facts’ come from other people who do care about those domains bringing them up in conversation. This isn’t a good thing, or any kind of model to hold up. It’s just true about me, and probably about lots of other people. Of course it leads to misunderstanding of the basics, and that sucks, but that doesn’t make it not true...and refusing to cite your sources in essays won’t do anything about it either.