Re: Ain't It Time to Kiss Evolution Goodbye??????????????????????

From: Richard Evans (infodex_at_mindspring.com)
Date: 08/04/04 

Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 23:26:21 GMT

"Bill Hobba" <bhobba@rubbish.net.au> wrote:

>Others have suggested Asperger Syndrome
>http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html. What has occurred to
>me also is that holding these views makes the person feel special and may
>compensate in some way for some deficiency - if they cease to hold these
>views they are not really special and may need to face some hard truths.
>

More like this, from Vol II Number 1 2004 issue of Skeptic magazine,
page 52.

<quote>

Over the past few decades social psychologists have demonstrated that
once individuals have committed themselves to a belief they are likely
to find the evidence in its favor to be convincing, and disconfirming
evidence to be unpersuasive. ... Even weak or equivocal evidence in
favor of a proposition to which one is emotionally committed is likely
to seem salient, vivid, and persuasive. And having given oneself over
to that belief, it is often all but impossible for the believer's mind
to be changed, no matter how strong the countervailing evidence.

[According to Robert Wright]: The proposition here is that the human
brain is...a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing
others that the owner is in the right -- and thus a machine for
convincing the owner of the same thing. The brain is like a good
lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing
the world of their moral and logistical worth, regardless of whether
in fact they have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human mind wants
victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable
for its skill than its virtue.

[The phenomenon has come to be known as] "confirmation bias."

<end quote>

Dick Evans

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