Schneier on Security

>There is a culture war in America, but it is about facts, not values.

cf. truthiness.

I wrote about this in October of 2003: "Ronald 'Shotgun Wedding' Reagan: A Study in Cognitive Dissonance". Essentially, Reagan as president did _the exact opposite_ of his 1980 campaign promises, and trying to resolve the paradox drove many on the right to clinical insanity.

http://www.romm.org/reagan.html

Whatever happened to "you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts"?

The categorization of “individuals of diverse cultural outlooks” as ”hierarchical and egalitarian, individualistic and communitarian” conveniently oversimplifies.

The reasons they talk about disagreeing about facts rather than issues is that there seems to be a broad agreement about the ends but sharp divisions about the means to achieve those ends. At least that's how I interpret the first paragraph of their conclusion.

Awesome post Bruce!

"People are also much more inclined to accept information about risk and danger when it comes from someone who shares their values than when it comes from someone who holds opposing commitments."

I agree with where you are going with this thought, but I see a subtle difference:

It is more common for someone to accept information if they feel good about how that person makes them feel. It actually does not matter if the other person truly shares their values or not, it is only perception/anticipation of good feelings that opens minds to information.

For example, if I tell you I think you are doing a great job (to actively engage your feelings) and then ask you to change your views you are more likely to agree than if you believe I am someone with the same values. In fact, I would expect you to resist and argue more if I say we have the same values and then tell you that I expect you to change your views.

"Shares my values" is a mental shorthand for "is trustworthy". Those who fail the "shares my values" test must first establish their trustworthiness before the listener will begin to accept what is said. It doesn't matter if what is being said are ostensibly facts or not, if you are required to mentally catalog, collate, and verify the stated facts, then that's more effort for you the listener.

Is it just me, or is the choice of wording in that abstract intentionally chosen to appeal only to people with grad student/ Academia vocabularies (17th+ grade level)? By this I mean, I could follow it, but it was awkward reading. I'd bet that most people in the US would take one quick look at it and decide not to read it and thus never gain the knowledge of it's very interesting conclusions.

One of the major problems in the US is that the voting majority is fairly easily into voting against their best interests by manipulating these kinds of cultural and cognitive biases and by using logical fallacies. Some of the fallacy techniques used, especially in promoting flawed security policies are:

Appeal to probability: because something could happen, it is inevitable that it will happen.

Base rate fallacy: using weak evidence to make a probability judgment without taking into account known empirical statistics about the probability.

False dichotomy: Where two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there are several.

For more details see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

If the people of the US truly understood these fallacious arguments and the cultural/cultural biases toward believing unfounded risk statements by those who they perceive as their peers. Then the debate on proper policies could be about facts, goals and techniques and not about who is better at tricky and deception.

Unfortunately most policies in the US are not now about whats in everyone's best interests, but about ways to serve the self interests of those who are good at manipulation.

Education of fallacious argument techniques, a strengthened ability to recognize someone's attempt to deceive and find ways rationally analyze situations are the only ways to resolve this. Sadly these are not a focus of our educational system, and i think they should be.

> There is a culture war in America, but
> it is about facts, not values.

Doesn't the study say that our values determine what we accept as fact?

I think the moral of this study is that our field of vision is restricted by the pigeon hole we live in.

"Is it just me, or is the choice of wording in that abstract intentionally chosen to appeal only to people with grad student/ Academia vocabularies (17th+ grade level)?"

The study report was written by psychologists for the benefit of other psychologists, and any education you or I get from it being freely available on the Web is purely incidental. I'm sure the target audience has no trouble with it.

"Whatever happened to 'you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts'?"

The Internet.

"Petrea" - no its not just you the abstract was written in "acedemese" a language that bears the same relationship to normal English as "Gangsta" and serves the same purpose.

That is it identifies the speaker/author as a bona fida member of his chossen community and to discourage outsiders from questioning the speakers/authors authority or engaging in debate.

"One of the major problems in the US is that the voting majority is fairly easily into voting against their best interests by manipulating these kinds of cultural and cognitive biases and by using logical fallacies."

What's the matter with Kansas is that there is a large group in the US who judge that what is in their own best interest is not measured by how much the government gives them.

@ Donald Donahue

Sorry, you lost me at "wording in that abstract intentionally chosen to appeal only". Could you simplify please? :)

>>There is a culture war in America, but it is about facts, not values.
>cf. truthiness.

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

a nice culture war to make us get alone better and better ~

As far as HPV, I think boys should be vaccinated, too. They may not be able to be predisposed to cancer by the virus, but they're nonetheless a factor.

Remember, it's not just girls who can sleep around.