from Hacker News

The Selective Laziness of Reasoning

by texan on 11/3/15, 12:04 AM with 10 comments

• by gwern on 11/3/15, 2:25 AM

  After reading the abstract, I was thinking to myself, 'to get a disagreement rate like that, how can you possibly present a subject's own argument to them and have them think it was someone else's? Wouldn't they remember?' and was expecting some very clever experimental manipulation or condition.

  Nope:

  > However, for one of the syllogisms (the manipulated syllogism), instead of being truthfully reminded of their previous answer, participants were told that they had given an answer different from the one they had given: either the valid answer (if they had answered invalidly) or the most common invalid answer (if they had answered validly). Their own previous answer, and the argument that justified it, were presented as if they were those given by another participant. The external features of the presentation were strictly identical to those of the other four syllogisms (see Fig. 1 for an example of both conditions).

• by webmasterraj on 11/3/15, 4:54 AM

  This explains half the comments I see these days on HN. More concerned with defending their point and criticizing people who disagree, than a genuine attempt at finding something actually true.

• by eli_gottlieb on 11/3/15, 12:34 AM

  <snark>

  Wait, there are people who still treat single arguments as reliable guides to truth?!

  </snark>