marginalium noun

the notes one makes in the margins.

A short note on

culture trumps evidence

February 20, 2025

source: online.ucpress.edu

by Dorian Minors

I did brain science at Cambridge. Now I'm a behaviour science professor. Read my shit.

Culture trumps evidence:

Beliefs may withstand the pressure of disconfirming events not because of the effectiveness of dissonance-reducing strategies, but because disconfirming evidence may simply go unacknowledged

A rebuttal to the classic ‘cognitive dissonance’ account of why believers continue to believe after the failure of a prophecy. In this case, the culture makes the failure less salient. One wonders whether this kind of surrender to a culture that protects you from dissonance is not simply another mechanism for reducing cognitive dissonance.

If you don’t do the thinking, the thinking will be done for you.

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