People Need Explanations

Fleeting

When someone claims the statement S, they fail to convince other people.

We need a reason to believe. We need to be given the argument (A), that suggest some premises (P): A = P => S.

But, somehow, this reason only needs to provide the feeling of truthness, plausibility. Even when the argument or the premise is obviously wrong, people tend to focus on how much they want to believe S.

• see,
  • intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second,
  • why do humans reason?,
  • predictions as extreme as your impressions,

When you make people realize that A or P are dumb, they still persist believing S if it made sense to them.

This causes cognitive dissonance to me. Why to people need A, if they don’t actually scrutinize A. This shows a lack of intellectual honesty and is, to me another symptom of the feeling good bias.

Even worse, if A or P do not tell a nice story about S, people will reject it. Intellectual honesty would suggest that people would do the same if A and P still tell a nice story but are obviously wrong.

It is as if explanation only needed to be image and metaphors, to help people grasp the idea, but did not need to bring truth to the debate.

• see,
  • arguments vs metaphors,

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