This is a graphic article. It explains why you can’t and won’t easily accept any changes to your worldview. It’s brilliant and worth the few minutes you’ll spend with it. It can lead you to give up some of your unproductive beliefs… beliefs that hinder you, beliefs that don’t serve you, even if they served you in the past. A wonderful accompaniment of all my articles that fall on deaf ears…
Inspiration
This comic was inspired by this three-part series on the backfire effect from the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.
If you want to learn more about the backfire effect and other related behaviors (confirmation bias, deductive reasoning, etc), I highly recommend listening to the whole thing:
Podcast Part 1 – Podcast Part 2 – Podcast Part 3
I would also like to thank my wonderful girlfriend Theresea for calling my attention to the backfire effect in the first place. The past year has been rough for a lot of people, and she pointed me in a direction that could actually help people. Theresea: you’re amazing, I love you, thank you.
USC Creativity and Brain Institute
Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence
By Sarah Gimbel and Sam Harris.
Other fun reading
Reddit – Change My View
Wikipedia’s list of common misconceptions
Sources
You Are Not So Smart
Website Podcast
USC Creativity and Brain institute
https://dornsife.usc.edu/bci/
Wooden teeth
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6875436
http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-man-the-myth/the-trouble-with-teeth/
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/did-george-washington-have-wooden-teeth
Slave teeth
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/upshot/george-washingtons-weakness-his-teeth.html?_r=0
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/george-washingtons…
http://www.snopes.com/george-washington-wooden-teeth/
Napoleon
https://books.google.com/books…
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/forget-napoleon-height-rules/
Thomas Crapper
http://www.snopes.com/business/names/crapper.asp
http://content.time.com/…
Houseflies
https://web.archive.org/…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly#Life_cycle
Exploding in a vacuum
http://www.webcitation.org…
http://www.abc.net.au/science/…
Jesus’s birthday https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/biblical…
ttp://www.livescience.com/42976-when-was-jesus-born.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_birth_of_Jesus
The Pledge of Allegiance
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bellamy
http://boingboing.net/2016/09/10/a-socialist-wrote-the-pledge-o.html
Roe v. Wade
http://www.heraldcourier.com/news/roe-v-wade-approved-by-republican-appointees/article_4fa2fb82-d738-5a11-95b6-650037c19451.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Supreme_Court_decision
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2603.html
