¿Have you seen our latest BAS Skeptalk? It covers the most impactful research happening today in scientific skepticism and is a MUST WATCH for anyone interested in changing minds. I’ve been waiting for this talk for months and it did not disappoint. The talk is available here: https://bit.ly/BASpenn
A common skeptical goal to change minds to broaden a belief in science, evidence, and critical thinking. Sadly, we haven’t had much success in this (as proven by the current state of conspiratorial belief in society), we have much work to do here.
Right now, social media algorithms are pushing people to consume progressively more pseudoscientific beliefs. Billions of people are unwillingly susceptible to these invisible kings of influence and we’ve done very little to fight it. I’ve been waiting for a talk about algorithms that are used to promote science and healthy skepticism. .
Gordon Pennycook, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University, dissects the role that overconfidence plays in conspiratorial belief, showing the results from multiple studies to validate that it plays an over-sized role. He downplays the need to believe (motivated reasoning) is the primary cause of belief, instead hypothesizing that it’s an information gap, a difficult task to prove due to the vast research required to counter every false claim.
Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Dr. Pennycook built a chatbot that refutes false claims, trained to methodically, politely, patiently, and non-judgmentally address each concern. In a 3-round conversation, the AI attempts to sway the believer.
The results are nothing short of astounding. After an ~8 minute conversation, over 20% decrease their confidence in the conspiracy and the effect persists 2 months later. This works even with very entrenched believers (those that are VERY confident in their belief). The more bad evidence that you’ve researched, the more good evidence that the AI can refute.
“It is the evidence that matters”
We’ve been led to believe that evidence alone does not persuade, with entrenchment overriding logic. I’ve seen so many claims about the “backfire effect”, in which true believers entrench when presented with contrary evidence, but Dr. Pennycook sees absolutely no evidence of this with thousands of subjects.
There is much more in this SkepTalk, but I’ll leave that for you to uncover as you watch. The research is thorough, data-driven, and breaks down exactly what’s working. It is optimistic and offers a jumping-off point for much more research.
BEST OF ALL – you can try it now here: https://debunkbot.com
¿Did you enjoy this talk? If so, tell someone about it and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more insightful talks.