{"id":30971,"date":"2018-10-27T11:38:13","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T06:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30971"},"modified":"2018-10-27T11:38:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T06:08:13","slug":"the-power-of-persuasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-power-of-persuasion\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of persuasion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/the-power-of-persuasion\/article22860100.ece\"><b>The power of persuasion<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Indian Constitution is unique in listing, among fundamental duties, the duty of each citizen \u201cto develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform\u201d (Article 51A).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>\u201cScientific temper\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jawaharlal Nehru was the first to use the expression \u201cscientific temper\u201d, which he described with his usual lucidity in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Discovery of India<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Superstition exists<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India may be unusual in the degree and variety of superstitious practices, even among the educated, but superstition exists everywhere.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People hesitate to discuss superstitions in public.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Superstitious in India:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In India, Practices such as sati.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Why is it so hard to remove superstitions?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Such beliefs are strengthened by a confirmation bias (giving importance to facts that agree with our preconceptions and ignoring others) and other logical holes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recent research even shows how seeing the same evidence can simultaneously strengthen oppositely-held beliefs (a phenomenon called Bayesian belief polarisation).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Disagreement in science<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scientific theories have limitations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Newton\u2019s theories of mechanics and gravitation were<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> superseded by Einstein\u2019s. Einstein\u2019s theory of gravity has no known limitations at the cosmological scale, but is incompatible with quantum mechanics.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Darwinism is a theory to explain how it occurs.<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today\u2019s version is a combination of Darwin\u2019s original ideas, Mendelian genetics and population biology, with much empirical validation and no known failures.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example<\/span><b>, epigenetic inheritance<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is not well understood and remains an active area of research.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Darwin\u2019s book was after all titled <\/span><b><i>The Origin of Species<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and the origin of life would seem beyond its scope.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>How then does one eradicate superstition?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By preaching or legislating against it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Awareness campaigns against dangerous superstitions along with better education and scientific outreach may have some impact but will be a slow process.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The topic of \u201cpersuasion\u201d is popular in the psychology, social science and marketing communities.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u00a0first step is to see the matter from the other person\u2019s point of view and acknowledge the validity of their perception, and then bring in its limitations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Such a strategy may be more successful than the aggressive campaigns of rationalists such as Richard Dawkins.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nevertheless, \u201charmless\u201d superstitions are likely to remain with humanity forever.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The power of persuasion Context: The Indian Constitution is unique in listing, among fundamental duties, the duty of each citizen \u201cto develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform\u201d (Article 51A). \u201cScientific temper\u201d \u00a0Jawaharlal Nehru was the first to use the expression \u201cscientific temper\u201d, which he described with his usual lucidity&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-power-of-persuasion\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The power of persuasion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}