Rationality: From AI to Zombies

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Taber and Lodge’s “Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs” describes the confirmation of six predictions:1 Prior attitude effect. Subjects who feel strongly about an issue—even when encouraged to be objective—will evaluate supportive arguments more favorably than contrary arguments. Disconfirmation bias. Subjects will spend more time and cognitive resources denigrating contrary arguments than supportive arguments. Confirmation bias. Subjects free to choose their information sources will seek out supportive rather than contrary sources. Attitude polarization. Exposing subjects to an apparently balanced set of pro and con arguments will exaggerate their initial polarization. Attitude strength effect. Subjects voicing stronger attitudes will be more prone to the above biases. Sophistication effect. Politically knowledgeable subjects, because they possess greater ammunition with which to counter-argue incongruent facts and arguments, will be more prone to the above biases.