Speakers widely reject evidence and double down on false claims publicly
Evidence
Donald Trump himself claimed that 1.5 million people attended his inauguration, whereas experts have calculated a turnout anywhere between 300,000 and 600,000. Sean Spicer, then White House Press Secretary and Communications Director, claimed on 21 January 2017, that Trump drew ‘the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period’. … If Sean Spicer were, for the sake of argument, Bayesian, he would have updated his beliefs in light of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Instead, when questioned by reporters a few days later, he doubled down on his initial statement. In other words, his posterior belief, as he expressed it, did not move closer towards the evidence. If anything, it seemed to move further away from it. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 107
Categorization
- SHARE: Nice worked instance of motivated reasoning with the Spicer doubling-down case, worth sending to anyone writing about disinformation or belief persistence.
- XREF: connects to: False beliefs often stem from bad sources rather than closed minds — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 143; People often resist or reverse belief updating rather than tracking evidence — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 104; People resist updating beliefs even at the cost of accuracy (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- People often resist or reverse belief updating rather than tracking evidence
#corroborates(0.80) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 104 - People resist updating beliefs even at the cost of accuracy
#corroborates(0.80) - False beliefs often stem from bad sources rather than closed minds
#complicates(0.78) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 143 - Polemical claims grow more cautious when examined against actual sources
#complicates(0.78) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1314