> "When policy is politically polarized, you need more facts," he said.
Mmmm... It seems in the world of politics, esp. populist politics, more facts don't bring better policies. They are simply ignored, or accused of being lies pushed by the ennemies.
> "We have all the facts on this we need. We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king."
My friend was saying that we just need to show people the facts to change their minds. I showed him a pile of scientific studies indicating that it doesn't work. His response was "I still think it'll work"!
Interestingly, research shows LLMs are better than humans at persuading people, and one of the reported reasons is that their arguments are deemed to be more evidence-based. (Findings even show that people are more likely to be persuaded when they KNOW the other side is an AI... maybe the underlying dynamic is that they assume people have vested interests?)
So maybe evidence does help, but what detracts from its effectiveness is how it is presented. Like we see every day on various public forums including this one, arguments are made in a rather heated manner, which are probably not conducive to making the other side more receptive to ideas. I'm not sure if this might be the confounding in these previous studies.
LLMs have the advantage of infinite patience and RLHF'd dispassionate mannerisms and the presumption of no vested interests. But that also means your friend could be technically right.
Thank you!
That's actually really interesting reading.
Some of the effect sizes are small though - would have been interesting to see a greater variety of benchmarks. Like what's the effect of different incentives given to the human controls (does 20 VS 100 USD change anything? etc.).
Anyways, thanks for the links!
bambax · · focus · HN ↗
Mmmm... It seems in the world of politics, esp. populist politics, more facts don't bring better policies. They are simply ignored, or accused of being lies pushed by the ennemies.
> "We have all the facts on this we need. We don't need any more facts. In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is the king."
-- Linton Barwick, In The Loop (2009)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdoN1LWGgfQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdoN1LWGgfQ
N_Lens · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗
So maybe evidence does help, but what detracts from its effectiveness is how it is presented. Like we see every day on various public forums including this one, arguments are made in a rather heated manner, which are probably not conducive to making the other side more receptive to ideas. I'm not sure if this might be the confounding in these previous studies.
LLMs have the advantage of infinite patience and RLHF'd dispassionate mannerisms and the presumption of no vested interests. But that also means your friend could be technically right.
prolly97 · · focus · HN ↗
keeda · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.fbk.eu/en/press-releases/artificial-intelligence-ai-now-more-persuasive-than-humans-in-debates/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fbk.eu/en/press-releases/artificial-intelligence...
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61345-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61345-5
<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09662" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09662
<a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2411.06837v2" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/html/2411.06837v2
<a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2604.22109v2" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/html/2604.22109v2
prolly97 · · focus · HN ↗
m463 · · focus · HN ↗