Kevbo

First of all, here's the WordNet definition of heuristic for anyone who isn't familiar with the word:
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heuristic
adj 1: (computer science) relating to or using a heuristic rule
2: of or relating to a general formulation that serves to
guide investigation [ant: algorithmic]
n : a commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase
the probability of solving some problem [syn: heuristic
rule, heuristic program]
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I recently came across this Edge article, found at http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge113.html

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'"Isn't more information always better?" asks Gerd Gigerenzer. "Why else would bestsellers on how to make good decisions tell us to consider all pieces of information, weigh them carefully, and compute the optimal choice, preferably with the aid of a fancy statistical software package? In economics, Nobel prizes are regularly awarded for work that assumes that people make decisions as if they had perfect information and could compute the optimal solution for the problem at hand. But how do real people make good decisions under the usual conditions of little time and scarce information? Consider how players catch a ball-in baseball, cricket, or soccer. It may seem that they would have to solve complex differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball. In fact, players use a simple heuristic. When a ball comes in high, the player fixates the ball and starts running. The heuristic is to adjust the running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant -that is, the angle between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information necessary to compute the trajectory, such as the ball's initial velocity, distance, and angle, and just focus on one piece of information, the angle of gaze."

Gigerenzer provides an alternative to the view of the mind as a cognitive optimizer, and also to its mirror image, the mind as a cognitive miser. The fact that people ignore information has been often mistaken as a form of irrationality, and shelves are filled with books that explain how people routinely commit cognitive fallacies. In seven years of research, he, and his research team at Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, have worked out what he believes is a viable alternative: the study of fast and frugal decision-making, that is, the study of smart heuristics people actually use to make good decisions. In order to make good decisions in an uncertain world, one sometimes has to ignore information. The art is knowing what one doesn't have to know.

Gigerenzer's work is of importance to people interested in how the human mind actually solves problems. In this regard his work is influential to psychologists, economists, philosophers, and animal biologists, among others. It is also of interest to people who design smart systems to solve problems; he provides illustrations on how one can construct fast and frugal strategies for coronary care unit decisions, personnel selection, and stock picking.

"My work will, I hope, change the way people think about human rationality", he says. "Human rationality cannot be understood, I argue, by the ideals of omniscience and optimization. In an uncertain world, there is no optimal solution known for most interesting and urgent problems. When human behavior fails to meet these Olympian expectations, many psychologists conclude that the mind is doomed to irrationality. These are the two dominant views today, and neither extreme of hyper-rationality or irrationality captures the essence of human reasoning. My aim is not so much to criticize the status quo, but rather to provide a viable alternative."'

-John Brockman
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My question: Is there some form of conditioned heuristic that informs decision-making in fundamentalist creationists, or for that matter, any type of fundamentalist? It seems to me that the human mind would easily accept a heuristic process that need only encompass an unchanging set of religious rules. This allows the mind to ignore a huge amount of information and make what seems like informed choices to the fundamentalist: "If it doesn't agree with dogma, it must be wrong." From interaction with various stripes of fundamentalists, this does not seem far off the mark.

Kevbo

I just recognized an addition that could be made while reading the entire article. The heuristics that fundamentalists employ in decision-making apply most often in situations where they think that they would receive no practical benefit for choosing rationality over dogma. For instance, in maintaining that the world is 6,000 years old or something like it, they have a close circle of friends and family that support that belief, and can interact with a number of people to whom this irrational belief is not a detractor to relations.

In medical or technical decisions, however, dogma is often absent. There are few fundamentalists left who refuse medical technology due to dogma, and those that do often have been indoctrinated at length by powerful religious organizations or by the family, as is the case with Jehovah's Witnesses.

Craig

Well, technically the JWs only refuse blood transfusions, not any other medical procedures. And they do so not on a scientific basis but because they claim that the bible instructs them to not "use" blood in any way. It's still a stupid position to take, but stupid for different reasons.

A better example would be Christian Scientists, who actually do believe that faith heals and sicknesses are all in your head.

ps418

Yes, which is why they can let their children die or suffer serious injury from things like diabetes (Assar and Swan, 1998). I just helped my wife write a paper on religious-motivated refusal of treatment. It was so depressing reading the various case histories, where instead of going to the hospital for quick, effective medical treatment, parents called prayer groups instead, which stand around and pray while the child slowly dies a horrible death. Luckily these sects are rare.

Asser, S., and Swan, R., 1998. Child Fatalities from Religion-motivated Medical Neglect, Pediatrics 101, pp. 625–29.

Clutch

Let me once again recommend Thomas Gilovich's How We Know What Isn't So, an excellent introduction to the empirical evidence regarding dubious beliefs.

The shortest answer to the OP is that creationists don't usually work by ignoring evidence, though that sometimes happens: what their "motivated inference" amounts to are practices like unequal standards of proof; devoting masses of energy to finding small flaws in opposing evidence, while accepting supporting evidence uncritically; forgetting countervailing points much more quickly; and so forth. It goes well beyond merely closing their eyes.

Kevbo

Good points, Clutch.