I have been reading The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch (1997). It's filled with surprising facts

I have been reading The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch (1997). It's filled with surprising facts. Physics has a lot of those, especially if you start talking about quantum level observations. Some of the facts are so surprising that they don't square with "common sense," that is our basic (and largely reliable) mental model for the-way-things-work.

So I got to thinking about the cognitive slipperiness of surprising facts at the end of his third chapter, "Problem solving."

I used to work in politics, and one of the things people on the left are grappling with these days is the cognitive weakness of facts. In their minds, the facts are on their side, so why don't people agree with them more?

For years there has been a cadre of lefties arguing: quit obsessing on facts! Make values based arguments! People don't care about facts. If a fact doesn't square with a person's mental model, they just forget it. It isn't even conscious. Their brain just does it!

We all do this constantly in all kinds of ways. Example: Think of watching a movie. At the end of a good movie, you understand it, but could you describe everything that happened? Even right after? Could you even easily recall what happened in the middle? Often, no. You threw out a lot of facts, but you still "get" the movie.

So I wondered — and I bet I know the answer but I'm writing this because it would be neat to learn if someone has tested this — if people tend to also forget facts about things that don't fit their mental model for topics with less emotional valence than polical and social issues tend to? Like, I bet there are some surprising facts in the world of forestry. And I think we all have some kind of mental model for forestry, right?

So if someone gave a lecture on forestry to a room full of people filled with a wide array of facts scored from "very common sense" to "holy shit, seriously?" what would happen if you tested people right after, a week after, a month after and a year after the lecture? Would they be more likely to recall the facts that scored closer to common sense?

I bet they would!