Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latincontroversia, as a composite of controversus – "turned in an opposite direction".
In the theory of law, a controversy differs from a legal case; while legal cases include all suits, criminal as well as civil, a controversy is a purely civil proceeding.
For example, the Case or Controversy Clause of Article Three of the United States Constitution (Section 2, Clause 1) states that "the judicial Power shall extend ... to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party". This clause has been deemed to impose a requirement that United States federal courts are not permitted to cases that do not pose an actual controversy—that is, an actual dispute between adverse parties which is capable of being resolved by the [court]. In addition to setting out the scope of the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, it also prohibits courts from issuing advisory opinions, or from hearing cases that are either unripe, meaning that the controversy has not arisen yet, or moot, meaning that the controversy has already been resolved.
Benford's law of controversy, as expressed by the astrophysicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford in 1980, states: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.[1][2] In other words, it claims that the less factual information is available on a topic, the more controversy can arise around that topic – and the more facts are available, the less controversy can arise. Thus, for example, controversies in physics would be limited to subject areas where experiments cannot be carried out yet, whereas controversies would be inherent to politics, where communities must frequently decide on courses of action based on insufficient information.
Psychological bases
Controversies are frequently thought to be a result of a lack of confidence on the part of the disputants – as implied by Benford's law of controversy, which only talks about lack of information ("passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available"). For example, in analyses of the political controversy over anthropogenic climate change, which is exceptionally virulent in the United States, it has been proposed that those who are opposed to the scientific consensus do so because they don't have enough information about the topic.[3][4] A study of 1540 US adults[5] found instead that levels of scientific literacy correlated with the strength of opinion on climate change, but not on which side of the debate that they stood.
The puzzling phenomenon of two individuals being able to reach different conclusions after being exposed to the same facts has been frequently explained (particularly by Daniel Kahneman) by reference to a 'bounded rationality' – in other words, that most judgments are made using fast acting heuristics[6][7] that work well in every day situations, but are not amenable to decision-making about complex subjects such as climate change. Anchoring has been particularly identified as relevant in climate change controversies [8] as individuals are found to be more positively inclined to believe in climate change if the outside temperature is higher, if they have been primed to think about heat, and if they are primed with higher temperatures when thinking about the future temperature increases from climate change.
In other controversies – such as that around the HPV vaccine, the same evidence seemed to license inference to radically different conclusions.[9] Kahan et al.[10] explained this by the cognitive biases of biased assimilation[11] and a credibility heuristic.[12]
Similar effects on reasoning are also seen in non-scientific controversies, for example in the gun control debate in the United States.[13] As with other controversies, it has been suggested that exposure to empirical facts would be sufficient to resolve the debate once and for all.[14][15] In computer simulations of cultural communities, beliefs were found to polarize within isolated sub-groups, based on the mistaken belief of the community's unhindered access to ground truth.[13] Such confidence in the group to find the ground truth is explicable through the success of wisdom of the crowd based inferences.[16] However, if there is no access to the ground truth, as there was not in this model, the method will fail.
Bayesian decision theory allows these failures of rationality to be described as part of a statistically optimized system for decision making. Experiments and computational models in multisensory integration have shown that sensory input from different senses is integrated in a statistically optimal way,[17] in addition, it appears that the kind of inferences used to infer single sources for multiple sensory inputs uses a Bayesian inference about the causal origin of the sensory stimuli.[18] As such, it appears neurobiologically plausible that the brain implements decision-making procedures that are close to optimal for Bayesian inference.
Brocas and Carrillo propose a model to make decisions based on noisy sensory inputs,[19] beliefs about the state of the world are modified by Bayesian updating, and then decisions are made based on beliefs passing a threshold. They show that this model, when optimized for single-step decision making, produces belief anchoring and polarization of opinions – exactly as described in the global warming controversy context – in spite of identical evidence presented, the pre-existing beliefs (or evidence presented first) has an overwhelming effect on the beliefs formed. In addition, the preferences of the agent (the particular rewards that they value) also cause the beliefs formed to change – this explains the biased assimilation (also known as confirmation bias) shown above. This model allows the production of controversy to be seen as a consequence of a decision maker optimized for single-step decision making, rather than as a result of limited reasoning in the bounded rationality of Daniel Kahneman.
See also
Listen to this article (8 minutes)
This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 27 June 2013 (2013-06-27), and does not reflect subsequent edits.
^. SysProg. Archived from the original on 2008-08-22. Retrieved 2007-03-10.
^Ungar, S. (2000). "Knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture: climate change versus the ozone hole". Public Understanding of Science. 9 (3): 297–312. doi:10.1088/0963-6625/9/3/306. S2CID 7089937.
^Pidgeon, N.; B. Fischhoff (2011). "The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks". Nature Climate Change. 1 (1): 35–41. Bibcode:2011NatCC...1...35P. doi:10.1038/nclimate1080. S2CID 85362091.
^Kahan, Dan M.; Maggie Wittlin; Ellen Peters; Paul Slovic; Lisa Larrimore Ouellette; Donald Braman; Gregory N. Mandel (2011). "The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change". hdl:1794/22097. SSRN 1871503. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Kahneman, Daniel (2003-12-01). (PDF). The American Economic Review. 93 (5): 1449–1475. CiteSeerX10.1.1.194.6554. doi:10.1257/000282803322655392. ISSN 0002-8282. JSTOR 3132137. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2017-10-24.
^Tversky, A.; D. Kahneman (1974). "Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases". Science. 185 (4157): 1124–31. Bibcode:1974Sci...185.1124T. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124. PMID 17835457. S2CID 143452957. from the original on 2018-06-01. Retrieved 2017-08-30.
^Joireman, Jeff; Heather Barnes Truelove; Blythe Duell (December 2010). "Effect of outdoor temperature, heat primes and anchoring on belief in global warming". Journal of Environmental Psychology. 30 (4): 358–367. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.03.004. ISSN 0272-4944.
^Saul, Stephanie; Andrew Pollack (2007-02-17). "Furor on Rush to Require Cervical Cancer Vaccine". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2011-11-26.
^Kahan, Dan M.; Donald Braman; Geoffrey L. Cohen; Paul Slovic; John Gastil (2008-07-15). "Who Fears the HPV Vaccine, Who Doesn't, and Why? An Experimental Study of the Mechanisms of Cultural Cognition". Law and Human Behavior. SSRN 1160654.
^Lord, Charles G.; Lee Ross; Mark R. Lepper (1979). "Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 37 (11): 2098–2109. CiteSeerX10.1.1.372.1743. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098. ISSN 0022-3514.
^HOVLAND, CARL I.; WALTER WEISS (1951-12-21). "The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness". Public Opinion Quarterly. 15 (4): 635–650. doi:10.1086/266350.
^ abBraman, Donald; James Grimmelmann; Dan M. Kahan (20 July 2007). "Modeling Cultural Cognition". Social Justice Research. SSRN 1000449.
^Fremling, G.M.; J.R. Lott Jr (2002). "Surprising Finding That Cultural Worldviews Don't Explain People's Views on Gun Control, The". U. Pa. L. Rev. 151 (4): 1341–1348. doi:10.2307/3312932. JSTOR 3312932.
^Ayres, I.; J.J. Donohue III (2002). Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis. National Bureau of Economic Research.
^Lee, M.D.; M. Steyvers; M. de Young; B.J. Miller. "A Model-Based Approach to Measuring Expertise in Ranking Tasks". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Ernst, Marc O.; Martin S. Banks (2002-01-24). "Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion". Nature. 415 (6870): 429–433. Bibcode:2002Natur.415..429E. doi:10.1038/415429a. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 11807554. S2CID 47459.
^Brocas, Isabelle; Juan D. Carrillo (2012). "From perception to action: An economic model of brain processes". Games and Economic Behavior. 75: 81–103. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2011.10.001. ISSN 0899-8256.
External links
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controversy, other, uses, disambiguation, state, prolonged, public, dispute, debate, usually, concerning, matter, conflicting, opinion, point, view, word, coined, from, latin, controversia, composite, controversus, turned, opposite, direction, contents, legal,. For other uses see Controversy disambiguation Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view The word was coined from the Latin controversia as a composite of controversus turned in an opposite direction Contents 1 Legal 2 Benford s law 3 Psychological bases 4 See also 5 References 6 External linksLegal EditIn the theory of law a controversy differs from a legal case while legal cases include all suits criminal as well as civil a controversy is a purely civil proceeding For example the Case or Controversy Clause of Article Three of the United States Constitution Section 2 Clause 1 states that the judicial Power shall extend to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party This clause has been deemed to impose a requirement that United States federal courts are not permitted to cases that do not pose an actual controversy that is an actual dispute between adverse parties which is capable of being resolved by the court In addition to setting out the scope of the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary it also prohibits courts from issuing advisory opinions or from hearing cases that are either unripe meaning that the controversy has not arisen yet or moot meaning that the controversy has already been resolved Benford s law EditMain article Benford s law of controversy Benford s law of controversy as expressed by the astrophysicist and science fiction author Gregory Benford in 1980 states Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available 1 2 In other words it claims that the less factual information is available on a topic the more controversy can arise around that topic and the more facts are available the less controversy can arise Thus for example controversies in physics would be limited to subject areas where experiments cannot be carried out yet whereas controversies would be inherent to politics where communities must frequently decide on courses of action based on insufficient information Psychological bases EditControversies are frequently thought to be a result of a lack of confidence on the part of the disputants as implied by Benford s law of controversy which only talks about lack of information passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available For example in analyses of the political controversy over anthropogenic climate change which is exceptionally virulent in the United States it has been proposed that those who are opposed to the scientific consensus do so because they don t have enough information about the topic 3 4 A study of 1540 US adults 5 found instead that levels of scientific literacy correlated with the strength of opinion on climate change but not on which side of the debate that they stood The puzzling phenomenon of two individuals being able to reach different conclusions after being exposed to the same facts has been frequently explained particularly by Daniel Kahneman by reference to a bounded rationality in other words that most judgments are made using fast acting heuristics 6 7 that work well in every day situations but are not amenable to decision making about complex subjects such as climate change Anchoring has been particularly identified as relevant in climate change controversies 8 as individuals are found to be more positively inclined to believe in climate change if the outside temperature is higher if they have been primed to think about heat and if they are primed with higher temperatures when thinking about the future temperature increases from climate change In other controversies such as that around the HPV vaccine the same evidence seemed to license inference to radically different conclusions 9 Kahan et al 10 explained this by the cognitive biases of biased assimilation 11 and a credibility heuristic 12 Similar effects on reasoning are also seen in non scientific controversies for example in the gun control debate in the United States 13 As with other controversies it has been suggested that exposure to empirical facts would be sufficient to resolve the debate once and for all 14 15 In computer simulations of cultural communities beliefs were found to polarize within isolated sub groups based on the mistaken belief of the community s unhindered access to ground truth 13 Such confidence in the group to find the ground truth is explicable through the success of wisdom of the crowd based inferences 16 However if there is no access to the ground truth as there was not in this model the method will fail Bayesian decision theory allows these failures of rationality to be described as part of a statistically optimized system for decision making Experiments and computational models in multisensory integration have shown that sensory input from different senses is integrated in a statistically optimal way 17 in addition it appears that the kind of inferences used to infer single sources for multiple sensory inputs uses a Bayesian inference about the causal origin of the sensory stimuli 18 As such it appears neurobiologically plausible that the brain implements decision making procedures that are close to optimal for Bayesian inference Brocas and Carrillo propose a model to make decisions based on noisy sensory inputs 19 beliefs about the state of the world are modified by Bayesian updating and then decisions are made based on beliefs passing a threshold They show that this model when optimized for single step decision making produces belief anchoring and polarization of opinions exactly as described in the global warming controversy context in spite of identical evidence presented the pre existing beliefs or evidence presented first has an overwhelming effect on the beliefs formed In addition the preferences of the agent the particular rewards that they value also cause the beliefs formed to change this explains the biased assimilation also known as confirmation bias shown above This model allows the production of controversy to be seen as a consequence of a decision maker optimized for single step decision making rather than as a result of limited reasoning in the bounded rationality of Daniel Kahneman See also EditListen to this article 8 minutes source source This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 27 June 2013 2013 06 27 and does not reflect subsequent edits Audio help More spoken articles Argument Bipartisanship Dialectic Misinformation ProCon org Scandal Third rail politics References Edit EFF Quotes Collection 19 6 Electronic Frontier Foundation 2001 04 09 Archived from the original on 2007 09 29 Retrieved 2016 12 04 Quotations Computer Laws SysProg Archived from the original on 2008 08 22 Retrieved 2007 03 10 Ungar S 2000 Knowledge ignorance and the popular culture climate change versus the ozone hole Public Understanding of Science 9 3 297 312 doi 10 1088 0963 6625 9 3 306 S2CID 7089937 Pidgeon N B Fischhoff 2011 The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks Nature Climate Change 1 1 35 41 Bibcode 2011NatCC 1 35P doi 10 1038 nclimate1080 S2CID 85362091 Kahan Dan M Maggie Wittlin Ellen Peters Paul Slovic Lisa Larrimore Ouellette Donald Braman Gregory N Mandel 2011 The Tragedy of the Risk Perception Commons Culture Conflict Rationality Conflict and Climate Change hdl 1794 22097 SSRN 1871503 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Kahneman Daniel 2003 12 01 Maps of Bounded Rationality Psychology for Behavioral Economics PDF The American Economic Review 93 5 1449 1475 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 194 6554 doi 10 1257 000282803322655392 ISSN 0002 8282 JSTOR 3132137 Archived from the original PDF on 2018 02 19 Retrieved 2017 10 24 Tversky A D Kahneman 1974 Judgment under uncertainty Heuristics and biases Science 185 4157 1124 31 Bibcode 1974Sci 185 1124T doi 10 1126 science 185 4157 1124 PMID 17835457 S2CID 143452957 Archived from the original on 2018 06 01 Retrieved 2017 08 30 Joireman Jeff Heather Barnes Truelove Blythe Duell December 2010 Effect of outdoor temperature heat primes and anchoring on belief in global warming Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 4 358 367 doi 10 1016 j jenvp 2010 03 004 ISSN 0272 4944 Saul Stephanie Andrew Pollack 2007 02 17 Furor on Rush to Require Cervical Cancer Vaccine The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2011 11 26 Kahan Dan M Donald Braman Geoffrey L Cohen Paul Slovic John Gastil 2008 07 15 Who Fears the HPV Vaccine Who Doesn t and Why An Experimental Study of the Mechanisms of Cultural Cognition Law and Human Behavior SSRN 1160654 Lord Charles G Lee Ross Mark R Lepper 1979 Biased assimilation and attitude polarization The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 11 2098 2109 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 372 1743 doi 10 1037 0022 3514 37 11 2098 ISSN 0022 3514 HOVLAND CARL I WALTER WEISS 1951 12 21 The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness Public Opinion Quarterly 15 4 635 650 doi 10 1086 266350 a b Braman Donald James Grimmelmann Dan M Kahan 20 July 2007 Modeling Cultural Cognition Social Justice Research SSRN 1000449 Fremling G M J R Lott Jr 2002 Surprising Finding That Cultural Worldviews Don t Explain People s Views on Gun Control The U Pa L Rev 151 4 1341 1348 doi 10 2307 3312932 JSTOR 3312932 Ayres I J J Donohue III 2002 Shooting down the more guns less crime hypothesis National Bureau of Economic Research Lee M D M Steyvers M de Young B J Miller A Model Based Approach to Measuring Expertise in Ranking Tasks a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Ernst Marc O Martin S Banks 2002 01 24 Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion Nature 415 6870 429 433 Bibcode 2002Natur 415 429E doi 10 1038 415429a ISSN 0028 0836 PMID 11807554 S2CID 47459 Wozny D R U R Beierholm L Shams 2008 Human trimodal perception follows optimal statistical inference Journal of Vision 8 3 24 1 11 doi 10 1167 8 3 24 PMID 18484830 Brocas Isabelle Juan D Carrillo 2012 From perception to action An economic model of brain processes Games and Economic Behavior 75 81 103 doi 10 1016 j geb 2011 10 001 ISSN 0899 8256 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to Controversy Look up controversy in Wiktionary the free dictionary Brian Martin The Controversy Manual Sparsnas Sweden Irene Publishing 2014 Controversial topics based on machine learning on Wikipedia data Controversial Today Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Controversy amp oldid 1133304393, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
