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{{Short description|State of prolonged public dispute or debate}}
{{Redirect|Disagree|the Malaysian band|Disagree (band)}}
{{Other uses}} {{Other uses}}
] engaging in debate in ]'s painting ''A controversy from the Talmud'', 19th century.]]
]]]
⚫ '''Controversy''' is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting ] or point of view. The word was coined from the ] ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite direction".
⚫ ==Legal==
⚫ In the ], a controversy differs from a ]; while legal cases include all suits, ] as well as ], a controversy is a purely civil proceeding.


⚫ For example, the ] of ] (], 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 . In addition to setting out the scope of the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, it also prohibits courts from issuing ]s, or from hearing cases that are either ], meaning that the controversy has not arisen yet, or ], meaning that the controversy has already been
⚫ '''Controversy''' is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of ]. The word was coined from the ] ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite direction," from ''contra'' – "against" – and ''vertere'' – to turn, or ''versus'' (see ]), hence, "to turn against."


⚫ ==Benford's law==
The most contentious or well known subjects, topics or areas are ], ] and ].<ref>U.S. News & World Report, Volume 117, , 1994 quotation: {{quotation|Perhaps that was inevitable, since abortion touches on three of the most contentious subjects in human discourse: religion, sex and politics.}}</ref><ref>Kenneth L. Karst (1995) p.137 quotation: {{quotation|Religion, sex and politics: in my younger days, these were the subjects you weren't supposed to discuss at the dinner table.}}</ref><ref>Susan Spencer, Margo Collins, Albert J. Rivero (2004) ''The eighteenth-century novel: Volume 4'' p.6 {{quotation|...the expiration of the Printing Act in 1695 swelled the number of licensed printers, while the relaxation of censorship under the Restoration opened once-guarded topics, especially religion, sex, and politics, for public discussion}}</ref> Other areas of controversy include ] and ]. Other minor yet prominent areas of controversy have included ], ], ], ], ], the ], ], ], ], ], ], ], and ]. Controversy in matters of ] has traditionally been particularly heated, giving rise to the phrase '']''. Controversial issues are held as potentially divisive in a given society, because they can lead to tension and ill will, as a result they are often ] to be discussed in the light of company in many cultures.
⚫ {{Main|Gregory Benford#Benford's law of controversy|l1=Benford's law of controversy}}


⚫ ], as expressed by the astrophysicist and science fiction author ] in 1980, states: ''] is ] to the amount of real ] available.''<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.eff.org/Misc/EFF/?f=quotes.eff.txt |title=EFF Quotes Collection 19.6 |publisher=] |date=2001-04-09 |access-date=2016-12-04 |archive-date=2007-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929083639/http://www.eff.org/Misc/EFF/?f=quotes.eff.txt |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080822143815/http://www.sysprog.net/quotlaws.html |archive-date=2008-08-22|url=http://www.sysprog.net/quotlaws.html|title=Quotations: Computer Laws |work=SysProg |access-date=2007-03-10}}</ref> 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.
⚫ ==Legal controversy==


⚫ ==Psychological bases==
{{Main|Controversy (law)}}
⚫ Controversies are frequently thought to be a result of a lack of confidence on the part of the disputants – as implied by ], 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 ], which is exceptionally virulent in the ], 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.<ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 9| issue = 3| pages = 297–312| last = Ungar| first = S.| s2cid = 7089937| title = Knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture: climate change versus the ozone hole| journal = Public Understanding of Science| year = 2000 | doi = 10.1088/0963-6625/9/3/306}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 1| issue = 1| pages = 35–41| last = Pidgeon| first = N.|author2=B. Fischhoff| s2cid = 85362091| title = The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks| journal = Nature Climate Change| year = 2011|bibcode = 2011NatCC...1...35P |doi = 10.1038/nclimate1080 }}</ref> A study of 1540 US adults<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Kahan| first = Dan M.|author2=Maggie Wittlin |author3=Ellen Peters |author4=Paul Slovic |author5=Lisa Larrimore Ouellette |author6=Donald Braman |author7=Gregory N. Mandel | title = The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change| year = 2011| doi = 10.2139/ssrn.1871503| ssrn = 1871503|hdl=1794/22097 | s2cid = 73649608|hdl-access=free }}</ref> found instead that levels of scientific literacy correlated with the strength of ], but not on which side of the debate that they stood.
⚫ In the ], a controversy differs from a ]; while legal cases include all suits, ] as well as ], a controversy is a purely civil proceeding.


⚫ 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 ']' – in other words, that most judgments are made using fast acting ]s<ref>{{Cite journal| issn = 0002-8282| volume = 93| issue = 5| pages = 1449–1475| last = Kahneman| first = Daniel| title = Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics| journal = The American Economic Review| date = 2003-12-01| jstor = 3132137| doi = 10.1257/000282803322655392| url = http://www.econ.tuwien.ac.at/Lotto/papers/Kahneman2.pdf| citeseerx = 10.1.1.194.6554| access-date = 2017-10-24| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180219074537/http://www.econ.tuwien.ac.at/lotto/papers/Kahneman2.pdf| archive-date = 2018-02-19| url-status = dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 185| issue = 4157| pages = 1124–31| last = Tversky| first = A.| author2 = D. Kahneman| title = Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases| journal = Science| year = 1974| bibcode = 1974Sci...185.1124T| doi = 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124| pmid = 17835457| s2cid = 143452957| url = https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/AD0767426| access-date = 2017-08-30| archive-date = 2018-06-01| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180601235707/http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD0767426| url-status = live}}</ref> that work well in every day situations, but are not amenable to decision-making about complex subjects such as climate change. ] has been particularly identified as relevant in climate change controversies <ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.03.004| issn = 0272-4944| volume = 30| issue = 4| pages = 358–367| last = Joireman| first = Jeff|author2=Heather Barnes Truelove |author3=Blythe Duell | title = Effect of outdoor temperature, heat primes and anchoring on belief in global warming| journal = Journal of Environmental Psychology| date = December 2010}}</ref> 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.
⚫ For example, the ] of ] (], Clause 1) states that "the judicial Power shall extend&nbsp;...&nbsp;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 hear cases that do not pose an actual controversy&mdash;that is, an actual dispute between adverse parties which is capable of being resolved by the . In addition to setting out the scope of the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, it also prohibits courts from issuing ]s, or from hearing cases that are either ], meaning that the controversy has not arisen yet, or ], meaning that the controversy has already been resolved.


⚫ In other controversies – such as that around the ], the same evidence seemed to license inference to radically different conclusions.<ref>{{Cite news| issn = 0362-4331| last = Saul| first = Stephanie|author2=Andrew Pollack| title = Furor on Rush to Require Cervical Cancer Vaccine| work = The New York Times| access-date = 2011-11-26| date = 2007-02-17| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/health/17vaccine.html}}</ref> Kahan et al.<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Kahan| first = Dan M.|author2=Donald Braman |author3=Geoffrey L. Cohen |author-link3=Geoffrey L. Cohen|author4=Paul Slovic |author5=John Gastil | title = Who Fears the HPV Vaccine, Who Doesn't, and Why? An Experimental Study of the Mechanisms of Cultural Cognition| date = 2008-07-15 |journal=Law and Human Behavior | ssrn = 1160654}}</ref> explained this by the cognitive biases of biased assimilation<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098| issn = 0022-3514| volume = 37| issue = 11| pages = 2098–2109| last = Lord| first = Charles G.|author2=Lee Ross |author3=Mark R. Lepper | title = Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence.| journal = Journal of Personality and Social Psychology| year = 1979| citeseerx = 10.1.1.372.1743}}</ref> and a credibility heuristic.<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1086/266350| volume = 15| issue = 4| pages = 635–650| last = HOVLAND| first = CARL I.|author2=WALTER WEISS| title = The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness| journal = Public Opinion Quarterly| date = 1951-12-21}}</ref>
⚫ ==Benford's law of controversy==


⚫ Similar effects on reasoning are also seen in non-scientific controversies, for example in the ].<ref name="guncontrol">{{Cite journal| last = Braman| first = Donald|author2=James Grimmelmann |author3=Dan M. Kahan | title = Modeling Cultural Cognition |journal=Social Justice Research | date = 20 July 2007| ssrn = 1000449}}</ref> As with other controversies, it has been suggested that exposure to empirical facts would be sufficient to resolve the debate once and for all.<ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 151| issue = 4| pages = 1341–1348| last = Fremling| first = G.M.|author2=J.R. Lott Jr| title = Surprising Finding That Cultural Worldviews Don't Explain People's Views on Gun Control, The| journal = U. Pa. L. Rev.| year = 2002| doi = 10.2307/3312932| jstor = 3312932| url = https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3214&context=penn_law_review}}</ref><ref>{{Cite conference| publisher = National Bureau of Economic Research| last = Ayres| first = I.|author2=J.J. Donohue III| title = Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis| year = 2002}}</ref> 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.<ref name="guncontrol" /> Such confidence in the group to find the ground truth is explicable through the success of ] based inferences.<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Lee| first = M.D. |author2=M. Steyvers |author3=M. de Young |author4=B.J. Miller | title = A Model-Based Approach to Measuring Expertise in Ranking Tasks}}</ref> However, if there is no access to the ground truth, as there was not in this model, the method will fail.
⚫ {{Main|Benford's law of controversy}}
⚫ ], as expressed by ] author ] in 1980, states: ''] is ] to the amount of real (true) ] available.''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.eff.org/Misc/EFF/?f=quotes.eff.txt |title=EFF Quotes Collection 19.6 |publisher=] |date=2001-04-09}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20080822143815/http://www.sysprog.net/quotlaws.html|archivedate=2008-08-22|url=http://www.sysprog.net/quotlaws.html|title=Quotations: Computer Laws |work=SysProg |accessdate=2007-03-10}}</ref> In other words, the fewer facts are known to and agreed on by the participants, the more controversy there is, and the more is known the less controversy there is. Thus, for example, controversies in physics are limited to subject-areas where experiments cannot be carried out yet, whereas Benford's Law implies that controversy is inherent to politics, where communities must frequently decide on courses of action based on insufficient information.


⚫ ] allows these failures of rationality to be described as part of a statistically optimized system for decision making. Experiments and computational models in ] have shown that sensory input from different senses is integrated in a statistically optimal way,<ref>{{Cite journal| issn = 0028-0836| volume = 415| issue = 6870| pages = 429–433| last = Ernst| first = Marc O.|author2=Martin S. Banks| title = Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion| journal = Nature| date = 2002-01-24| doi = 10.1038/415429a|bibcode = 2002Natur.415..429E| pmid=11807554| s2cid = 47459}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 8| issue = 3| pages = 24.1–11| last = Wozny| first = D.R. |author2=U.R. Beierholm |author3=L. Shams| title = Human trimodal perception follows optimal statistical inference| journal = Journal of Vision| year = 2008| doi = 10.1167/8.3.24| pmid = 18484830| doi-access = free}}</ref> As such, it appears neurobiologically plausible that the brain implements decision-making procedures that are close to optimal for Bayesian inference.
⚫ ==Psychological bases of controversy==


⚫ Brocas and Carrillo propose a model to make decisions based on noisy sensory inputs,<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1016/j.geb.2011.10.001| issn = 0899-8256| last = Brocas| first = Isabelle|author2=Juan D. Carrillo| title = From perception to action: An economic model of brain processes| journal = Games and Economic Behavior| volume=75| pages=81–103| year = 2012}}</ref> 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 ] and polarization of opinions – exactly as described in the ] 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 ]) 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 a result of limited reasoning in the ] of ].
⚫ Controversies are frequently thought to be a result of a lack of confidence on the part of the disputants - as in ]. For example, in the political controversy over ] ] that is prevalent in the ] - it has been thought that those who are opposed to the scientific consensus did so because of a lack of evidence.<ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 9| issue = 3| pages = 297–312| last = Ungar| first = S.| title = Knowledge, ignorance and the popular culture: climate change versus the ozone hole| journal = Public Understanding of Science| year = 2000}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 1| issue = 1| pages = 35–41| last = Pidgeon| first = N.| coauthors = B. Fischhoff| title = The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks| journal = Nature Climate Change| year = 2011|bibcode = 2011NatCC...1...35P |doi = 10.1038/nclimate1080 }}</ref> A study of 1540 US adults<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Kahan| first = Dan M.| coauthors = Maggie Wittlin, Ellen Peters, Paul Slovic, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Donald Braman, Gregory N. Mandel| title = The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change| journal = SSRN eLibrary| year = 2011| ssrn = 1871503}}</ref> found instead that levels of scientific literacy were 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 exposed to the same evidence and being able to reach different conclusions, has been frequently explained (particularly by Daniel Kahneman) by reference to a ']' - that is most judgments are made by fast acting heuristics (system 1)<ref>{{Cite journal| issn = 0002-8282| volume = 93| issue = 5| pages = 1449–1475| last = Kahneman| first = Daniel| title = Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics| journal = The American Economic Review| date = 2003-12-01| jstor = 3132137}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 185| issue = 4157| pages = 1124–31| last = Tversky| first = A.| coauthors = D. Kahneman| title = Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases| journal = Science| year = 1974|bibcode = 1974Sci...185.1124T |doi = 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124| pmid=17835457}}</ref> that work well in every day situations, but are not amenable to decision making about complex subjects such as climate change. ] has been particularly identified as relevant in climate change controversies <ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.03.004| issn = 0272-4944| volume = 30| issue = 4| pages = 358–367| last = Joireman| first = Jeff| coauthors = Heather Barnes Truelove, Blythe Duell| title = Effect of outdoor temperature, heat primes and anchoring on belief in global warming| journal = Journal of Environmental Psychology| accessdate = 2011-11-26| date = 2010-12| url = http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494410000319}}</ref> as individuals are found to be more positively inclined to believe in ] 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 ].

⚫ In other controversies - such as that around the ], the same evidence seemed to license inference to radically different conclusions.<ref>{{Cite news| issn = 0362-4331| last = Saul| first = Stephanie| coauthors = Andrew Pollack| title = Furor on Rush to Require Cervical Cancer Vaccine| work = The New York Times| accessdate = 2011-11-26| date = 2007-02-17| url = http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/health/17vaccine.html}}</ref> Kahan et al.<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Kahan| first = Dan M.| coauthors = Donald Braman, Geoffrey L. Cohen, Paul Slovic, John Gastil| title = Who Fears the HPV Vaccine, Who Doesn't, and Why? An Experimental Study of the Mechanisms of Cultural Cognition| journal = SSRN eLibrary| date = 2008-07-15| ssrn = 1160654}}</ref> explained this by the cognitive biases of Biased Assimilation<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098| issn = 0022-3514| volume = 37| pages = 2098–2109| last = Lord| first = Charles G.| coauthors = Lee Ross, Mark R. Lepper| title = Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence.| journal = Journal of Personality and Social Psychology| accessdate = 2011-11-26| year = 1979| url = http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1981-05421-001}}</ref> and a ].<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1086/266350| volume = 15| issue = 4| pages = 635–650| last = HOVLAND| first = CARL I.| coauthors = WALTER WEISS| title = The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness| journal = Public Opinion Quarterly| accessdate = 2011-11-27| date = 1951-12-21| url = http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/4/635.abstract}}</ref>

⚫ Similar effects on reasoning are also seen in non-scientific controversies, for example in the ] debate in the ].<ref name="guncontrol">{{Cite journal| last = Braman| first = Donald| coauthors = James Grimmelmann, Dan M. Kahan| title = Modeling Cultural Cognition| journal = SSRN eLibrary| ssrn = 1000449}}</ref> As with other controversies, it has been suggested that exposure to empirical facts would be sufficient to resolve the ] debate once and for all.<ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 151| pages = 1341| last = Fremling| first = G.M.| coauthors = J.R. Lott Jr| title = Surprising Finding That Cultural Worldviews Don't Explain People's Views on Gun Control, The| journal = U. Pa. L. Rev.| year = 2002}}</ref><ref>{{Cite conference| publisher = National Bureau of Economic Research| last = Ayres| first = I.| coauthors = J.J. Donohue III| title = Shooting down the more guns, less crime hypothesis| date = 2002}}</ref> 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.<ref name="guncontrol" /> Such confidence in the group to find the ground truth is explicable through the success of ] based inferences,<ref>{{Cite journal| last = Lee| first = M.D.| coauthors = M. Steyvers, M. de Young, B.J. Miller| title = A Model-Based Approach to Measuring Expertise in Ranking Tasks}}</ref> however, if there is no access to the ground truth, as there was not in this model, the method will fail.

⚫ ] allows these failures of rationality to be described as part of a statistically optimized system for decision making. Experiments and computational models in ] have shown that sensory input from different senses is integrated in a statistically optimal way,<ref>{{Cite journal| issn = 0028-0836| volume = 415| issue = 6870| pages = 429–433| last = Ernst| first = Marc O.| coauthors = Martin S. Banks| title = Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion| journal = Nature| date = 2002-01-24| doi = 10.1038/415429a}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal| volume = 8| issue = 3| last = Wozny| first = D.R.| coauthors = U.R. Beierholm, L. Shams| title = Human trimodal perception follows optimal statistical inference| journal = Journal of vision| year = 2008}}</ref> 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,<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1016/j.geb.2011.10.001| issn = 0899-8256| issue = 0| last = Brocas| first = Isabelle| coauthors = Juan D. Carrillo| title = From perception to action: An economic model of brain processes| journal = Games and Economic Behavior| accessdate = 2011-11-27| url = http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825611001758}}</ref> 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 ] and Polarization of opinions - exactly as described in the ] 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 ]) 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 ] of ].


==See also== ==See also==
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==References== ==References==
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==External links==
{{Wiktionary|controversy}}
{{wikiquote}} {{Wikiquote}}
⚫ {{Wiktionary|controversy}}
* ], '''' (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2014).
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Latest revision as of 08:47, 14 December 2024

State of prolonged public dispute or debate For other uses, see Controversy (disambiguation).
A scene of rabbis engaging in debate in Carl Schleicher's painting A controversy from the Talmud, 19th century.

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".

Legal

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 . 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

Benford's law

Main 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. 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. A study of 1540 US adults 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 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 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. Kahan et al. explained this by the cognitive biases of biased assimilation and a credibility heuristic.

Similar effects on reasoning are also seen in non-scientific controversies, for example in the gun control debate in the United States. As with other controversies, it has been suggested that exposure to empirical facts would be sufficient to resolve the debate once and for all. 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. Such confidence in the group to find the ground truth is explicable through the success of wisdom of the crowd based inferences. 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, 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. 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, 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 a result of limited reasoning in the bounded rationality of Daniel Kahneman.

See also

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