Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting

opinion An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements. Definition A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with f ...

or point of view. The word was coined from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite direction".

Legal

In the

theory of law Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of Reason#Logical rea ...

, a controversy differs from a legal case; while legal cases include all suits,

criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...

as well as civil, a controversy is a purely civil proceeding. For example, the

Case or Controversy Clause The Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted the Case or Controversy Clause of Article III of the United States Constitution (found in Art. III, Section 2, Clause 1) as embodying two distinct limitations on exercise of judicial review: ...

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 ourt In addition to setting out the scope of the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, it also prohibits courts from issuing

advisory opinion An advisory opinion is an opinion issued by a court or a commission like an election commission that does not have the effect of adjudicating a specific legal case, but merely advises on the constitutionality or interpretation of a law. Some cou ...

s, or from hearing cases that are either

unripe Ripening is a process in fruits that causes them to become more palatable. In general, fruit becomes sweeter, less green, and softer as it ripens. Even though the acidity of fruit increases as it ripens, the higher acidity level does not make the ...

, meaning that the controversy has not arisen yet, or moot, meaning that the controversy has already been resolved.

Benford's law

Benford's law of controversy Gregory Benford (born January 30, 1941) is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is professor emeritus at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of ''Reason ...

, as expressed by the astrophysicist and science fiction author

Gregory Benford Gregory Benford (born January 30, 1941) is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is professor emeritus at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of ''Reason ...

in 1980, states: '' Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random ...

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

, 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 In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

, which is exceptionally virulent in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, 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 Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal. Limitations include the difficulty of ...

' – 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 An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...

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 Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines are vaccines that prevent infection by certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV). Available HPV vaccines protect against either two, four, or nine types of HPV. All HPV vaccines protect against at least HP ...

, 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 The wisdom of the crowd is the collective opinion of a diverse independent group of individuals rather than that of a single expert. This process, while not new to the Information Age, has been pushed into the mainstream spotlight by social infor ...

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 Multisensory integration, also known as multimodal integration, is the study of how information from the different sensory modalities (such as sight, sound, touch, smell, self-motion, and taste) may be integrated by the nervous system. A coherent r ...

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 An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...

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 Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...

) 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

Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was award ...

References

External links

* Brian Martin,
The Controversy Manual
' (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2014).
Controversial topics
based on

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

on Wikipedia data
Controversial Today
{{Authority control English words

Legal

Benford's law

Psychological bases

See also

References

External links