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Studies Say Ideology Trumps Facts
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Sep 25, 2008 01:54 AM
from the water-still-wet dept.
from the water-still-wet dept.
Anti-Globalism writes "We like to think that people will be well informed before making important decisions, such as who to vote for, but the truth is that's not always the case. Being uninformed is one thing, but having a population that's actively misinformed presents problems when it comes to participating in the national debate, or the democratic process. If the findings of some political scientists are right, attempting to correct misinformation might do nothing more than reinforce the false belief."
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Science education (Score:5, Insightful)
What if your ideology is based around the careful analysis of facts - like a good science education?
Re:Science education (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, that's not what they're talking about. If anything, just watch the current "debate" that's going on on talk radio and blogs about the upcoming election. You still hear that Obama is a muslim or that Palin wants to ban specific books. Despite these ideas having been debunked multiple times, people keep repeating them. Why? Because that's what they want to believe - ideology trumping facts.
Parent
So she disliked a book and never banned it (Score:5, Informative)
But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there
Talk about a straw man.
You handily glossed over the fact she only thought the book did not belong, and never did anything about it.
Further proving the main point. Something within drives you to ignore the very text in front of you, in the rush to demonize the Other.
Parent
Re:So she disliked a book and never banned it (Score:5, Interesting)
You handily glossed over the fact she only thought the book did not belong, and never did anything about it.
And you handily glossed over the fact that the GP used a poor quote to support his argument, and you're both missing something important. From the same article (emphasis mine):
The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.
"People would bring books back censored," recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin's predecessor. "Pages would get marked up or torn out."
Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.
Note: One of these contemporary reports [nytimes.com] from a different article/reporter claim that it was a little more than a simple request. Now back to the main point:
This presents one heck of a conflict: believe the witness accounts of her constituents garnered from the investigative reporting of news organizations that are trying desperately to dig up dirt on all fronts (yes, all. Just because someone has more dirt than another does not mean that the reporting is unfair.) or the words of the campaign that's trying desperately to get elected. Is there a truth to this? Of course, but it means one side is deliberately lying, spinning the truth, or honestly believes one way or the other despite being wrong. It really comes down to who you believe, if either.
Parent
Re:So she disliked a book and never banned it (Score:5, Funny)
And all of you are missing the most important point.
She's hot.
Well hotter than Obama, Biden or McCain, at least.
Parent
get real (Score:5, Informative)
You're letting your prejudices and biases cloud your judgment.
Of course, Palin didn't literally ban books from library shelves: she simply doesn't have the power to do so. But it appears that she opposed the presence of particular books in the library and exerted pressure.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5766173&page=1 [go.com]
The story is credible also because Palin is in trouble for several other abuses of power.
Parent
Re:Science education (Score:5, Informative)
She didn't try to ban books outright... rather she asked the librarian "Would you ban a book if I told you too" and then after asking 3 times, she threatened to fire her because she didn't feel she had the librarys support.
Don't get facts crossed, reality is scarier then fiction.
Parent
Re:You proved the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Expressing an opinion that a particular book "does not belong there" is not an attempt to ban anything.
No, but attempting to fire the librarian sure is.
On the other side one could make the argument that Obama was raised as a Muslim in a portion of his childhood
So? Does being "raised a Muslim" violate any legal or ethical principles? Even if he had been raised as a practicing Muslim, would that say anything about his character today? The only reason that being "raised a Muslim" is an issue in this campaign at all is because of religious intolerance and prejudice by Republicans.
On the other hand, attempting to fire the city librarian because she was not "politically loyal" and apparently had different views from Pailin is a violation of American values and principles.
Parent
Re:Science education (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that true of any religion?
Parent
Re:Science education (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a perfect answer--not because it makes any sense, but because it so perfectly illustrates the cognitive dissonance we're talking about. Christians who take the time to read both the Bible and the Koran frequently have no trouble taking the harsher parts of the Koran at face value but find no end of excuses why the Bible's crazier passages (shellfish, anyone?) are not to be read literally.
Thanks for the demonstration.
Parent
Re:Science education (Score:5, Insightful)
Read _A History of God_ by Karen Armstrong. Interesting book that covers Judaism, Christianity and Islam from a historical perspective. A history of how ideas developed in those beliefs, really.
The thing about the Bible the trips some people up is that they read it as a continuous narrative when it's more like an anthology. The Old Testament is easily half the book if not more and contains such crowd-pleasers as Leviticus, with the famous dietary laws along with times when it's appropriate to sell your sister to a giraffe. Rules to cover every eventuality. Then you hit the Gospels and Jesus says something along the lines of, "Okay, forget the earlier stuff about not eating monkeys or goats, just be nice to each other and we'll call that good enough." Which of course makes everything prior to that in the Bible totally irrelevant as moral handbooks go. It seems like a lot of the loudest Christians prefer the earlier parts about setting witches on fire and such to the just trying to get along with everybody revision.
Parent
Actively misinformed? (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing slashdot is here to set the record straight.
I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
I haven't RTF article, but I don't need to-facts don't matter.
Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Dupe? (Score:5, Insightful)
fourth branch of government (Score:5, Insightful)
I speak of the American media because I don't understand enough of the rest of the world's media to comment.
Re:fourth branch of government (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
FIRST branch of government (Score:5, Interesting)
The modern media is not the fourth branch, or estate, of government. It is the First Estate. Let me explain.
The estates have classically been, in order:
1) The Church
2) The Aristocracy
3) Everybody Else
Traditionally added to this list has been
4) The Media ("Independent of church and state")
This was the rule up to one should think about 50 years ago in most countries. It's still the case today in many, especially latin american, countries. However, one should realise that the estates we not so much defined by WHO they were so much as WHAT they did. For instance, one can easily replace "aristocracy" with "very rich people", and the second estate model still fits modern society.
However, how does one replace "church" in modern society? Even in america, religious leaders wield only a small fraction of the power they once did. Do we then conclude that the model of the three estates is therefore outdated and does not apply? I would argue that this is not the case, and that the three estates model is in fact a valid model for how almost all societies operate on a basic level.
What did the first estate do? The church was closer to the people that the aristocracy. It wielded great influence over them through its sermons, traditions and omni-presence in society at large. It mostly sided with the aristocracy, to maintain the status quo. Though it would disagree with their policies when it suited its own purposes. The general idea was that the aristocrats ruled, while the church helped keep the people in line. In turn, the aristocrats would confer legal status, benefits and privileges to the church. It was a symbiotic relationship designed to keep power out of the hands of the masses.
Who replaces the church of the Ancien Régime in our 21st century society? No-one? Look beyond outward apearance and to the actual substance of the matter. Who is close to those in power and spreads their message to the masses? Who is close enough to the average citizen to influence their opinion? Who generally agrees with the government, but can disagree when it suits their purposes. Who benefits from their patronage?
The modern media, or at least the majority of it, constitutes the first estate in our modern society. I'd like to stress that I do not believe this to be the result of a conspiracy or plot. Rather, I would hold that the three estates model is a natural state towards which human societies will gravitate, without anyone ever consciously planning or realizing it.
The demise of church power in western society has left a vacuum. The Media has filled that vacuum. When people talk about the Daily Show being the only source of "real news", they are in effect pointing out the inherant difference between the "New Media" of the First estate (Bill O'Reilly), and the "Old Media" of the Fourth estate (Jon Stewart). These two model of media have always existed together, but in recent times, the First estate media has become the dominant type.
In order for idealogical to work, it needs propaganda. It needs a first estate. In order to resist ideology, we need the truth. We need a fourth estate. Right now, we have too much of the former and dangerously little of the latter.
Parent
Democracy - "the least worst form of government"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The cynic in me is beginning to believe that Winston Churchill was wrong in saying that "Democracy was the least worst form of government". After being a part of the American political process for the last 8 years I've seen how ideology has, time and again, trumped reason. Still I'm not completely impressed with other systems, the "meritocratic" technocratic bureaucracy espoused by the Chinese communist party seems flawed as well (don't buy Chinese Milk!). That's despite being described as "the Harvard Alumni Association with an Army".
Maybe the fact is that, as humans (and 98% chimp) we're only slightly beyond our animal forebears. Perhaps we just cannot handle a technologic civilization with complex issues like genetic engineering, nuclear weapons, climate change, nano technology. If Fukuyama is right in saying that Liberal Democracies are "the end of history" maybe it means that that's the end of our progress. - Then again maybe the United States (with its 70% of the population being strongly religious) is an aberration and the future lies with other less religious societies.
Re:Democracy - "the least worst form of government (Score:5, Funny)
What we need is one lone ruler who tells us what to do who has no ulterior motives and hidden agendas beyond making this world the most livable and efficient for as large a fraction of the population as possible.
A Benevolent Dictatorship? That never works in any organization larger than the Python Development Community.
Parent
O RLY? (Score:5, Funny)
Douglas Adams knew it all along (Score:5, Insightful)
The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
People don't believe scientists, only celebrities (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this? Because what people believe is based on trust, not facts. They trust faces that are familiar to them and (thanks to the education system) are not capable of working out for themselves which answer is correct.
Ultimately it comes down to emotions
"Lenses" (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a poli sci major, now a law student (yeah, I know, what the hell am I doing on Slashdot...). I think the most useful discussion I ever heard in class was one on the general idea of "lenses" we see the world through.
The professor who taught the course had been in the Intelligence Community for some time, and this is an issue that analysts and other intelligence officers encountered constantly and is, in fact, encountered in essentially every career path. Analysts, who may not have visited the country they work on in years, will see it very differently than the man on the ground. The man on the ground, however, who is constantly tied up with a million small details, will likely see things differently and fail to see the big picture.
In my own life, I can think of a few instances where this has been particularly true. I had the "pleasure" of getting caught in the middle of a slum during the December 2001 riots in Argentina. Not a pleasant experience, needless to say. So now, every time I go back to Latin America, I'm paranoid. Once you've seen people getting stabbed and robbed all around you, you get that way. It's my "lens" - I always see things as less stable than they truly are, and always feel that I need to be ready to either batten down the hatches or bolt at any moment.
A more useful story would come from a recent work-related incident. A legal issue came up when I was an intern at a law office (yes, imagine that). I was in a conference with the other attorneys - all distinguished professionals with lengthy records - discussing the matter, and all of the attorneys handled it exactly like they would a case from a textbook - they played their "role". They took the facts they were given, assumed they were real, and attempted to find a legal answer to the situation. That's what lawyers do. After listening to discussion on this for several minutes, I piped up and questioned the very basis of the facts (the situation seemed a bit far-fetched to me - one not yet entirely corrupted by the practice of law - and I simply applied Occam's razor). I received strange stares for a moment, and then the attorney in charge of the matter said, "wow, I'd never considered that before. Let's look into it." Sure enough, I was right, and we saved a lot of money, headache, and effort on research and other costs.
People simply see things differently and will process information differently. Environment, experience, language, education, spirituality, family background, geographical origin, economic situation, genetics (to an extent), etc. all shape how we see the world - and how we even interpret - or even recognize - fact. It's only human. The best we can hope to do is to acknowledge it and to seek out those who view things differently in the hopes of honing our own vision and seeing things we hadn't seen before.
Fox News (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm from the UK and recently took a holiday in San Diego to visit some relatives. Great place, but unfortunately they had a limited Sat TV package that only gave a choice of a few news channels, and Fox News was the one that got turned on most.
Now I've never seen Fox News before, and coming from a country there the TV news has a mandate to be unbiased, Fox News was quite a shock to the system. I've never seen anything like it. It's completely one sided (towards Republicans) crammed with emotional rhetoric deliberately aimed at misinforming the viewer. It so over exaggerates the current level of the "terrorist threat" to America, that an outsider viewing this crap would think you're on the cusp of being invaded.
Watching it reminded me of the kind of news propaganda that the Nazi's used in WW2 to convince their population that their cause was just and righteous, and demoralize their enemies.
I know that sounds a bit strong, but I was just so shocked at the level of dishonest manipulation Fox News are involved in. And horrified that there are people in the USA who actually watch this trash and BELIEVE that it's real news!
So in a nutshell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at the paper on the Roberts study linked to TFA:
Tell some people bad stuff about a Republican, then tell them it isn't true. The pro-Democrats in the audience believe the bad stuff and ignore the rebuttal. The pro-Republicans... mostly ignored the bad stuff in the first place (or maybe didn't think it was so bad?)
Film at 11. Or, to put it another way, mud sticks.
I can't quickly see any link from the paper to the specific rebuttal of the ad which the participants were shown - but the paper assures us that it was a "a sharp, factual, bipartisan evisceration of its insinuations" - so that's alright then. (I'm reluctant to criticize a paper too deeply after a 2 minute skim, but that line made my red pen itch).
The authors of the paper seem to be taking as axiomatic that the ad was completely untrue and the rebuttal was compelling. After all, the title of the paper says "False political beliefs".
Note that the question in the study was "do you support Roberts for Supreme Court Justice" and not "do you believe that the ad was accurate". Any good propaganda will contain a grain of truth - however disingenuously presented. In this case, it was that one of the "nonviolent" protesters was a convicted violent protester. That shouldn't count for anything in a court of law, but it might reduce your audience's enthusiasm for the right to protest.
This study would be more interesting if it were done using a nice, well-defined reproducible or falsifiable scientific or mathematical fact and a common misconception. Actually, this has been done in science/math education and there is evidence that merely telling someone "your belief is wrong - here is the right answer" is ineffective unless you force them to see the absurd consequences of their belief. (go Google for "cognitive conflict").
When ideology is what you ARE (Score:5, Insightful)
Fostering brand loyalty is a cost effective way to get repeat customers. But you don't <em>have</em> to be a mindless consumer of political ideology.
Same conclusion from a different approach? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, my best bet would be on "cognitive dissonance" rather than "conspiracy theory."
The best way to illustrate cognitive dissonance is via the classic experiment: you assign someone (e.g., a student) a Homer Simpson-esque job that's boring him to tears. Then you one day say he can stop doing it, you have something better to do with him. But you ask him if he can find a replacement for that previous crap job. You even offer a dollar if he does. So he'll go try to convince someone else that it's a great job to take. The fun thing is, after a while he'll have convinced himself too that it's a great job.
Apparently, having to reconcile between "I'm a nice and honest guy" and "I just lied to a bunch of people for a lousy dollar", he'll alter the latter to, basically, "yeah, well, it wasn't really a lie." Just to keep his mental model consistent.
It seems to be a function of at least the mammalian brain. When you have two contradictory ideas in your model, one has to give. With humans, though, if one idea is too important to let go, something else has to give.
Even more fun is that the strength of the effect is inversely proportional to how sustainable or justifiable that action is. If you offer him a lot more money, he has the escape of, basically, "yeah, well, I needed the money. So I have my price too. Bite me." If it's a precondition to getting out of that crap job, same thing, he has an excuse. But when there's no excuse he can wrap his mind around, he'll alter the truth so he doesn't need an excuse.
A similar fun effect is with kids. Apparently when they really want something or to do something, as silly deterrent like "mommy will pout" is often actually more effective than a harsh punishment, if applied consistently. When there is no real justification for "why didn't I do that, if I wanted to anyway?" something else has to give, and it becomes, "I didn't really want that in the first place." Fun stuff.
I find that the same applies to politics, religion, fanboys, or, for that matter, everything else. The least justifiable a position is, the more people will warp reality to keep it. And the more rabidly they'll defend that redefinition of reality, lest their whole mental model comes crashing down around their ears.
And, yes, applying more force just creates more resistance.
And for a last bit of fun, there's no defender more stalwart of a piece of bullshit, than someone whose model already broke down once and was patched to that bullshit. If they're going to have to admit "I was wrong and doing wrong" anyway, they'll run with that to the hilt, and make an even more warped model in the other direction. So funnily enough, there is no more rabid, say, XBox fanboy, than one who was a PS2 fanboy and felt betrayed by Sony and had to let their whole "Sony for ever!!!" model crash. And viceversa. There is no bible-thumper for puritan morals more rabid than someone who was a prostitute until last week. And viceversa: nobody does a good christian-baiting trolling like someone who still went to church last month. There is no Republican more rabid about every single aspect of that ideology, than someone who was a Democrat until they felt somehow betrayed. And viceversa.
But now they won't just change about the aspect where they thought they were cheated, they'll go for the whole list, from military spending to abortion stance to gay marriage to everything else. Now Party X is right in everything, and Party Y is wrong about everything, because I don't like Party Y any more. And I must enlighten the masses about how wrong and evil Party Y is!
And the least justifiable that position is (e.g., don't be silly, Sony didn't "betray" anyone and didn't owe you anything in the first place), the more immovable it will be. As I was saying, fun stuff.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect what you meant to say is that your money is on self-delusional behaviors, such as religion, groupthink, dogmatism, fanaticism, etc. Cognitive dissonance is what then happens when reality comes knocking at the door of this fantasy world. Unfortunately, all too often the doorbell goes unanswered or ignored. That's pretty much to what these studies refer: people choosing to maintain a self-delusion rather than answer the door and be faced with uncertainties.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
Cognitive dissonance is just what happens when you have two conflicting ideas, and basically have to choose one. It happens just as well when reality came and rang the door bell, but it's the same mechanism that was at work when that delusion rang the bell and you let it in. You have two options and you can't have both. You choose one. Whether it was the right one or you sank deeper into delusional behaviour, is rather irrelevant for the mechanism at work. Choosing the wrong one is nevertheless just the same mechanism at work.
Basically I don't disagree with you when you call those behaviours names, or anything. I'm just saying that the term "cognitive dissonance" is used to mean a very specific mechanism, and how, yes, such self-delusional behaviours come to be.
The dissonance itself is just the fact that (temporarily) two pieces of your mental model are at odds with each other. You have to solve that somehow, because your brain is wired to need one consistent model and try to solve such conflicts. But, at any rate, that's the dissonance: propositions X and Y can't both be true. How you solve that, is already one step further. You can go with the truth, or manufacture a lie, but the dissonance was just the same.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, 'tis true enough. FWIW I perceive far too many people making these decisions based on emotional or social needs rather than the "facts in evidence". That's where the delusion starts for many people, because then they want to pretend that wasn't what they did. They imagine they're rational and open-minded when they're exactly the opposite. Of course they're doing THAT for emotional reasons - preservation of ego - as well. And they slide further down the slope.
Political parties and their social influences and "platforms" actually harm rational debate rather than help it. People buy into party groupthink and become polarized and dogmatic. Forget having multiple parties and campaign finance reforms... if we really wanna fix what ails our political system, we'd abolish the "party system" and institute electoral lotteries to shut out the the Good Old Boys (and yes, that includes Obama).
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Can everyone please stop saying 'they' and start saying 'we'?
Or are we playing to the self-delusion that everyone except us is broken?
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
Can everyone please stop saying 'they' and start saying 'we'?
Or are we playing to the self-delusion that everyone except us is broken?
No I'm fine it's just you and to a lesser extent them,
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Male brain, female brain, monkey brain, whatever. In a recent experient, monkeys too were shown to build (at least the symptoms of a) cognitive dissonance.
It makes sense, if you think about it. You can't really do much with a mental model where simultaneously "all grass is green" and "all grass is red" are true. You must discard or fix one of the statements, or maybe go for some compromise like "most grass is green, but some species are red" or maybe admit "I have no bloddy clue what colour grass is, that still needs to be determined."
The only bad dissonances happen when one just can't let go of one of the ideas, so the other one _has_ to be false, all evidence be damned. As someone else correctly noted, most often when one's beliefs and actions are irreconcileable with each other. If you're not able to let go of the beliefs, you redefine the actions.
A broken model is actually a source of stress and discomfort until it's somehow fixed, so virtually everyone will do something to fix it.
We could go into who builds the worst dissonances. (Though I'm not aware of any data saying that women build worse resolutions than the men, or viceversa.) But the basic issue of needing a consistent model isn't gender specific, or as far as we know even species specific. Your cat tries to keep its little mental model just as consistent as you do with yours.
Parent
It was metaphorically speaking (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that was metaphorically speaking, and using the term "wiring" rather inexact.
The actual "wiring", as you noted, is largely the data. That's how we learn.
The metaphorical "wiring" I'm talking about is actually in the DNA and proteins encoded by it. It's how the neurons themselves are built to work. They don't rewire the network randomly, they have a bit of code in the DNA that says how they should work. The BIOS and bootstrap code of that neural network, so to speak. That's really what I'm talking about when I say "wired".
I hope it didn't cause too much confusion to anyone.
As for how would you check for consistency, I dunno, by running a proof through it and seeing if you get two contradicting results? There's even a conjecture that that's what dreams are: the night job that runs simulations through that data.
But in truth I doubt that there's anyone who can tell you exactly how the brain works, and which pathway belongs to the consistency checking job. If we knew that, we'd already have a working AI.
We can however look at it from the outside, like at a black box, and notice some things it does. And there is strong evidence that it does that kind of a model consistency check and cleanup. Even if we don't know exactly how it works, we can see what goes in and what comes out, and it looks that way.
Same as I can look at a plane and say it tries to keep its altitude constant, even if I have no fucking clue which control surfaces are used for that, and even less clue what the code running on its computers is.
Parent
Science is just a way to try to avoid it, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in the end, the scientific method is just a way to _avoid_ clinging to some dogma and building cognitive dissonances to support it. There is no immovable "truth", or rather, we don't know it yet. Your pet theory is likely to be not quite the whole "truth" yet. There will eventually be some data which require it to be refined even further. Be honest to yourself and admit that you could have only an incomplete understanding of the universe, and that way we can all continue to learn more.
Anyone who sees science as some immutable dogma, or as some choice between this dogma and that one, isn't doing science in the first place. That's religion. It's the exact opposite of science. And, yes, it's funny to see people rant against religion, while using science as a dogma. That's not science vs religion, that's religion vs religion. One of them uses pseudo-science trappings, but it's used as a religion nevertheless.
I don't see how you can qualify the real thing as, basically, self-delusional, or conversely claim that only sticking to a bullshit fairy-tale as The Truth is the only non-self-delusional behaviour. Science is all about avoiding that kind of absolute truths and abandoning any pretense that you know everything. This is the data we have. This is the theory that explains that data. When we'll have more data, we'll refine the theory some more. If some of those axioms don't fit the data, we'll discard the axioms. It's just about as intellectually honest as it gets.
So, pray tell, in which way is that kind of admission that we don't know everything "self-delusional"?
Parent
Re:Science is just a way to try to avoid it, reall (Score:5, Insightful)
Or would we rather establish a Ministry of Truth rather than allow people to believe in wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy presented as fact?
We need the freedom to be "wrong". That's what it means to be an adult.
Parent
Most definitely (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree we should be free to think as we will.
Although I don't believe we have a right to correct information, it'd be real nice if politicians and corporations were held responsible for their misinformation. Our choices (in Truth, wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy) are only as solid as the information on which they are built, and unfortunately, our Public Representatives (from city council members on up) feed us only the information we require to achieve the goals they desire. There seems to be no regard for the validity of the information.
It's our responsibility as citizens to hold liars responsible for their lies. As we've seen with Clinton and Bush, though, lies are accepted as truth, even in the face of physical evidence.
Oh, well. I guess we (as a population) also have the right to accept any gilded bullshit as gospel, and build our worldview on that.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
> There is no such thing as Truth. We all cling to illusions. You just think your illusion is superior to theirs.
You do realise that your statement invalidates itself? If there is no such thing as truth and everything is an illusion, then so is your statement.
Could it be that you are trying to say that we all have models of the world around us and some of those models model the real world more accurately than others, but not one of them is 100% correct? Because having an inaccurate model of the world isn't really a problem when acknowledge that it isn't perfect (and can make a rough estimate of how imperfect it is) and are willing to correct your model when more data is available.
Damn it seems I invented science.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
All statements are false, especially this one.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very nice summation of a serious problem. This issue is why I always teach (and try to practice) that it is important to admit when you are wrong. The nice thing about doing so, is that you have to do it less often as time goes on. Well, a bit - but it becomes easier to do. One should never allow the value you have invested in believing something to be a factor in whether you believe it or not.
Parent
Re:Not even conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not everyone goes for lying to themselves. So I don't doubt that some people will do just like you said. But look around you. Do you really doubt that half of your co-workers would try to sucker someone, even just to be on the boss's good side? :P
That said, not that I'm accusing you or anything, but having very strong and immutable ideas about what you'd do or wouldn't do, is what causes such dissonances to go wrong in the first place. People start with immutable ideas like "_I_ wouldn't ever do X", and when somehow they find themselves doing it, well, if that idea is immutable, the other one has to go. It becomes, "yeah, well, what I did doesn't _really_ qualify as X." That's when and how such lying to oneself happens.
So keeping a more open mind about your options could actually help.
But again, I don't know you enough to make a definitive pronouncement there. Maybe you have the will power to actually stick to your principles, no matter what. Most people have the principles, but not the will to stick to them. So they end up warping reality to be still able to think that they do have those principles.
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Re:ideology trumps facts and so what? (Score:5, Funny)
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War, legality thereof. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, you might claim illegality under the so called "international law". But here too, one can find a legal basis in various UN resolutions (e.g. 678, 687).
But, advocating for taking war actions only under the direction of the UN is fairly silly. There are plenty of situations in which the United States should be compelled to act even if various nations disagree with US policy.
Instead of focusing on the legality of the action in question, the more interesting question is if the war itself was in America's best interests. Here, one can most certainly raise all sorts of claims vis-a-vee whether the war itself was a worthwhile action (cost vs. benifeits).
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Re:Confirmed by experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
Both houses did pass a resolution for the Iraq and Afghani wars so I don't really know what hes trying to say, Bush wasn't the only one who wanted war.
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Re:Indeed, the second expiriment fared no better (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it takes two to tango. IF the democrats had put up someone even reasonably qualifying for the office, they would have won. And yet again, they may prove to have made the same mistake again, choosing the MOST liberal senator out of the whole bunch. If they had picked like 85 instead of 100 on the list, this election would not even be in doubt...
an excellent example of the dissonance discussed.
you are a republican, a thoroughly indoctrinated one.
Obama isn't even close to "liberal" democrat.
If you want liberal take a look to canada, and that's only what 85 out of 100 scale liberals want.
The truth is it wouldn't matter who the democrats trotted up there.
If you never knew GW, and he ran under the democratic ticket, you would rain the same derision upon him.
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Re:The best example (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:On three. 1.... 2.... 3.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, sometimes, one side really is right, or at least substantially less wrong than the other.
Yes, but not necessarily because their analysis and thinking are more sound... You can be a bloody-minded partisan and still hit on a good idea every now and then, even if it's just because the other side opposes the idea.
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