Studies Say Ideology Trumps Facts 784
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."
Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to hijack this thread (Score:3, Informative)
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=955999&cid=24911097#comment_top_24911097 [slashdot.org]
I'll just leave this here
Indeed, the second expiriment fared no better (Score:2, Informative)
After four years of bad rule that included a record deficit, starting two illegal wars, and alienating most of their allies, the people of that nation were asked if they would vote for him again. And they did!
Interestingly, in the follow-up expiriment a group of people were set up to control the purse strings of the same nation, and after four years of exponential spending it appears people are still willing to vote for them as well!
Amazing what people will do, and further proof of the theorem.
Indeed the expiriment is still ongoing, with any luck the monkeys at the switch will pull the lever for once that gives them the smaller banana instead of pulling the big 'ol lever of "free" bananas forever, supplied by magical forces from above.
Re:Science education (Score:4, Informative)
That's a good point, and well taken, except that the Palin book-censorship "myth" was never debunked — the (truthful, as far as it goes) claim that she never attempted to ban specific books as mayor of Wassila is a straw man, a cynical diversion from the fact that she embarked on her campaign of attempted book-censorship as a city councilwoman, before being elected mayor.
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, according to Ms. [Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin's first run for mayor in 1996,] and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.
"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."
"I'm still proud of Sarah," she added, "but she scares the bejeebers out of me."
(From this article [nytimes.com] in the New York Times.)
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.
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.
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.
Re:fourth branch of government (Score:3, Informative)
The reason being that Chomsky's work has been more optimistic of recent developments in the media industries, and, honestly, that's not something I can have much faith in. Simply agreeing with the dominant media perspective doesn't mean that the system is any less ideological.
Re:Democracy - "the least worst form of government (Score:4, Informative)
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 wit an Army".
That's a very naive characterisation of the Chinese system, or any non democracy. From my experience it's more like organised crime with an army. Fact is absolute power lies with the people with the money and guns, not with the Harvard alumni.
One of my friend's husbands works in China. One of his partners is in the PLA, and the main reason he is a partner is because people are scared of him. Let's just say if her husband's company makes a business offer and you're Chinese, you don't refuse it once you find out he's involved.
Very scary place.
Re:Science education (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway if you read the Bible the Jews/Israelites aren't supposed to eat shellfish and do a lot of other things.
Re:Science education (Score:3, Informative)
If the answer to your question was "no", how could the Bible contain a passage in which shellfish eating was banned?
Anyway, I think that was the whole point. The Bible bans shellfish which is a strange thing to do but fairly innocuous. There are much crazier more repulsive things in the Bible. There are several passages in it which describe God sponsored genocide. For instance, at school when I was 9 we talked about things like Joshua's attack on Jericho but somehow the teacher forgot to mention what Joshua did with the inhabitants after he had won.
Re:Science education (Score:2, Informative)
--nawcom, atheist
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.
Re:Science education (Score:3, Informative)
FYI Those are Danish cartoons, allthough they've been reprinted in the Netherlands.
Close, but no sigar.
Re:The best example (Score:3, Informative)
Fannie and Freddie are government-created entities, and are not run nor structured like other private companies.
Washington policy, particularly centered around an "ownership society," loosened rules and practically forced some companies to make loans to poor people who couldn't afford them in the mistaken idea that it somehow creates equality.
Several senators - particularly Dodd and Sanders - continually blocked measures by the Bush administration to actually be responsible in their required oversight of Fannie and Freddie.
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.
Re:Bible Mentions Shellfish in Leviticus (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if you actually want an answer, it is because the in the book of Acts, Peter was informed that all of those food injunctions were removed. If you don't actually want an answer, then disregard.
She tried to do something about it (Score:5, Informative)
She did try to do something about it. [adn.com]
I am from Alaska. I have family in Wasilla, some who know Palin. The facts: Palin asked the city librarian if she would remove books from the library. The librarian said, essentially, "Not on my watch." So Palin attempted to change the watch.
She did try to do something about it, at the cost of a well-liked city librarian. She did so because of her scary fundamentalist ideology, the same thing that caused her to push through measurements requiring rape victims to pay for their rape test kits.
This "censorship" thing is not a strawman. I'm not sure if two cases make a pattern, but the "Troopergate" (stupid name, I know) affair indicates she likes to fire people she doesn't like, or who stand in the way of her doing things like censor libraries.
Hardly (Score:4, Informative)
I keep hearing how the government "practically forced some companies to make loans." This isn't supported by the facts. The bill in question (passed by Clinton in '93) essentially mandated fairness in lending -- that if banks gave a loan to one person, they couldn't refuse a similar loan to a similar person.
In fact, deregulation allowed standard banks to behave as speculative agencies. It wasn't Fannie and Freddie that gave these sub-prime loans, and nobody was forced to do so. The fact is, they were highly profitable in the short-term (say, 15 years, which is plenty to make a killing and get out). Other banks purchased up blocks of loans. Couple that with increasing privatization of Freddie and Fannie.
There was so much return on these subprime loans, that Fannie and Freddie were financially pressured into purchasing up blocks themselves. As they are the biggest mortgage lenders, they ended up with huge numbers of these loans.
The economy started spiralling down about the same time the ARMs came due, exacerbating the rate of mortgage defaults.
Jeez, doesn't anybody listen to NPR anymore?
Re:The best example (Score:4, Informative)
"Facts" my ass. Here are some real, unbiased facts:
1) The CRA bill had virtually nothing to do [prospect.org] with the current financial crisis. To quote:
The reason bad loans were given out was because it made people a fuckton of money. The real failure was in the Bush administration not working to encourage investment opportunities outside the secondary mortgage market for the vast glut of credit that was around after the 2001 tech crash. Instead, they let the "invisible hand" work, and since real estate looked like a great way to make money, they threw their money in there. Suddenly banks saw a market for MBSs and began loaning like mad so they could resell the investments and make boatloads of cash. This drew new investors, which encouraged more bad loans, lather, rinse repeat. Throw in unregulated ratings agencies that were financially motivated to lie about risk, not to mention general risk obfuscation thanks to the structure of the instruments being sold, and you have a recipe for disaster.
All of this could've been fixed with some sensible regulation, but the government instead chose to sit back and ride the wave.
2) Fannie and Freddie largely largely avoided the subprime market until late 2007 when the market was failing and needed credit to keep it functioning, and they only stepped in when the government more or less told them to. So what the hell would regulating Fannie and Freddie have done to avoid the current problems? Nothing at all.
But I don't expect you to actually believe any of this. After all, cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.
Re:Science education (Score:5, Informative)
The Old Testament is easily half the book if not more
Actually, the Old Testament makes up about 85% of the Bible we have today.
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
Really only the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch) are the Law books, and much of those books are just telling about the early history of the Israelites. (Genesis & Exodus). Also, there is nothing about selling your sister to a giraffe in the Old Testament (nor the New). Giraffes would, however, fall into the edible foods category based on their hoofs. Regardless, there are plenty of bizarre or seemingly pointless laws in there.
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.
Not to be judgmental or argumentative, but honestly, this is a really inaccurate portrayal of the Bible's message. Even a secular humanist professor of religion who has some understanding of its message wouldn't summarize the Bible in that way, because it's just not what it's saying.
Jesus himself says in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:17-18 (the fifth chapter in the first book in the New Testament, essentially the first thing you read in the New Testament if you read for more than about 5 minutes): "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." (NIV)
I tend to agree with this, and interpret the entire Old Testament as pointing towards Jesus. The purpose of the Law was to demonstrate the sinfulness of man and how we can never be "good enough." This may sound clichÃ, but the New Testament's whole message is that it's not about us and what we do and how good we are, but about God and what He did for us by his Grace.
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.
Again, there is nothing about "setting witches on fire" anywhere in the Old/New Testaments, and the "getting along with everybody part" was not a "revision." I suppose the Old and New Testaments do condemn witchcraft, though. Also, please read the first paragraph in this post again. Thanks a lot.
Re:It was metaphorically speaking (Score:3, Informative)
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.
I think I could. But it's no "pathway". That's not how a NN (neural network) works. In a NN, everything is stored in superimposed states of whole subnets of paths. I can't explain it without thinking more about it, but I think consistency is more a basic property of how a NN works. If you have two output lines... one for going trough door A and one for going trough door B, the signal for door A could be stronger, so that it wins. After that, you will do backwards rationalization (saying that you clearly decided to take that door in the first place), which is a feedback that suppresses the "in this situation I take door B" pathway/state in your brain.
You have learned it.
Sometimes it's impressive how simple the basic mechanism is, and how complex the results are.