Remember, Sometimes Facts Don’t Matter
On The Media remembers a study last year finding that sometimes misinformed people become more convinced of their opinions even when given the facts:
Mr. BRENDAN NYHAN (Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research, University of Michigan):… it’s threatening to us to admit that things we believe are wrong. And all of us, liberals and conservatives, you know, have some beliefs that aren’t true, and when we find that out, you know, it’s threatening to our beliefs and ourselves.
And so what we think happens is that the way people, you know, try to resolve this in some cases is to, you know, buttress that belief that they initially held, and, you know, there’s a long line of research showing results like this. … And what’s interesting is in some of these cases, it’s the people who are most sophisticated who are best able to defend their beliefs and keep coming up with more elaborate reasons why 9/11 was really a conspiracy or how the weapons of mass destruction were actually smuggled to Syria or whatever the case may be.
So this isn’t a question of education, necessarily, or sophistication. It’s really about, it’s really about preserving that belief that we initially held.
Opposition makes us smarter and more creative. Embrace it.
9 Responses to “Remember, Sometimes Facts Don’t Matter”
My favorite is glaciers that are rapidly disappearing from existence and then to read global warming deniers deny disappearing glaciers and ice sheets on the earth’s poles.
and isn’t that why we all visit TMV?
at least us sophisticated folks
You can see this in many of the GOP central policy talking points that can be easily refuted by recent history.
First, that lowering personal income taxes creates jobs and raising them costs jobs.
Second, deregulation is good for the economy despite the fact that whenever we deregulate an industry some kind of fiasco relating to that deregulation happens withing a very short time frame. This symptom is usually the industry in question trying to game the system for short term gains in a manner that they did decades ago, which spawned the regulation in the first place. However, big business advocates love to claim that the regulation is no longer needed because businesses have learned their lessons. And a sizeable chunk of the american electorate seem to agree even though we get a demonstration at least once a decade on this topic.
Facts do indeed not matter to some people. Not when your people are so gullible you can convince 25% of them the President wasn’t born in this country just by repeating it over and over. Not when they are so gullible they will swear there is a fire just because you said you saw smoke.
@slamfu
How did deregulating long distance carriers and railroads lead to a disaster in a very short time frame?
Those appear to be fine deregulation acts that were done over 30 years ago in a much different environment. I get your point, not all deregulation is bad. And my point was that all deregulation is bad, but in my frustration to make my point I failed to mention like most policy decisions we need people in place that can recognize a good plan from a bad one, needed policy from blindly following a course set by talking points. Do you feel the people currently proposing deregulation these days are doing that? Or is it more likely they just want to make their campaign donors happy whether or not its in the interests of the public?
The GOP has been on a tear trying to gut EPA regs saying that it costs jobs when it does anything but. Even after the financial sector ran amok and caused the recession the GOP is still saying we need to not interfere in their operations at all, that they will handle it. Do you think these ideas come from the same place as the deregulation proposals in 1976 and 1980? I do not.
And to be honest, the 4R act really resembled a govt bailout of 3 failed merged railroads a lot more than what we would today call a deregulation. Not to pick nits, but so did the breakup of AT&T’s monopoly. At the time AT&T had a great deal of influence in the regulating bodies that governed it. The breakup was long overdue and a strong case can be made that it was AT&T who was fighting it. Again, not the same situations as we are seeing today.
Back to the original post, I love it when people spout out their opinions, you then counter with your opinions, and then they bark out “where’s your data to support that?” when, in fact, they never presented data to support theirs.
Happens all the time on TMV and elsewhere.
As fate would have it, I stumbled across this today:
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/images/us101/balance.gif
Well of course it happens. There are many major issues from economic policy, international relations, environmental impact from businesses, education, civil rights, etc… that people have to have an opinion on and vote to make the best of it. Its absurd to expect everyone to have formal education in all topics or even to be completely up to speed on it since most people are staying pretty busy just being people and getting by. Yet we all must have an opinion, so no need to poke fun at folks who are obviously trying to get involved.