Literally every single person of all political stripes will see this and agree with this statement.
Smart people can be stubborn and would dismiss facts sometimes too
Not just sometimes. Much of the time.
I’d much rather confirm whether new information is accurate before adjusting my world view. Not all new information is equal.
This was my thought. Everyone challenges the source when they don’t like info and honestly there is a ton of bad info out there. When it comes to research I like to know where the funding came from.
I think this makes it seem a lot more black and white than it really is. Defaulting to information that agrees with your word view is a natural human bias. We all suffer from it and it’s important to actively try and work against that
Defaulting to information that agrees with your word view is a natural human bias.
In general, perhaps, but in the face of conflicting facts?
Everyone has their own set of facts. That’s the basis for their world view. Doesn’t mean those facts are pertinent to the question at hand but upsetting their entire worldview is not something people allow easily.
And that’s human nature. We’re a social species. We belong to tribes and depend on our tribe for survival. If we could drop our worldview like a load of dirty laundry then we’d be walking away from our tribes and dying.
Ask anyone who has had profound political disagreements with their family. It’s enormously painful. While you can drop a position here or there in an election, it’s not at easy to drop your family.
Everyone has their own set of facts.
If you mean their own configuration of facts, I agree. If you mean “things they believe”, I disagree that those are “facts”.
Perhaps I was being too vague but the key to my point is this:
Doesn’t mean those facts are pertinent to the question at hand
What I’m talking about is facts about people’s situation in life. Their friends, their family, their community. It’s well-known that many people will believe the medical advice of a close family member over that of a doctor. Does this mean that they (through family connections) have access to some secret medical knowledge?
No.
What it means is that a person’s instincts to trust their family and close friends — members of their tribe — make it difficult for them to accept contradictory information from their doctor (a stranger). You can extend this issue to almost any domain of expertise (apart from those in which the person in question has had formal training). This is why conspiracies, myths, and other falsehoods can be so difficult to dispel from the outside of communities: the people who believe these things are not going to take the word of strangers who try to contradict their friends and family.
And so what I mean about people having different facts is this: their relationships and communities are different. Their whole worldview depends on their ability to trust the people they’re closest to. So when it comes to the question of whether to believe a falsehood (myth/conspiracy/scandal) or to reject it and in so doing reject their own community (with catastrophic results for their life), it should not be a surprise that they choose to believe a falsehood.
And in that I agree. But I read the OP as saying something different.
As an example: Trump is a rapist. That’s a fact. How is that a fact? Well, his victim detailed the rape, produced evidence to corroborate it, and a judge and jury agreed, fining him 85 Million dollars for saying he didn’t rape the victim. Was he tried, convicted, and sentenced under a charge of rape? No. Statute of limitations and other reasons prohibited that. But the “fact” remains.
Now, the evidence of that fact is: the corporate news reporting of it AND the trial AND the transcripts which include witness testimony. Can all of those things exist for something that isn’t a fact? In extreme examples, yes, but it’s very rare. So as best as anyone can determine, this is a fact about a political figure.
A trump supporter will not believe it. Just like that. No reasoning, no plausible counter-argument, just - no. Because that is against their belief system. A straightforward rejection of a simple proven fact.
I’m saying I think that’s qualitatively different from a person altering their belief about the relatively unknowable - what is “god”, the purpose of life, how health is maintained - all of which have varying degrees of provable empirical fact but which are malleable to one’s family, society, culture, etc.
Reality: 2+2=4
Trump: 2+2=5
MAGAts: 2+2=5!
Reality: no, it really, really doesn’t.
MAGAts: I don’t subscribe to your facts! 2+2=5!
That’s. what I think the OP is describing.
Right, but now we need to ask ourselves how a person could get to the point where they don’t believe the media reporting all of this and instead they choose to believe Trump.
It starts with their community and it ends with a total collapse in their trust in public institutions, including the media. Then, if they and all their friends and family have begun to believe that the media (what they might call “left wing media”) are engaged in a conspiracy to disenfranchise themselves and their community (by trying to disqualify their chosen candidate through alternative means) it becomes easier to see why they would reject the facts.
It’s really a serious problem for democracy in the U.S. (but also in other western countries) and it didn’t begin nor doesn’t end with Trump. It’s a sign of major fault lines through society.
It’s a good question. However, I think it’s been answered before by about 30 or 40 years.
The answer is that media consumption and propaganda are often exactly the same thing and we don’t limit, police, suspect, or explain media consumption at all. That’s usually considered to be a good thing, but I think we see in the age of TikTok that it’s gone way too far, and we need to have basic media literacy as an elementary school-level learning.
That’s something that none of trumps supporters have had. I think what’s working in that situation (the right wing blogosphere, etc.) is some bastardized and weaponized version of “media literacy” that is strictly focused on not believing standard authority, and only believing the “new” authority.
Which is itself a very old ploy.
That’s not true!
The problem is, this is wrong. Most people won’t change their views easily. We instinctively downgrade evidence that disagrees with us and upgrade that which reinforces our beliefs.
Ironically, “smart” people can be FAR worse at this that stupid people. Just ask anyone who’s tried to do IT work for a doctor. Smart people are able to build more elaborate mental constructs to explain contradictory evidence.
This comes to a particular head in science. Scientific papers are written in a weird way. It’s always in the 3rd person, with as much personality taken out as possible. This helps when someone critiques it. Disagreements are with the paper, not the author. This is backed up by a LOT of training at university level. Even so, scientists are still prone to hanging onto outdated ideas far too long. These are people who are undoubtedly “smart” by any reasonable measure.
hot takes are already incoming, so just as a reminder: Sayings like this have assumptions that are necessary to be aware of before nitpicking details.
The saying is just saying that smart people are open minded to new ideas and information and indoctrinated people are taught to be close minded. It doesn’t mean every new piece of information is immediately believed by the smart person or that smart people are immune to confirmation bias, just that they are generally open to new information supported by evidence and indoctrination teaches people to reject new information whether it is supported by evidence or not.
It is a generalization about a primary difference, not a hard and fast rule.
I always find that people that are unflinchingly rigid in their beliefs always seem to be incredibly happy.
I believe that this stems from their inability to grasp the concept that the things that you don’t want to be true sometimes are, and the things you wish were, sometimes aren’t.
Nah, this sounds like bs to me
I did what you see there
I’m dismissing any facts you are commenting that contradict this post.
Oh yeah? Well I’m posting any contradictions that dismiss the comments on these facts! Ha!
Not a meme but ok
