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redneckgaijinWhen I do political posts, I would prefer, in the abstract, to talk about factual issues and how one side or the other is ignoring the facts, using links like this one, or maybe this one, or perhaps this one, or possibly this one.
Unfortunately, as recent research has shown, most people, when confronted with facts that disprove something they believe, either ignore or discount the facts and become stronger in their erroneous belief.
I can quite easily believe this. Back when I was active in the Libertarian Party, by far the vast majority of activists were of the belief that, if only more people were educated about libertarian philosophy and how the facts support it, libertarianism would become the dominant political philosophy.*
After spending a couple of years trying "education" (and annoying and driving off numerous people in the process, many of whom were favorably inclined to me at first and ended hating my guts), I came to the conclusion that no political party could possibly win by "educating" the public. Almost nobody who wasn't already at least half persuaded to the party line would give party representatives any credence in the first place, for one thing. For another:
He who is persuaded against his will
Is of his own opinion still.
Or put another way, "I know what I know, and don't confuse me with the facts!"
My position became, instead, that to win libertarians had to persuade voters on an emotional level- that is, they had to build up trust with the electorate that Libertarian Party candidates would run government well and watch over the interests of the people. (Naturally you might see a little problem with that...) As one example, I proposed- in all seriousness- that Libertarians should start up a non-profit charity to pay the medical bills of the indigent as a means of proving that, as per libertarian dogma, private charity would ensure no one went without health care in a world without Welfare or Medicaid. I was, of course, completely ignored.
And now the study referred to in the article seems to bear me out:
The main study's creator suggests that, if talking heads lost face or reputation for peddling false information, the trend might be countered. As the right wing has demonstrated, though, false information is not punished but rather REWARDED. By portraying all dissenting media as in conspiracy against conservatives, people like Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have ensured that their audiences will discount any and all evidence that shows their lies for what they are. (Not that the mainstream media has tried very hard. To the contrary, any lie, no matter how egregious, is accepted because "there are two valid sides to every story." Which is bullshit.)
What this research shows is that we, as human beings, grab hold of the facts we like and discount the facts we don't like- regardless of their validity. Facts are not going to persuade anyone in a political contest, or at least not enough of anyone to matter. Emotion and intuition, not factual study and deduction, determine our political choices.
Which is why I would probably be better advised to keep my political posts about things that are emotionally outrageous or terrifying, stuff like this or maybe this or possibly this or definitely this with a side helping of that.
And it does explain why, here in America, we almost always vote AGAINST someone instead of in SUPPORT of someone. We vote based not on facts or rational self-interest (there's no such animal anyway), but on fear and anger and tribal hatred. The least scary side wins.
* Incidentally, a number of facts have caused me to go entirely off the idea of libertarianism, at least on the economic side... but I've often been told that I'm unusual in that I occasionally change my mind when confronted with countervailing facts. Most people don't seem willing to do that.
Unfortunately, as recent research has shown, most people, when confronted with facts that disprove something they believe, either ignore or discount the facts and become stronger in their erroneous belief.
I can quite easily believe this. Back when I was active in the Libertarian Party, by far the vast majority of activists were of the belief that, if only more people were educated about libertarian philosophy and how the facts support it, libertarianism would become the dominant political philosophy.*
After spending a couple of years trying "education" (and annoying and driving off numerous people in the process, many of whom were favorably inclined to me at first and ended hating my guts), I came to the conclusion that no political party could possibly win by "educating" the public. Almost nobody who wasn't already at least half persuaded to the party line would give party representatives any credence in the first place, for one thing. For another:
He who is persuaded against his will
Is of his own opinion still.
Or put another way, "I know what I know, and don't confuse me with the facts!"
My position became, instead, that to win libertarians had to persuade voters on an emotional level- that is, they had to build up trust with the electorate that Libertarian Party candidates would run government well and watch over the interests of the people. (Naturally you might see a little problem with that...) As one example, I proposed- in all seriousness- that Libertarians should start up a non-profit charity to pay the medical bills of the indigent as a means of proving that, as per libertarian dogma, private charity would ensure no one went without health care in a world without Welfare or Medicaid. I was, of course, completely ignored.
And now the study referred to in the article seems to bear me out:
In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
. . .
Studies by other researchers have observed similar phenomena when addressing education, health care reform, immigration, affirmative action, gun control, and other issues that tend to attract strong partisan opinion. Kuklinski calls this sort of response the “I know I’m right” syndrome, and considers it a “potentially formidable problem” in a democratic system. “It implies not only that most people will resist correcting their factual beliefs,” he wrote, “but also that the very people who most need to correct them will be least likely to do so.”
. . .
In 2005... Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.
For the most part, it didn’t. The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire. The effect was slightly different on self-identified liberals: When they read corrected stories about stem cells, the corrections didn’t backfire, but the readers did still ignore the inconvenient fact that the Bush administration’s restrictions weren’t total.
. . .
A 2006 study by Charles Taber and Milton Lodge at Stony Brook University showed that politically sophisticated thinkers were even less open to new information than less sophisticated types. These people may be factually right about 90 percent of things, but their confidence makes it nearly impossible to correct the 10 percent on which they’re totally wrong. Taber and Lodge found this alarming, because engaged, sophisticated thinkers are “the very folks on whom democratic theory relies most heavily.”
The main study's creator suggests that, if talking heads lost face or reputation for peddling false information, the trend might be countered. As the right wing has demonstrated, though, false information is not punished but rather REWARDED. By portraying all dissenting media as in conspiracy against conservatives, people like Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have ensured that their audiences will discount any and all evidence that shows their lies for what they are. (Not that the mainstream media has tried very hard. To the contrary, any lie, no matter how egregious, is accepted because "there are two valid sides to every story." Which is bullshit.)
What this research shows is that we, as human beings, grab hold of the facts we like and discount the facts we don't like- regardless of their validity. Facts are not going to persuade anyone in a political contest, or at least not enough of anyone to matter. Emotion and intuition, not factual study and deduction, determine our political choices.
Which is why I would probably be better advised to keep my political posts about things that are emotionally outrageous or terrifying, stuff like this or maybe this or possibly this or definitely this with a side helping of that.
And it does explain why, here in America, we almost always vote AGAINST someone instead of in SUPPORT of someone. We vote based not on facts or rational self-interest (there's no such animal anyway), but on fear and anger and tribal hatred. The least scary side wins.
* Incidentally, a number of facts have caused me to go entirely off the idea of libertarianism, at least on the economic side... but I've often been told that I'm unusual in that I occasionally change my mind when confronted with countervailing facts. Most people don't seem willing to do that.
