People believe what they want to believe

[Pete Zicato]

What a revelation. But now there's research to back it up.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=128490874

[Lamplighter]

Brendan Nyhan has an interesting history, going back to Spinsanity.

Maybe he went through a phase of trying to use fact-checking in politics,
and has become somewhat disillusioned with the human nature of people... or was that me ?

[SamIam]

Interesting.

I liked this:

Brendan Nyhan, why is it that highly partisan issues seem to be most subject to this backfire phenomenon?

Mr. NYHAN: Well, I think they're the cases where people care most about the actual outcome of the debate. So, you know, if you're going to buy a refrigerator at the store, you really don't care except to buy a good refrigerator.

But in the case of something like your political views, you don't just care about accuracy, you care about you essentially have a team in a lot of cases, right. You're either a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative.

And so you're filtering all the information you receive, you know, through that prism, and so what you end up getting is this real divergence on all sorts of issues, not just on, you know, what policies we should adopt as a country but on actually the underlying facts. And that makes it really hard to have a debate.

You know, if one side says, you know, the sky is blue, and one side says the sky is purple, we have a pretty hard time, you know, actually, you know, agreeing on the premises to actually have a conversation.

Which explains why its almost impossible to have a real debate in the politics forum.

[classicman]

YOU'RE WRONG YOU JERK!

You're either a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative.

I disagree - there are shades of gray. However, I do agree that we are becoming more polarized.

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by SamIam

Which explains why its almost impossible to have a real debate in the politics forum.

Yeah. That's pretty much what I was thinking when I read this.

The other thing I was thinking is that for an educated guy, he sure does say "you know" a lot.

[Spexxvet]

I mean, what else, you know, should he, you know, say, ok?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

We know, we know!

That's what you call an unflattering transcript.

This seems like a good place to park this bit that Dyspepsia Generation -- written by someone the wife and I know slightly, the author of 'Stomping Out The Reds' -- turned me on to, a blog called Mangan's.

Reactionary Affliction

The sidebar is noteworthy too.