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Studies Say Ideology Trumps Facts
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."
I guess that nothing supports false-facts better than trying to debunk them. It's all a conspiracy after all.
What if your ideology is based around the careful analysis of facts - like a good science education?
Interestingly, an experiment was conducted a few years ago in which a completely incompetent ruler was set up as a head of state of one of the worlds larger nations. 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! So yes, I would say that ideology certainly trumps facts.
In fact I probably shouldn't be talking about this, since the experiment is still ongoing...
Once something believes in god, it'll believe in anything.
I think I read a similar article sporting the same statistics quite a while ago. Has ArsTechnia posted a dupe? Besides that, the questions they used to measure 'misinformation' aren't the best: There's quite a bit of different meanings to both of them. Could 'possessing weapons of mass destruction' mean having hundreds of thousands shells loaded and ready to go, or could it mean having no more than a couple of arterially shells with expired nerve-gas that even the Iraqis had forgoten about (I THINK we have found the latter). Does being involved with Al-Quida mean planning and bankrolling every attack and operation together, or does it mean that Saddam tentatively let some Al Quida members into the country? Ars' summery doesn't even agree with the graphic they used: The graphic says the question was "The US has found evidence that Saddam Hussain was working closely with terrorist groups" while the article says that the numbers represent folks who though "there was a credible link between the 9/11 attack and Saddam Hussein". Bit of a difference there.
The American media has a good deal of power, and that power carries a good deal of responsibility. When the media creates false debates, unreasoned arguments, and promotes trivia above important things, they abuse that power. A single newsperson instilling spin into a popular story has done more evil than many purse-snatchers.
I speak of the American media because I don't understand enough of the rest of the world's media to comment.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
The cynic in me is beginning to believe that Winston Churchill was wrong in saying that "Democracy was the least worst form of government". After being a part of the American political process for the last 8 years I've seen how ideology has, time and again, trumped reason. 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 with an Army".
Maybe the fact is that, as humans (and 98% chimp) we're only slightly beyond our animal forebears. Perhaps we just cannot handle a technologic civilization with complex issues like genetic engineering, nuclear weapons, climate change, nano technology. If Fukuyama is right in saying that Liberal Democracies are "the end of history" maybe it means that that's the end of our progress. - Then again maybe the United States (with its 70% of the population being strongly religious) is an aberration and the future lies with other less religious societies.
Start with a mass of people. Rile them up with talk radio. Tell them everything they hear and see outside of that is the "liberal media", demonize higher education, and encourage them to convert or drive away anybody who doesn't think like they do by loudly "arguing" whatever talking points are being pushed this week.
It's cult-like, and downright scary. For some reason, it didn't exactly cheer me when Air America came around either. People think it's enough to load up with a handful of "facts" from these shows and regurgitate/copy-and-paste them at the nonbelievers, and the result looks more like a verbal soccer brawl than reasoned debate.
Bring back critical thinking.
The real problem is that many Americans don't usually educate themselves about the issues, but rely on misinformation. You would be surprised at how many Americans still think Republicans are in control of Congress, or where Iraq is (even after all these years), or even that Obama is a Muslim.
Also, the other thing is that people tend to make opinions based on emotion, and then use facts to back these opinions up, not the other way around.
Ideology Trumps Facts...if you're a closed minded prejudiced moron who can't face reality.
The ability to learn, grow and change your opinion is something we all possess. If we choose to close our eyes and pray instead of looking at the facts, it's our own fault. It may be easier from an emotional perspective to deal with our limited existence and the hardships life throws at us by subscribing to a belief system handed down to us, or that we've found in a "time of need" but if you actively ignore reality you're doomed to end up destroying yourself.
The trouble with studies like this is that they tell us we can justify our own stupidity. Sure, go ahead, but you'll face the consequences.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
ideology trumps facts. ok. so what?
1. this observation is ideologically neutral. that is, it evens out in every ideological direction, such that no particular ideology is favored
2. this observation applies to everyone. this observation applies most of all to those of you who think you are immune to prejudice. that's you, reading these words. yes, you are guilty of this. how passionately you dispute the notion that you have prejudices is directly proportional to how prejudiced you are, blindly. meanwhile, if you start with the assumption that you prejudiced, you are better able to identify your prejudices in your thought processes, and work around them
3. this observation applies to all societies, in all cultures, in all time periods, including the future. in other words, make peace with the concept that ideology trumps facts. nothing you do will ever change that, it is a simple aspect of human nature. unless you seek to disrespect democracy and free will, and somehow "reeducate" people. which makes the cure worse than the disease
we are all prejudiced. individually, and as societies. so it is better to recognize your weaknesses and work around them than somehow fantasize it is possible to have no prejudices at all. the story summary is nothing more than the sound of someone shockingly realizing a truth about their world, and trying to come to grips with it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Accepting Scientific fact in the modern world usually requires an amout of thought and analysis. Accepting an ideology requires no thought at all. Humans are basically lazy.
Cue the Dem and Repubs pointing and accusing each other of doing just that.
You know, sometimes, one side really is right, or at least substantially less wrong than the other.
From the immortal H2G2:
The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
So true ; ) /sarcasm
Self awareness is a road to enlightenment, Anti-Globalism.
Keep up the good work.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Well, we don't have much proof... Just some VX munitions that had been drained of the agent. As I said in an earlier post, though, they probably just shipped it all out to Iran or Syria hours before the invasion to add insult to injury for Bush.
That, or they're still buried a mile underground.
Again, no proof, so the question will likely never be answered either way.
Why is this? Because what people believe is based on trust, not facts. They trust faces that are familiar to them and (thanks to the education system) are not capable of working out for themselves which answer is correct.
Ultimately it comes down to emotions
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
These days, is there *anything* that doesn't trump facts?
That's a very nice summation of a serious problem. This issue is why I always teach (and try to practice) that it is important to admit when you are wrong. The nice thing about doing so, is that you have to do it less often as time goes on. Well, a bit - but it becomes easier to do. One should never allow the value you have invested in believing something to be a factor in whether you believe it or not.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I think you just proved the point. She never tried to ban anything. Expressing an opinion that a particular book "does not belong there" is not an attempt to ban anything. You might think that Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries don't belong in a children's library, but expressing that opinion is not an attempt to ban them. But believe what you will. On the other side one could make the argument that Obama was raised as a Muslim in a portion of his childhood. He was registered as a Muslim when he went to school in Indonesia for instance. That's the test. Believe both are debunked or that both have some truth in them and you are healthy. Believe one but not the other and you are just as described in the article -- unwilling to accept that your point of view is possibly incorrect.
Well, not everyone goes for lying to themselves. So I don't doubt that some people will do just like you said. But look around you. Do you really doubt that half of your co-workers would try to sucker someone, even just to be on the boss's good side? :P
That said, not that I'm accusing you or anything, but having very strong and immutable ideas about what you'd do or wouldn't do, is what causes such dissonances to go wrong in the first place. People start with immutable ideas like "_I_ wouldn't ever do X", and when somehow they find themselves doing it, well, if that idea is immutable, the other one has to go. It becomes, "yeah, well, what I did doesn't _really_ qualify as X." That's when and how such lying to oneself happens.
So keeping a more open mind about your options could actually help.
But again, I don't know you enough to make a definitive pronouncement there. Maybe you have the will power to actually stick to your principles, no matter what. Most people have the principles, but not the will to stick to them. So they end up warping reality to be still able to think that they do have those principles.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Now, you might claim illegality under the so called "international law". But here too, one can find a legal basis in various UN resolutions (e.g. 678, 687).
But, advocating for taking war actions only under the direction of the UN is fairly silly. There are plenty of situations in which the United States should be compelled to act even if various nations disagree with US policy.
Instead of focusing on the legality of the action in question, the more interesting question is if the war itself was in America's best interests. Here, one can most certainly raise all sorts of claims vis-a-vee whether the war itself was a worthwhile action (cost vs. benifeits).
Come on folks we all know that were the Colbert Nation leads the world follows. All this is saying is that politics these days is about Truthiness which is "Truth that comes from the gut, not from books". Back in 2005 Colbert was right.
His latest campaign is that we don't even want answers and should not be allowed to ask questions.
Its very sad how the two best political commentary programmes in the US go out on Comedy Central.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Yep, 'tis true enough. FWIW I perceive far too many people making these decisions based on emotional or social needs rather than the "facts in evidence". That's where the delusion starts for many people, because then they want to pretend that wasn't what they did. They imagine they're rational and open-minded when they're exactly the opposite. Of course they're doing THAT for emotional reasons - preservation of ego - as well. And they slide further down the slope.
Political parties and their social influences and "platforms" actually harm rational debate rather than help it. People buy into party groupthink and become polarized and dogmatic. Forget having multiple parties and campaign finance reforms... if we really wanna fix what ails our political system, we'd abolish the "party system" and institute electoral lotteries to shut out the the Good Old Boys (and yes, that includes Obama).
Of course I doubt it. Half is way too low. Seriously, it's more like 95%. And that was before I had a job working in sales, where I was constantly getting told off for my honesty (I've since left that job; too much of a moral issue among other things).
Most people will do just about anything if they see or can expect some sort of personal gain. I won't go so far to say that someone will be more likely to do something otherwise-immoral if it's at someone else's expense, but I've seen precisely that happen far too often to refute it either.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
It appears to be a generic troll. Completely generic. Notice the complete lack of any context whatsoever. You could cut that text and paste it into any political discussion from 1980 until today -- "the current crisis" could mean anything, the "explanation" of the root cause in fact fails to in any way explain how the supposed cause is in any way causal to "the current crisis" (it can't do that, of course, since that would require actually justifying the assertion with details that would then make the post no longer completely generic). There is, in fact, no actual content to the message itself -- it like a Rorschach test -- if you thought that message actually said anything, look again at what it actually says, vs. what meaning you're actually inserting into it yourself by making assumptions about what the author is referring to. If in fact you think it said anything at all, you're making assumptions about what the author meant that he never actually said. "the current crsis", "the problem" "pretty much every area" -- the message contains many words, but it specifically says nothing at all.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Just as kidnapping CAN be legal, there can be legal wars. The state can for instance kidnap you, it is done in cases where a judge decides to hold an otherwise innocent person in jail to force their cooperation. You most often see this used against journalists to pressure them in revealing their sources.
The problem with understanding what a legal war is that it all depends on what set of rules you choose to use. International law as such does not exist, it more a set of rules that overtime have in general become accepted to be used as international law. Of course, by the time war becomes an option it would be fair to say that the parties who disagree to the extent that war is now an option are hardly going to agree on a common set of laws.
But a legal war WOULD for instance be if a party was attacked first. The right to defend yourself. Another legal war would be to come to the aid of a ally who requested your aid and after a decleration of war.
There are rules, and the US has been claimed to have ignored those rules in the case of the Iraq war.
The US had not been attacked by Iraq, nor did it come to the aid of allie.
This makes the war illegal, unless you accept the US claim the Iraq was behind 9/11.
The japanese war against the americans was illegal (no decleration of war) IN american eyes, the japanese didn't share the western practice of declaring war before attacking.
The american war against germany was legal. The german one against the US borderline. There was a decleration of war, but US property had been attacked before although not in attacks that could be seen as an outright attack.
The whole point of 'legal' wars is not just for the sake of argument, it is to prevent the world from sliding into anarchy. Basically, if everyone followed the concept of 'legal' wars, then war can't just break-out overnight.
That is what is so scary about the Iraq war. The idea that any nation with the means can just attack another country when they feel like it. The 'law' is a very thin shell we use to keep us all civilized. Wether it is that big guy who is 'restrained' by the law from punching your face in or the superpower who is restrained by international law to invade another country.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You know, sometimes, one side really is right, or at least substantially less wrong than the other.
Yes, but not necessarily because their analysis and thinking are more sound... You can be a bloody-minded partisan and still hit on a good idea every now and then, even if it's just because the other side opposes the idea.
even if it was a mere inquiry, or a simple request, it's still an advocation of and affirmative personal attempt at censorship.
This was a public repository, not some private home or a business whose job it is to please only her.
She acted in a way designed to deny children perspective.
It doesn't matter if she whispered it with a please between each word, or pulled out a quiver of flaming arrows and set the stacks alight. It all amounts to the same intent.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Unfortunately, it takes two to tango. IF the democrats had put up someone even reasonably qualifying for the office, they would have won. And yet again, they may prove to have made the same mistake again, choosing the MOST liberal senator out of the whole bunch. If they had picked like 85 instead of 100 on the list, this election would not even be in doubt...
an excellent example of the dissonance discussed.
you are a republican, a thoroughly indoctrinated one.
Obama isn't even close to "liberal" democrat.
If you want liberal take a look to canada, and that's only what 85 out of 100 scale liberals want.
The truth is it wouldn't matter who the democrats trotted up there.
If you never knew GW, and he ran under the democratic ticket, you would rain the same derision upon him.
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Male brain, female brain, monkey brain, whatever. In a recent experient, monkeys too were shown to build (at least the symptoms of a) cognitive dissonance.
It makes sense, if you think about it. You can't really do much with a mental model where simultaneously "all grass is green" and "all grass is red" are true. You must discard or fix one of the statements, or maybe go for some compromise like "most grass is green, but some species are red" or maybe admit "I have no bloddy clue what colour grass is, that still needs to be determined."
The only bad dissonances happen when one just can't let go of one of the ideas, so the other one _has_ to be false, all evidence be damned. As someone else correctly noted, most often when one's beliefs and actions are irreconcileable with each other. If you're not able to let go of the beliefs, you redefine the actions.
A broken model is actually a source of stress and discomfort until it's somehow fixed, so virtually everyone will do something to fix it.
We could go into who builds the worst dissonances. (Though I'm not aware of any data saying that women build worse resolutions than the men, or viceversa.) But the basic issue of needing a consistent model isn't gender specific, or as far as we know even species specific. Your cat tries to keep its little mental model just as consistent as you do with yours.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you believe an Iraqi Air Force general.
Of course, only Fox News interviewed him, so maybe that's why Fox viewers think Saddam had WMD.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Umm.. You do realize the crisis is in private credit, not public spending? The relevant issue is regulatory oversight, which is an executive function. The only legislative way to intervene would require a supermajority in the Senate.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well, in the end, the scientific method is just a way to _avoid_ clinging to some dogma and building cognitive dissonances to support it. There is no immovable "truth", or rather, we don't know it yet. Your pet theory is likely to be not quite the whole "truth" yet. There will eventually be some data which require it to be refined even further. Be honest to yourself and admit that you could have only an incomplete understanding of the universe, and that way we can all continue to learn more.
Anyone who sees science as some immutable dogma, or as some choice between this dogma and that one, isn't doing science in the first place. That's religion. It's the exact opposite of science. And, yes, it's funny to see people rant against religion, while using science as a dogma. That's not science vs religion, that's religion vs religion. One of them uses pseudo-science trappings, but it's used as a religion nevertheless.
I don't see how you can qualify the real thing as, basically, self-delusional, or conversely claim that only sticking to a bullshit fairy-tale as The Truth is the only non-self-delusional behaviour. Science is all about avoiding that kind of absolute truths and abandoning any pretense that you know everything. This is the data we have. This is the theory that explains that data. When we'll have more data, we'll refine the theory some more. If some of those axioms don't fit the data, we'll discard the axioms. It's just about as intellectually honest as it gets.
So, pray tell, in which way is that kind of admission that we don't know everything "self-delusional"?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think all but the most ardent free-marketer would agree that the current economic meltdown was caused not by the concentration of power in Washington but by the abdication of government responsibility to curb the amorality of unbridled greed.
Your comment seems to exemplify the article's thesis about ideology trumping facts.
Well what would anyone logically expect after years of influence and propaganda being foisted upon the populations of the world, through television. Instead of being the invention that would revolutionize the world in positive ways, it's more or less used to control populations to any number of observable outcomes.
The "awakening" if you will has been the internet. It has become the great equalizer. I'll give one example.
The Gulf of Tonkin
It never happened. Given this fact why hasn't the MSM channels done huge docu-journals on it? Why hasn't the American president apologized for the war?
I find it rather unnerving that so many people are caught up on calling others' "conspiracy theorists" now days as well. It's as if it gives them some secret insider holier-than-thou french tickle inside, while climbing the moral mountain of so what....
Ignorance tends to go both ways.
I tend to think it comes down to one thing. People simply hate to be proven wrong. That derives mostly out of a fear of ....well fear. Fear they will seem inadequate or untrustworthy to friends, family and co-workers, etc.
Looking at the paper on the Roberts study linked to TFA:
Tell some people bad stuff about a Republican, then tell them it isn't true. The pro-Democrats in the audience believe the bad stuff and ignore the rebuttal. The pro-Republicans... mostly ignored the bad stuff in the first place (or maybe didn't think it was so bad?)
Film at 11. Or, to put it another way, mud sticks.
I can't quickly see any link from the paper to the specific rebuttal of the ad which the participants were shown - but the paper assures us that it was a "a sharp, factual, bipartisan evisceration of its insinuations" - so that's alright then. (I'm reluctant to criticize a paper too deeply after a 2 minute skim, but that line made my red pen itch).
The authors of the paper seem to be taking as axiomatic that the ad was completely untrue and the rebuttal was compelling. After all, the title of the paper says "False political beliefs".
Note that the question in the study was "do you support Roberts for Supreme Court Justice" and not "do you believe that the ad was accurate". Any good propaganda will contain a grain of truth - however disingenuously presented. In this case, it was that one of the "nonviolent" protesters was a convicted violent protester. That shouldn't count for anything in a court of law, but it might reduce your audience's enthusiasm for the right to protest.
This study would be more interesting if it were done using a nice, well-defined reproducible or falsifiable scientific or mathematical fact and a common misconception. Actually, this has been done in science/math education and there is evidence that merely telling someone "your belief is wrong - here is the right answer" is ineffective unless you force them to see the absurd consequences of their belief. (go Google for "cognitive conflict").
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
brain is wired to need one consistent model
Apart from the fact that you, on principle, will have a hard time to check for consistency: How do you imagine that a neural network like the brain — with a multitude of parallell processess — can be wired to be consistent (add 'over time' to get an even better grasp on the chances)? How can the machine check for and maintain consistency on the hardware level and which (consistent? set/network of) processes takes care of that?
To me, it seems rather a learning issue how coping with vagueness is implemented, not a characteristic of the hardware layer, which, besides, is not that 'hardwired' at all but adapts to the environmental (task-)profile.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Isn't that sort of like saying "Does anyone actually stick their face in a blender? I prefer to jump in front of a propeller plane just before it takes off."?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
as opposed to what you THINK, then facts become a threat. When ideology is what you think, you can revise your thinking without a threat to your ego.
Fostering brand loyalty is a cost effective way to get repeat customers. But you don't <em>have</em> to be a mindless consumer of political ideology.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sorry, but words like "censorship" don't end an argument.
There are plenty of "perspectives" that aren't fit for children, much less adults.
You're sitting in your own little 4' square dot on earth trying to tell people what books they can or cannot have as well. You're likely as worried that some kid in thousands of miles away is going to read the Bible! And you likely think that his parents are crazy.
And they think you're crazy for promoting a) sex to kids and b) homosex to kids.
You're at least as bad as what you're ranting against.
When you become a god, create your own universe and rules. In the mean time, don't try to deny people the right to decide what is best for their own community and family. You're not dictator yet.
"Censorship" and other PC crap are not going to cow everyone into submission to your own "perspective".
How much does a cow weigh? If you ask ten people to estimate the average weight of a cow, then the average of their estimates will probably be a little off. If you ask 100 people, you'll get a number that's closer. If you ask 1000, you'll get a number that's even closer. Why? Because, 90% of us (hypothetically) don't know what a cow weighs, so our guess is going to be off. But, statistically, 45% will be too high, and 45% will be too low, so they cancel each other out. That leaves the other 10% who grew up on a farm, or are veterinarians, or for whatever other reason know what a cow weighs. As the sample grows, the correct answer rises to the top. Which means that, since 90% of us don't know enough about politics to make an informed vote, then the best candidate will rise to the top because the other 10% will know what they're doing. But that doesn't work, does it? Why not? Because we're not just randomly guessing. We're deliberately choosing the wrong answer - the wrong candidate - based on something other than the facts. Our ignorance is getting in the way.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
> The sad thing is that therefore anyone who claims to think "rational" is wrong. If he were truly rational he wouldn't be able to reach any conclusion at all, for he'd run stuck on the axioms he uses, and from the question "why does axiom hold ?" there is no rational way out. And since this persion reaches conclusions in a rational way, he'd run stuck on that problem no matter what problem he was trying to resolve.
Either the universe is predictable to some degree, or it isn't. If it is, then it makes sense to collect data and try to use that data to make predictions. If it isn't, then we lose whatever we do. If we don't know wether the universe is predictable, it still makes sense act like it is predictable, since we don't have anything to lose when it isn't, and much to gain if it is.
Off course one can still be wrong. Maybe this universe isn't predictable at all, it only appears to be predictable, and when I hit 'submit', every person who can lick their own nose and is at least 30 years of age is going to transform into a pink balloon (being unable to lick my nose and still in my twenties, I find this risk acceptable...).
I think the rational (assuming rational behavior is to take the optimal course of action based on the available data) thing to do is to try and reach conclusions, based on axioms that appear to hold true (and replace these axioms when better ones are found), even if they might actually be false, or their 'true-ness' can never be known with absolute certainty.
To sit and do nothing because your axioms *might* be false is certainly NOT the optimal course of action.
The best example of this is how people of both major parties continue to believe in government.
Witness the current crisis, whose root cause is the concentration of power in Washington, D.C. Everybody proposes all kinds of solutions, and every one of them is to increase the power of government, which caused the problem in the first place!
I'm curious to hear your theory of how big government caused the current financial crisis. Maybe I just don't get out much, but I hadn't heard that one yet.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
What's the message -- just accept it?
Or would we rather establish a Ministry of Truth rather than allow people to believe in wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy presented as fact?
We need the freedom to be "wrong". That's what it means to be an adult.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Thanks for the thoughtful, illustrative comments. Slashdot is (in my mind) full of people with conclusions in search of evidence. At least that's my conclusion ;)
I was delighted that there were on-topic, thoughtful comments and that this didn't immediately degrade into bickering about politics.
Most people I meet are so indoctrinated as either republicans or democrats that they merely parrot back the party line. There is no attempt to think for themselves whatsoever.
Lemmings should not have the right to vote, but unfortunately in our country they are encouraged to. The truth is politicians are afraid of an educated constituency, as their job would be tougher.
This is just another sign of the sorry state our society is in.
Can everyone please stop saying 'they' and start saying 'we'?
Or are we playing to the self-delusion that everyone except us is broken?
Reality is fact: Gravity, Inertia, those are facts.
Whatever is in your head are NOT facts... even how you preceive actual facts. Knowlage is really the only determining factor between wild speculation and at least a partially correct view. Another key is being willing to adjust what you think is real as new evidence is supplied.
Short version: Anything you have an opinion about is subjective; but reality itself doesn't give a shit what your opinion is and wilie e coyote will still fall like a rock after stepping off a cliff.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
The lazyness of physics book writers doesn't make physics into dogma.
The laws of physics are not final and eternal, the fact that newtons law of gravity has been proven to be wrong should be proof of that.
"Mandate to be unbiased..."
You're kidding, right? Of course, that's the problem with journalism, is the deception that the human mind can be unbiased. Most journalists lean heavily left-of-center, and believe that their core "training" is the definition of objectivity. One thing I find rarely done is the realization that maybe they can never be truly objective...
well there is a finite chance that there is no such thing as gravity and ever since the universe came into being all the objects, gas etc have merely coalesed into bodies by chance and every time you drop an object it only moves "down" by chance.
if you have a 2 compartment box with a divider, one compartment a perfect vacum, the other filled with gas then open the divider and one minute later close it again there is a finite(although stupidly unlikey) chance that all the molecles in the gas will be on one side of the divider.
Nothing is 100% certain, "facts" are merely things which are extremely unlikely to be chance.
Certainty is for priests and children.
Facts don't stand alone. They need to be interpreted in the framework of a world view.
But that's not what the studies found.
In this case, all the article stated was that people who were told the wrong things (by Fox) about something that happened far away (Iraq) that the individuals involved could not confirm on their own, had the wrong view of reality. How on earth could this be otherwise?
Let's take a concrete example. The moon landing. You and I believe that it happened? Did it? Can you actually confirm it yourself? Practically, no (unless you are Bill Gates). So how do we know it happened? We have a trust network that verifies this fact, and that trust network has proved reliable in the past, so we have no reason to doubt it. That's just the way it is and we have to live with the consequences. The best we can do is to show that Fox has been unreliable in things that an individual can verify directly.
BTW, no form of science is possible without this sort of trust network. No person is an island. If you believe everyone loves you, and everyone tells you that they love you (but laugh at you behind your back), you'll likely believe you're lovable no matter how many experiments you run to truly verify it.
The funny thing is, the study's conclusion have been verified nonetheless, simply by the reaction to the objective facts. The objective facts said something that any 5 year old knows, but those trivial facts were extrapolated to support pet prejudices against the Bush administration (which is guilty of many things and can't be defended anyway), religion, and prejudices in favour of a "Science-only" ideology (as if Mozart has anything to do with science).
Yes WE have all been guilty of not listening. But that's okay! We can use that to our advantage. Oftentimes, when you debate with someone, the goal is not to convince that person. The goal is to convince the other people listening to the debate. For example:
"I think the government should provide a free car to everyone, since it's a necessity to life in America."
"Okay. Would you consider it okay to break-into your neighbors' homes, remove $20,000 from their wallets, and use that money to buy yourself a new car?"
"No of course not. That's stealing."
"Then why do you think it's okay for the government to steal the $20,000 via paycheck taxes?"
"Um... er... because everybody needs a car! It's a basic right!" ----- In this hypothetical debate, I obviously did not change this democratic-socialist's mind. Due to cognitive dissonance he simply chose to not hear what I was saying to him. However I still achieved my goal: I convinced some of the audience that the idea is immoral (because theft is theft, whether it's done directly by a thief, or through the government acting as the thief's agent).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
The poll in the article is bogus anyway because WMDs were found in Iraq: 500+ munitions containing degraded mustard gas and sarin nerve agent. Their usefulness is dubious and they were not what we were looking for, but to simply say that WMDs were not found in Iraq is just untrue.
I agree we should be free to think as we will.
Although I don't believe we have a right to correct information, it'd be real nice if politicians and corporations were held responsible for their misinformation. Our choices (in Truth, wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy) are only as solid as the information on which they are built, and unfortunately, our Public Representatives (from city council members on up) feed us only the information we require to achieve the goals they desire. There seems to be no regard for the validity of the information.
It's our responsibility as citizens to hold liars responsible for their lies. As we've seen with Clinton and Bush, though, lies are accepted as truth, even in the face of physical evidence.
Oh, well. I guess we (as a population) also have the right to accept any gilded bullshit as gospel, and build our worldview on that.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
>>>To me, it seems rather a learning issue how coping with vagueness is implemented, not a characteristic of the hardware layer
I agree. I recall reading Thomas Jefferson's discovery of sea creature fossils in nearby mountains. He was unable to reconcile the then-dominant view of a perfect God creating a perfect world, with the idea that the mountains used to harbor sea-creatures. He examined a bunch of possibilities (including Noah's flood), and rejected all of them as illogical and non-explanatory. At the end of his paper he simply wrote, "I do not know." The answer to this puzzle was not discovered until ~100 years later (the earth's surface is like a jigsaw with pieces ramming into one another, thereby turning oceans into mountains).
This world would be better-served if we had schools teach students to be like Jefferson and say "I don't know" more often, rather than force them to cough-up any old answer that comes to mind. As somebody once said (forget who): "A foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds..."
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
The "science as dogma" argument is often used by creationists trying to refute evolution (and other religious-based arguments trying to "unseat" science). Having spent time with very religious people, I know first hand that they take great comfort in "knowing" that their holy books (whichever ones they may be) contain all knowledge. They are used to having a certainty that there are no real unknowns in the world. Sure, we humans might not know it all, but the holy books prove that God, Jesus, Flying Spaghetti Monster, whoever, *does* know it all and by praying/studying real hard you can get a glimpse at that knowledge.
When these religious folks look at science, they just can't conceive that scientists would be OK with not knowing everything. They assume that scientists must look to "science" as their holy book and thus they must pray to/study science in an effort to gain greater knowledge the same way that the religious folks pray to God. Of course, all religious folks also tend to believe that all Gods who aren't their own are false gods. This means (to them) that science is a false god to be banished.
Getting back to the subject of cognitive dissonance, they are presented with two conflicting world views:
1 - This holy book which you have been studying for years holds all knowledge. Pray to The Great Whoever to attain this knowledge.
2 - Science can learn many things about the world without prayer and while being OK with the idea that their theories can change at any moment (e.g. with new evidence).
Their brains can't accept both as true and they've invested a lot of their lives in #1, so #1 becomes "TRUTH" and #2 gets warped into Science Is A Threat To My God.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I believe Dennis Kucinich is much more liberal than Obama. And I was certainly ready to vote for him. He'd barely be "moderate" in most mentally-healthy countries.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You were modded "interesting", I'd have modded it "insightful" but you got a 5 so what the hell, it's all good...
Anyway, There is no Republican more rabid about every single aspect of that ideology, than someone who was a Democrat until they felt somehow betrayed. And viceversa.
That's my dad, to a T. He was a Republican all his life; his parents were both Republicans, too. Then about the time he retired he started realizing that Social Security, Medicare, and all the other governmnent benefits he and his still-living mother were getting came from the Democrats, and that the Republicans had been for the rich (including his wealthy brother).
He's been a Democrat ever since.
There is no bible-thumper for puritan morals more rabid than someone who was a prostitute until last week.
True, and the funny thing about it is the Bible isn't harsh on prostitutes! It's hard on pimps ("whoremongers") but not the whores themselves. Same with alcohol; in fact it says to give wine to the sad and strong drink to the dying. Jesus turned water into wine, and his deciples all got drunk at the last supper.
And it says nothing at all about drugs, despite the fact that marijuana and opium were known to the ancients, yet your average bible-thumper will be adamantly against drugs.
Free Martian Whores!
I know that sounds a bit strong, but I was just so shocked at the level of dishonest manipulation Fox News are involved in. And horrified that there are people in the USA who actually watch this trash and BELIEVE that it's real news!
The first thing one must realize is that in the US, news and entertainment are almost indistinguishable. Fox News is just one example of an professionally-produced entertainment program that is carefully targeted at its intended audience.
The second thing one must realize that every other news organization does the same. Their target demographics are just different from Fox News.
Like the other poster that responded, I read a large variety of news sources. Fox News is the most blatant about it, but every news organization exhibits bias, usually by careful omission of facts that don't support their viewpoint.
At some point, there has to be reality or exsistance is meaningless... and because I know some 'intro to philosophy' college brat is going to say "well it is", I'm going to go ahead and say "Then mass-suicide if there's no meaning". If it's meaningless then you shouldn't bat an eye at ending it.
I enjoy reality as I can see it, and while it's subjective to the way we see it, it's still there. It's sickeningly egotistical to think that just because you can't understand it perfectly it isn't real.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Yeah, but this leads to information pollution. There are so many different spins on the "facts," that the facts themselves are obscured. Consider the evidence presented by the government in the lead-up to the Iraq war. While other papers were debunking this evidence (whatever else you might think of the Guardian, they nailed that), ours were toeing the Presidential line. It wasn't until Joseph Wilson published his response in the NY Times that we started even talking about the validity of the evidence.
And even that was misdirected with the Valerie Plame incident, which effectively drew attention away from what Joe Wilson was talking about: the fact that at least some of the evidence was outright forged.
This whole mess is insane. How can we, as citizens, make valid choices, when we can't even get basic facts? The news stopped focussing on presenting facts, and started focussing on interpreting those facts, to the point where the facts are lost, and the interpretation is all that remains.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Because voting for that friendly guy in 2000 worked out so well...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Your statement here is dishonest, depending on the sensitivity and nature of an experiment then Newtonian Mechanics is completely and utterly bogus. In order to apply Newton's Laws you MUST have an inertial reference frame. Since inertial reference frames do not exist in reality, Newton's Laws are ALWAYS an approximation. So, depending on how poor that approximation is then your answer using Newton's Laws will be more wrong. This problem is not just in "fringe" cases of physics, every day phenomena do not follow Newton's laws. A simple example of this problem is the Coriolis Effect (the deflection of objects due to a rotating reference frame), which causes projectiles fired from gunships to be deflected and miss their intended target (unless the gunner compensates for this effect).
You are misusing the term "dogma", dogma applies to a belief in the purest sense (without proof). Unfortunately, in English we do not have a separate word for "belief with proof" so instead we normally say that we "know this to be true with a high degree of certainty." If we were German we would use the word "kennen", which has the appropriate meaning but is normally translated to English simply as "to know."
Go take some philosophy classes, especially those that concentrate on ethics. Ethical systems derived from scientific principles are VERY different from ethical systems derived from dogmatic beliefs.
You have a problem in your argument... Taking money through taxes is not stealing. You might not like it, and you may not agree with it, but it isn't illegal.
Also, taxes aren't a bad thing. They pay for all sorts of things like roads, emergency services, weather radars and a bunch of other things that you don't think are important - until you don't have them.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
And as a developer that somehow got shuffled into sales (don't ask, I still can't figure it out) I wouldn't either. Developers tend to care a lot more about doing things right* so that everyone benefits rather than having their pissing matches. Of course, not having a quota helps too - deadlines are a bit different than losing a significant chunk of your income by not meeting sales goals.
It's probably a natural thing though. Software is designed to help people accomplish something (at least from a developer's perspective), so it makes sense that they'd be less inclined to start selling each other out. Sales jobs are all about personal gain - the "it's good for the company" line is a bunch of BS - they don't give a damn about the company if they're any good, because they know some other company would hire them.
*code posted to DailyWTF excluded, of course.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
On the flip side you also did not listen to what he had to say and used a false argument to get your point point across. Your basic premise has nothing to do with a car, and has to do with the idea that taxes = stealing using the car as a straw man.
Basically, neither of you made a strong logical argument for a third party, yet you've both convinced yourself that you have - especially given the "truth" of your statement.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
They will gladly point you to a posting on CoastToCoastAM.com or WhatReallyHappened.org as proof.
Or point to their holy book of choice. "It's written in the Bible" counts as "proof" to a disturbingly large number of people, particularly in the USA.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Fox News is fair and balanced - it said so right there on the screen!
Long ago when Fox News was just getting started, I posed the rhetorical question:
Can an organization that incessantly promotes itself as "fair" and/or "balanced" possibly be either one?
Actually, you failed utterly. You put an idiotic strawman into the mouth of your ideological opponent, then portrayed him as a stuttering simpleton who hasn't given any thought to his views and is unable to write a coherent reply - in fact, you describe him as hesitating and playing for time in a written message. And after beating this ridiculous scarecrow, you think that the audience - us - is somehow convinced that your ideology - which I presume is libertarian from your premise that taxation is stealing - is supreme to socialism.
Your post is a truly pathetic attempt at ideological indoctrination at both levels, and yet you think that you've accomplished something besides making yourself look like an idiot or a particularly inept demagogue. That is a clear example of cognitive dissonance, and one that seems quite common within libertarians.
Or have I just been trolled ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In the mean time, don't try to deny people the right to decide what is best for their own community and family.
Strike me down, but isn't that exactly what Palin's accused of?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Not a'tall. Rather, simply recognizing your own biases enables you to better evaluate the biases of others. The OP addresses Fox News bias as if he had the one true, clear, unbiased view. That's incredibly naive.
For example, the OP and you would probably assert that the lack of a successful terrorist attack on US soil in the past 7 years is proof the terrorist threat is over-stated, and criticize the President for infringing on our liberties unnecessarily.
Fox News would probably take the view that the same events demonstrates that the President's actions were both warranted and successful.
Both assertions are biased by world views. But you needn't lose track of reality at all - REALITY is that we haven't had a successful terrorist attack on US soil in the past 7 years. Whether the President's actions are to credit or beside the point is an exercise eventually left to the electorate and historians.
As an amusing aside, I see that I have finally drawn the wrath of the Obama Death Squads, as evidenced by the crush of Overrated mods drowning out the Interesting and Underrated ones. Although I'm much more Libertarian that Republican, it's always the zealot Democrats with their "Equal Access" and "Hate Speech" laws that most credibly threaten free speech in my experience. Just my $0.02. Mod away.
Since a firefighter provides for the common welfare of ALL homes within his jurisdiction, including mine, then no I have no objections to paying for his salary. Tax away.
What I object to is if that firefighter protected just ONE home and ignored everyone else's home. THAT is theft; that is enslavement to the "master" whose house is being protected. No way! If that guy wants a firefighter dedicated to just his own home, and nobody else's home, then let HIM pay the bill, not me.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Well, there are studies about your arguments, and they show that:
1. Direct democracy leads to better decisions; it has been statistically proven on budget spending both in U.S. and Switzerland. So it works better even in the US, which has (especially on local and state level) one of the best democratic systems in the world (maybe you are American, so it sounds strange to you, but from (my) foreigner's perspective it's very much true).
2. It also has been shown that the commitment and political education of population is the consequence of political system, not the other way around. To wait until these conditions are satisfied is just silly. Also, modern concepts of direct democracy are being used in practice for almost 100 years in both U.S. and Switzerland, and I highly doubt that people in 1908 had better education or more free time than we have now.
If you want references for these studies, read the book at http://democracy-international.org/book-direct-democracy.html