Who let’s facts get in the way of their opinions??
Okay boys and girls… today’s piece was inspired by an article in the Boston Globe (boston.com). The article How facts backfire: Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains, was entertaining… in much the same way as certain French appetizers are entertaining. They’re not toxic so they’re not completely wrong, but no matter how you wrap it in elitist language and/or with a French accent… it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a slug with a shell and as such… should only be eaten if stranded in remote lands for extended periods of time with nothing else to eat. While the article leads with the conclusion that our brains are actually a threat to democracy… because facts don’t change people’s minds or opinions, it then follows with a string of sketchy so called facts to bolster its position.
The fact is that in a really distorted way, the article it correct that facts don’t generally change anyone’s mind, and then it exemplifies why facts don’t change anyone’s mind… by throwing out several non-facts and inferring in the end that normal people just can’t handle the responsibility of democracy… because of the non-facts that the author throws out as facts.
So, I’ll start with the few ‘facts’ that this article throws out as facts that so called conservatives take issue with;
- “In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, 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), “
- Well… the (there weren’t), part isn’t exactly true. There were MWD’s found in Iraq, there were MWD manufacturing and research facilities found in Iraq, and there was evidence that large quantities of WMD’s were transported out of Iraq, however… there were NOT the large quantities of WMD’s found that the entire world’s intelligence agencies thought were there. But to say flatly that “there weren’t” any WMD’s in Iraq… is wrong.
- “that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell)”
- That statement is patently false… Government revenues did rise. President Bush took office in 2001, in a year in which government revenues were steeply falling.
Year GDP-US Total Revenue-fed
1999 9353.5 1827.64 a
2000 9951.5 2025.46 a
2001 10286.2 1991.43 a
2002 10642.3 1853.40 a
2003 11142.1 1782.53 a
2004 11867.8 1880.28 a
2005 12638.4 2153.86 a
2006 13398.9 2407.25 a
2007 14077.6 2568.00 a
2008 14441.4 2524.00 a
2009 14258.2 2105.00 a
2010 14623.9 2165.12 b
Legend:
a – actual reported
b – budgeted estimate in US fy11 budget
Now, as the actual numbers show… revenues peaked in 2000, a year before Bush took office, then dropped precipitously until… by God… until 2004, the fiscal year following the full implementation of Bush’s tax cuts. (Please do not take this as a defense of Bush at all… because while his tax cuts did raise revenues… his spending outpaced his revenue increases dramatically)
So, two ‘facts’… that according to this article claims that so called ‘conservatives’ were so defensive about… weren’t even facts at all, but misrepresentations of facts.
Is it any wonder why so many people disbelieve these so called ‘facts’??
Then the article continues with this, ‘It’s unclear what is driving the behavior — it could range from simple defensiveness, to people working harder to defend their initial beliefs — but as Nyhan dryly put it, “It’s hard to be optimistic about the effectiveness of fact-checking.”’
Well, to the trained eye it is simple what the driving behavior is. I divide it up into two areas, agenda and simple values.
- Agenda… people have agendas to push. Everyone has agendas to push… from Katie Couric interviewing Sarah Palin to Sean Hannity interviewing Sarah Palin. The media, whether it’s CNN, Fox News, MSNBC to your evening news… they all have an agenda.
I have an agenda… only I freely admit that I have an agenda, and I’ll state my agenda openly an honestly. That is one of the few things that I think sets me apart from many others…
… other people cloak their agendas in the language of intellectual elitism and behavioral studies, etc.
Politicians wrap their agendas in GAO studies, CBO projections, economist speak, and greater good… and need and… my personal favorite, it’s for the children…
And of course, these ‘Fact Checkers’… themselves have agenda’s. Factcheck.org, MediaMatters.org and even to a slight degree… snopes.com all have agendas. Though snopes.com seems to have the least political agenda, factcheck.or mediamatters.org both have a steep political tilt and thus… their facts are about as reliable as the ones in this article.
2. Values… simple values. I’ll tell you what I value. I value individual liberty, namely my individual liberty and that of my children. I value your individual liberty, but not necessarily as much as my own, meaning… I’m not willing to let you swing your fist into my face for the sake of your liberty. Nor would I expect you to be willing to let me swing my fist in your face… or would I expect to party all the time and expect for you to pay for my house, run my business into the ground and expect you to bail me out.
That is what I value. I won’t make any bones about it. I don’t value your health-care. I don’t value your house. I don’t value your job… at least not as much as I value our liberty.
So, when faced with what may very well be absolute facts (for the sake of argument)… like that a new sweeping health-care bill might lower overall health-care costs and it might provide for a new Utopian society… at the cost of letting some bureaucrat to decide what kind of health-care I have…
… I’m going to completely ignore and disregard it. I don’t care.
It’s not some flaw in my brain. It’s not a threat to democracy… it’s a simply difference in VALUES.
So, take into account a difference in values, with the FACT that I recognize that like opinions and… well opinions… everyone has agendas, it’s no wonder why so called facts don’t seem to change people’s minds.
There has never been a pundit or politician yet that has let facts get in the way of their opinions… and it would seem that very few of these studies or articles let facts get in the way of their ‘facts’ or conclusions.
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