In this blog I post my thoughts about political activities and important current events. I make a sincere attempt to avoid bias, though no one can be entirely successful in achieving this goal. My guess is that most people believe that they also do this, though it has been my observation that many fail ingloriously. But bias is hardly the only or even the largest fault that misleads people in their life choices and their political beliefs. An astonishing number of our fellow Americans sincerely believe utter nonsense, and that certainly can’t help. This includes conspiracy theories, some religious beliefs, fake medical nostrums, astrology, junk science and a great many political beliefs. Examples abound and I am sure your list is as good as mine.
Our choices for political leaders and then the decisions they make that affect all of us are significantly conditioned by these absurd beliefs. This is one reason why our government is failing to accomplish much of value while thrashing fruitlessly in the effort. This problem isn’t confined to dullards and the uneducated. I have always been puzzled why so many well-educated and apparently intelligent people believe such total balderdash. Quite a few of these deluded people actually have assembled extensive supporting data for these beliefs. Thus it isn’t simply that they are ill-informed nor that they are incapable of understanding the available data. Indeed many are equipped with a well-developed skepticism, though they do tend to target that skill selectively only against criticism of their beliefs.
Thus it is with great interest that I recently came across a peer-reviewed study of this very topic. The basic conclusion of the study is that in order to insulate yourself from erroneous belief requires two things. You must have the ability to think analytically and – most crucially – the inclination to do so. Thus many people whom you wouldn’t expect to believe nonsense do so simply because they want to. These beliefs provide psychic support. They make the chaotic and sometimes threatening world around us understandable and predictable. This also explains why these people appear to be insulated from counter-evidence or failures in what they predict will occur. They simply find ways to ignore such data, and their analytical skills serve them well in this regard. Or if they are intellectually crippled, they just call it fake news.
Any impartial observer would agree that this condition characterizes quite a few members of Congress and the current administration. But this situation is neither new nor remarkable. It only seems so because we all have to suffer the consequences of their ill-informed decisions.
All of us, myself included, are subject to this intellectual flaw to some degree. It is seductive and we must constantly fight to ward it off. One person’s conspiracy theory is another’s clever insight. One simple test you might perform to examine your own beliefs is to see if they tend to make you feel more secure or to give you a comforting feeling that you understand what is going on around you. This isn’t a sign of validity, rather it is a warning signal that your critical skills may have been blunted by emotion. Of course it also doesn’t mean that your beliefs are invalid, it simply means that they need skeptical re-examination.
In the political realm, we have sincere and well-meaning beliefs on one side that seem either sadly misinformed or even deliberately malevolent by the other side. An example for Republicans is their belief in trickle down economics. And for Democrats, there is the conviction that big government offers the best solutions for society’s problems. Neither side listens to evidence of flaws in these beliefs simply because they don’t want to.
Risum Teneatis 