Arkady
President
One of the most depressing things I ever read was an article demonstrating how very little facts mattered in forming people's opinions. Before that, I really believed that if I could just point people to a credible and clear enough set of facts, and present something that drew those into enough of a logically unassailable and engaging argument, I could change people's minds.
Back then, I figured my failure to change minds (other than, occasionally, my own, when my research convinced me that I'd started with the wrong assumption) was a failure on my part to explain the logic clearly enough or to make it snappy enough to hold people's attention. I kept trying, figuring that maybe eventually I'd find just the right analogy to break through the prejudice, or I'd eventually hone the structure of the argument to enough of an edge to cut through willful ignorance. I concluded that continued failures to bring people to the clearly rational conclusion must be my fault. I just wasn't very good at this yet.
However, after reading more about it, I came to realize that most people are simply intractable. They bend their intellects not to assessing new information and arguments, but instead to maintaining the walls of their ignorance and prejudice. When facts fail to fit, they work overtime to explain to themselves that the stats are fake, the facts are misreported, or that causation can never be rightly inferred.
See here:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_51116.pdf
As you can see, "Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down" since Obama took office. In reality, unemployment has dropped from 7.8% to 4.9% and stock values have nearly tripled. So, it isn't even close.
How can the majority of Republicans have gotten things that dramatically wrong? How can all but 27% of them have missed the news? I don't think they did. Even entombed within the Fox News echo chamber, murmurs from the outside world slip in. They have doubtless heard that unemployment rates have fallen to lows not seen since before the Great Recession -- lows never once reached in the Reagan years. Doubtless they have heard repeated reports of stocks setting new all-time highs. But, I believe, they turn their mental energies to defending their prejudices against such inconvenient facts.
For example, they'll tell themselves the "real unemployment rate" is much higher, once you label labor-force dropouts as unemployed. Then they'll forego the obvious next step of figuring out what the "real unemployment rate" was before Obama, using the same standards, because subconsciously they realize that would lead them back to the same uncomfortable conclusion that unemployment is down sharply on Obama's watch. Only by allowing themselves an apples-to-oranges comparison of "real unemployment" today and official unemployment before Obama can the majority defend their prejudice that says surely things must have gotten worse under his leadership.
Similarly, with stocks they can tell themselves stock values aren't actually up, even when all the major indexes tell the tale of one of the most dramatic bull markets in history. They just say it doesn't count, because monetary policy isn't what they, personally, think it should have been. If money were as hard to come by as they'd like it to be, stocks wouldn't be up, therefore stocks are actually down.
How does one combat such insanity? I honestly don't know. Is it even possible? If prejudice is so deeply entrenched that the majority of Republicans can claim one of the biggest stock market run-ups ever was a time when the stock market fell, what hope is there that logic and education can ever find traction?
Back then, I figured my failure to change minds (other than, occasionally, my own, when my research convinced me that I'd started with the wrong assumption) was a failure on my part to explain the logic clearly enough or to make it snappy enough to hold people's attention. I kept trying, figuring that maybe eventually I'd find just the right analogy to break through the prejudice, or I'd eventually hone the structure of the argument to enough of an edge to cut through willful ignorance. I concluded that continued failures to bring people to the clearly rational conclusion must be my fault. I just wasn't very good at this yet.
However, after reading more about it, I came to realize that most people are simply intractable. They bend their intellects not to assessing new information and arguments, but instead to maintaining the walls of their ignorance and prejudice. When facts fail to fit, they work overtime to explain to themselves that the stats are fake, the facts are misreported, or that causation can never be rightly inferred.
See here:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_51116.pdf
As you can see, "Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down" since Obama took office. In reality, unemployment has dropped from 7.8% to 4.9% and stock values have nearly tripled. So, it isn't even close.
How can the majority of Republicans have gotten things that dramatically wrong? How can all but 27% of them have missed the news? I don't think they did. Even entombed within the Fox News echo chamber, murmurs from the outside world slip in. They have doubtless heard that unemployment rates have fallen to lows not seen since before the Great Recession -- lows never once reached in the Reagan years. Doubtless they have heard repeated reports of stocks setting new all-time highs. But, I believe, they turn their mental energies to defending their prejudices against such inconvenient facts.
For example, they'll tell themselves the "real unemployment rate" is much higher, once you label labor-force dropouts as unemployed. Then they'll forego the obvious next step of figuring out what the "real unemployment rate" was before Obama, using the same standards, because subconsciously they realize that would lead them back to the same uncomfortable conclusion that unemployment is down sharply on Obama's watch. Only by allowing themselves an apples-to-oranges comparison of "real unemployment" today and official unemployment before Obama can the majority defend their prejudice that says surely things must have gotten worse under his leadership.
Similarly, with stocks they can tell themselves stock values aren't actually up, even when all the major indexes tell the tale of one of the most dramatic bull markets in history. They just say it doesn't count, because monetary policy isn't what they, personally, think it should have been. If money were as hard to come by as they'd like it to be, stocks wouldn't be up, therefore stocks are actually down.
How does one combat such insanity? I honestly don't know. Is it even possible? If prejudice is so deeply entrenched that the majority of Republicans can claim one of the biggest stock market run-ups ever was a time when the stock market fell, what hope is there that logic and education can ever find traction?
