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Tag Archives: beliefs
The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast
The Boot Is Coming Down Hard And Fast A lot’s been happening really fast. It’s a white noise saturation day and it’s impossible to keep track of everything going on, so I’m just going to post my thoughts on a few of the things that have happened. ❖ Biden has announced plans to roll out new domestic […]
Is Fake News Hard-Wired? Study Finds People Misremember Facts To Fit Their Beliefs
Is Fake News Hard-Wired? Study Finds People Misremember Facts To Fit Their Beliefs I recently criticized NBC Meet The Press host Chuck Todd for suggesting that Trump supporters are fantasy-prone dimwits who just want to be lied to… NBC News anchor Chuck Todd is under fire for an openly derisive comment about Trump supporters as effectively delusional […]
Deaf, Dumb and Blind: Who is Better at Conceding They Are Wrong–Conservative or Liberal Extremists?
DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND : WHO IS BETTER AT CONCEDING THEY ARE WRONG – CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL EXTREMISTS? For those readers who wish to confirm their cemented bias or simply don’t read past the first paragraph or two, here is the down and dirty answer to the question posed in the title. The answer is…neither! […]
Encouraging Energy Conservation: Is Less More?
Encouraging Energy Conservation: Is Less More? Many messages about saving energy use multiple arguments to make their case. But our research suggests that may actually be the wrong approach. Is messaging about consumers’ home-energy habits important in climate change mitigation? Many organizations say yes, and are conducting outreach to raise awareness and persuade individuals to […]
The Psychology of Systemic Consensus
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SYSTEMIC CONSENSUS We are all too familiar with established views rejecting change. It has nothing to do with the facts. Officialdom’s mind is often firmly closed to all reason on the big issues. To appreciate why we must understand the crowd psychology behind the systemic consensus. It is the distant engine that […]
Escape the Echo Chamber
Escape the Echo Chamber First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images Something has gone wrong with the flow of information. It’s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. It seems like different […]
The Twilight of Authority
The Twilight of Authority I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the need for a rhetorical education—that is, an education that doesn’t presume to lay down the law about what’s true and what’s false, but instead teaches each individual how to understand and assess claims about truth and falsehood. That’s a concept many people […]
A Rhetorical Education
A Rhetorical Education Quite a bit of the discussion on this blog and its predecessors has focused on controversial issues, the kind of thing that causes rhetoric to fly fast and thick. Given the themes I like to discuss in these essays, that could hardly have been avoided. Ours is an age riven by disputes, […]
People Ignore Facts That Contradict Their False Beliefs
People Ignore Facts That Contradict Their False Beliefs The more people there are who ignore facts that contradict their beliefs, the likelier a dictatorship will emerge within a given country. Here is how aristocracies, throughout the Ages, have controlled the masses, by taking advantage of this widespread tendency people have, to ignore contrary facts: What social scientists call “confirmation bias” and […]
“The End Of Truth” – Hayek Saw It All Coming Over 70 Years Ago
“The End Of Truth” – Hayek Saw It All Coming Over 70 Years Ago The Road To Serfdom (authored by F.A. Hayek, first publ;ished in 1944) Excerpts from Chapter 11 – The End of Truth Annotated via Crossroad.to/heaven, “The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social […]
Peak Oil & System Justification: “Threatening” Status Quo
Peak Oil & System Justification: “Threatening” Status Quo It’s a lot easier to seek confirmation than information. So not only does the online world provide less information, it provides more spin and distortion of that information from an online empire of advocates that enables us as never before to find the voices we agree with, and […]
Peak Oil: We All Do This, But…. Pt 1
Peak Oil: We All Do This, But…. Pt 1 Confirmation bias is the tendency of individuals to pay attention to or believe information that confirms the personal values and beliefs they already hold, rather than allowing their beliefs to be changed by new information. It’s a powerful force that many researchers have suggested plays a […]
Convenient Beliefs
Convenient Beliefs “Massive Deterioration” – Worse Than 2008 BALTMORE – “Stocks still not finding bottom” warned a headline at Investor’s Business Daily. On Thursday, the Dow ended down 255 points – or 1.6%. The index is down by almost 9% since the start of the year. “These developments, if they prove persistent, could weigh on the […]
Who’s In Your Head?
Who’s In Your Head? When you reflect on your life, do you sometimes lament the choices you’ve made, directions you took or didn’t take, and wonder what could have been? You may find that you’ve achieved success in one or more areas of life, yet feel like you have fallen short in others. You might […]
A Kept Culture | Two Ice Floes
A Kept Culture | Two Ice Floes. My thinking on a variety of subjects has changed over time and I expect my understanding will continue to evolve as new information, knowledge and propaganda enters my orbit. Contrary to popular belief this is a good thing because it means my mindset is not as static and […]
