BELIEF V. FACT research shows people believe whatever they want to believe, risregarding facts

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Does anyone remember the Doobie Brothers rock group from the 1980s? I am sure there are millions who do. They had a song in which the refrain was “what a fool believes, he sees”. The idea was not original with them, of course, but it summed the essence of observation and distorted facts that come from it. What I want to believe, I want to see. When I look, I see what I want to believe. Having reached that conclusion, it might be impossible to change my mind.

This is one reason that politics and debates about it are so difficult. We believe we can see the truth, even when we can’t. And, damn it, we are not going to let anyone change our minds (if “mind” is the right word).

Belief is more important than fact. This I have known for many years. Belief can change facts to suit its purposes, exclude uncomfortable facts and alter reality to meet the need. Because of this innate human tendency, we should never allow ourselves to be led around by any groups or leaders with set beliefs, whether Republican, Democrat, Socialist, religious or philosophical. Why? Because they will just feed us what they think we want to believe to get what they want us to do.

There is an op ed piece in today’s New York Times by a professor and researcher at the University of Michigan who confirms our great human desire to make misperceptions. It is written by Brendon Nyhan:

“In some cases, we found that corrections can even make misperceptions worse. For example, in one experiment we found that the proportion of conservatives who believed that President George W. Bush’s tax cuts actually increased federal revenue grew from 36 percent to 67 percent when they were provided with evidence against this claim. People seem to argue so vehemently against the corrective information that they end up strengthening the misperception in their own minds.”

Here’s the deal: it is terribly difficult to live in a world without shape or form. We take what we grow up with, mix in a little learning along the way with what we hear from family and friends and, proof, that’s our belief system. We don’t want to change it, either, because that would mean having to go back to the roots of why we believe certain things and examining whether they are actually true.

One of the great problems in America is not partisanship, it is blind partisanship. Republicans were inclined to believe that anything Bush did was good, anything Obama does is bad. The reverse was true for the Dems. So, it was okay if Bush took us into a war on false premises (he was doing his best) and his administration openly approved the torture of terrorist suspects and called it “enhanced interrogation”. The Republicans, in turn, went nutso the moment Obama opened his mouth and said “health care reform”. That can’t be good, it is being proposed by a Democrat, someone who might be, ew, liberal.

Can’t anyone see what is happening here? We are being led around by the nose by politicians who think they can benefit, ride the wave, of public anger they continually are fanning with false or misleading statements. The facts of the problems we face don’t fit neatly into political boxes. Some of the reasons that Bush, Cheney et al took us into war in Iraq represented valid concerns. Very little, or nothing, about Obama’s health insurance reform package is socialist in any way. What, sadly, the researchers at the University of Michigan are showing, however, is that none of this really matters. People have their beliefs and, come hell or high water, they are stickin’ with ‘em. Logic, thinking, is the last thing on their minds.

Doug Terry, 3.25.10

THE LINK to the NY Times op ed:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/opinion/25nyhan.html

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