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#10 | ||||
Power Femme
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Right now, in the United States of America, there are people who believe things that are manifestly untrue. Demonstrably, provably, untrue. The fact that these things are untrue makes absolutely no difference what-so-ever and their epistemic closure is so perfect that even though they are not in an entirely hermetically sealed environment they simply write off conflicting information as proof of a conspiracy of the so-called 'lame-stream media'. Next year, the electorate will go to the polls and about a *third* of the electorate in one of the two major parties will vote believing that cutting taxes *always* raises revenue (it doesn't), that cutting taxes is the most direct and efficient way to create jobs (it isn't), that there is a serious effort for Sharia law to be enacted in the USA (there isn't), that the President of the United States was born in Kenya (he wasn't) and that he is a Muslim (he isn't). I would think that given the last 11 years of American history and the kinds of tragically stupid decisions that were made at the highest levels, with massive popular support, based upon absolutely false information we would not have to question whether or not the beliefs of other human beings matter. Yes, they do! Is there *anyone* here who believes that had their been strong majority opposition (upwards of 75%) to the invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration would have gone ahead and started such a war? Does anyone think that the 62% of Americans who supported the war at its start would have done so if they had not believed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks or that he had an *active* nuclear and biological weapons program and, quite possibly, one or more nuclear weapons? Because that is what people said that they believe and those were the reasons they gave for supporting the invasion of Iraq. Eight years after it was demonstrated, conclusively, that there was no active WMD program there are *still* a nontrivial number of the voting public who believe that Iraq had the Bomb and/or that it was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. So what does it matter what beliefs people have in their heads? It matters quite a lot, actually. What's more, the kind of behavior you describe is almost precisely *not* how people behave. Your description of people holding strong beliefs suddenly changing them on new evidence is exactly the opposite of what has been observed. When millennialist cult leaders predict an exact date for the end of the world and then the world obstinately continues to exist one would think that their followers would pack up and leave and stop believing. Instead, they believe *harder* and simply accept whatever explanation is necessary to keep the cognitive dissonance to a minimum. Quote:
If you don't see any relationship to how people believe and how they behave, then how do you propose effecting social change if we *don't* change people's beliefs about the real world? Cheers Aj
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Proud member of the reality-based community. "People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett) |
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