That wasn’t really the nature of the shock. It wasn’t that they got their news from conservative sources, or that their beliefs were different from mine. I have no trouble with the concept of people who believe fundamentally different things are desirable. Just because I believe that preserving the environment is desirable, for example, doesn’t mean others will. My shock was that they believed in fundamentally different facts. I had difficulty with the difference in belief about what is true, not the difference in what to do about it.
My shock was that they believed in fundamentally different facts.
The worst place for fact disagreements, in my experience, is discussions about race or sex. I’m having a hard time thinking of subjects that are more murderous to minds.
One reason that there can be such a large divergence in what gets taken as facts is that we are fundamentally not interested in facts. What we are really interested in is truthiness.
For example, a bunch of upstate NY Republican school teachers who think that “the reason [the oil] had not been cleaned up already was a conspiracy on the part of President Obama”. What a bunch of yahoos! Even though they have master’s degrees, they don’t realize that one man does not a conspiracy make. Now that was an anecdote with real truthiness.
Can you clarify your second paragraph? I don’t think I get your meaning. Do you think the OP is misrepresenting the republicans, or is it something else?
I was being snarky. I suspect that the OP failed to present a perfectly factual account of the conversation. But her account did have a high level of truthiness.
I would also guess, based on even less evidence, that if her upstate teachers were to be interrogated by someone as snarky as myself, they would probably have to admit that their anti-Obama statements (whatever they were) were not perfectly factual either. But they would claim (in good faith) that their statements in that lunch-room conversation carried a sufficient level of truthiness to absolve them of any charge of misrepresentation. “The administration messed up the Gulf spill response somehow,” they would claim.
People tend to find facts boring these days. The important thing seems to be to fashion a narrative which makes it easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.
Do you think the OP is misrepresenting the republicans, or is it something else?
Well, given that ‘conspiracy theory’ is a phrase that is much more commonly applied to one’s opponents’ ideas to discredit them then to one’s own, I strongly suspect ‘conspiracy’ is the OP’s word and not the Republicans’.
Good point, I haden’t paid much attention to that, but “conspiracy” is used much more often to describe “beliefs of one’s opponents” than one’s own beliefs. What other words are in that category? “hate”, probably.
That wasn’t really the nature of the shock. It wasn’t that they got their news from conservative sources, or that their beliefs were different from mine. I have no trouble with the concept of people who believe fundamentally different things are desirable. Just because I believe that preserving the environment is desirable, for example, doesn’t mean others will. My shock was that they believed in fundamentally different facts. I had difficulty with the difference in belief about what is true, not the difference in what to do about it.
The worst place for fact disagreements, in my experience, is discussions about race or sex. I’m having a hard time thinking of subjects that are more murderous to minds.
One reason that there can be such a large divergence in what gets taken as facts is that we are fundamentally not interested in facts. What we are really interested in is truthiness.
For example, a bunch of upstate NY Republican school teachers who think that “the reason [the oil] had not been cleaned up already was a conspiracy on the part of President Obama”. What a bunch of yahoos! Even though they have master’s degrees, they don’t realize that one man does not a conspiracy make. Now that was an anecdote with real truthiness.
Can you clarify your second paragraph? I don’t think I get your meaning. Do you think the OP is misrepresenting the republicans, or is it something else?
I was being snarky. I suspect that the OP failed to present a perfectly factual account of the conversation. But her account did have a high level of truthiness.
I would also guess, based on even less evidence, that if her upstate teachers were to be interrogated by someone as snarky as myself, they would probably have to admit that their anti-Obama statements (whatever they were) were not perfectly factual either. But they would claim (in good faith) that their statements in that lunch-room conversation carried a sufficient level of truthiness to absolve them of any charge of misrepresentation. “The administration messed up the Gulf spill response somehow,” they would claim.
People tend to find facts boring these days. The important thing seems to be to fashion a narrative which makes it easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.
So it’s an Arguments as Soldiers thing. That makes sense. I’m trying to free myself of that problem currently.
Well, given that ‘conspiracy theory’ is a phrase that is much more commonly applied to one’s opponents’ ideas to discredit them then to one’s own, I strongly suspect ‘conspiracy’ is the OP’s word and not the Republicans’.
Good point, I haden’t paid much attention to that, but “conspiracy” is used much more often to describe “beliefs of one’s opponents” than one’s own beliefs. What other words are in that category? “hate”, probably.