In an article about how one’s bias can affect how one recalls and views “evidence”, the NYT author helpfully gives us a wide variety of examples:
FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories  and mislead us along the way.
******
With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.
Delusion, it would seem, despite the universality of these processes, afflicts conservatives most.
And of course, the democrat party douche who wrote that bilge needn’t show in any meaningful way how the Swift boat guys were peddling false ideas. It is simply an understood value.
Wow. It took two people to write that swill.
Can they write about echo-chambers next?
It’s avant-news.
That last quoted sentence is a semiotic time-bomb, set there to become an ironic example of the phenomenon described in the second-to-last, unsourced non-information to be passed over by the Times reader, never consciously absorbed yet somehow always already known.
It’s, like, Borges-y.
The New York Times has become no more than an arm of the liberal brain wash-a-teria. All anyone has to know is that the “Swiftboaters” forced Lurch to change his story FOUR times.
I think the MSM is just a litle confused by the meaning of the word “lying”. Lately, it seems that the4ir main job is to justify lies, not expose them.
Oh. And Dan. This is OT, but I thought you might appereciate this. I wish I had thought of it first.
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=699285
You probably will have to cut and paste this, because I have been lazy, and haven’t bothered to Google “HTML” yet. I’ve been waiting for a good mood. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Whaduya know? The link works!
Pssst.
We’re losing Iraq. Badly. Quagmire. And Obama is the Messiah, and he will absolve the country of its racist past, as well as lead us into a bright future of hope and change. Lightworker, you see.
Pass it on…
A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage.
So, what they are telling me is that the Swifboats message couldn’t actually take hold until people had had time to process and accept the false statements from that noncredible source, John F. Kerry.
Because, if you never actually beleived the Senator then the Swiftboat’s credibility is hardly an issue.
Ohnoes. We can’t drill our way out of this problem.
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found.
I have a hard time believing that someone polled a question on the sun revolving around the earth.
I recall how pathetic Kerry’s lies were. Probably the most glaringly obvious falsehood was the reported claim that his boat encountered a full half hour of automatic weapons fire from both banks on his day of heroism and not only were none of the crew struck by the imaginary bullets in his story, the boat wasn’t hit either.
Miraculous!……or total bullshit. You be the judge.
Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found.
Who is peddling “FALSE beliefs”?
Eighteen percent of the U.S. population would be about fifty-four million people.
“Delusion, it would seem, despite the universality of these processes, afflicts conservatives most.”
yeah, I’d give conservatives the edge, but no one seems immune to the
primary function of the human brain; which is to make excuses and justify, intellectually, what we’ve already decided to do, or believe.
Deep learning (imprinting) has an emotional component which affects long term memory
most profoundly. Hence, while most of us tend to think the emotion (passion) with which we process the data, follows the learning, it is just the opposite. Hearing, seeing what we wish to perceive is, generally, due to the emotional engine’s predisposition. A sense of objectivity is what’s most lacking and this is why conservatives have the edge. Passion, like any quality, is good in measured quantities, but becomes a weakness when it is outsized.
And you honestly think the right is more guided by emotion and passion that the left, ‘cleo?
By the way, congratulations on a coherent post with an actual position. If you can manage a coherent defense you might become a welcome here yet.
Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim.
So are we to assume that 100% of the 10% are conservatives?
…man is a rationalizing animal — R. A. Heinlein.
Regards,
Ric
Obviously, Semanticlod hasn’t heard of PUMA, a totally rational, dispassionate group of DEMOCRATS!
They would be irrational 711, because anyone that hasn’t absorbed the fact that this election is a referendum on bush has not been paying attention.
This is one time I think Cleo’s comment should be read with an open mind. I don’t agree with it, but for once she’s not being gratuitously confrontational.
They would be irrational 711, because anyone that hasn’t absorbed the fact that this election is a referendum on bush has not been paying attention.
The President of the United States is elected through the “electoral college” process, not a “referendum”. BTW, George Bush isn’t running for president.
SevenEleventy: Some people (*cou-proggie-gh*) just can’t let go.
PUMA move over! More rational thought with Just Say No Deal. Semenclap, what say you?
Hey Dan,
“Delusion, it would seem, despite the universality of these processes, afflicts conservatives most.”
I know you’re being sarcastic, but I think you’ve got it roughly correct – if for complex reasons. It would be more accurate to say more people with deep-seated delusions identify as conservatives.
There are more conservatives who take a faith-based, unscientific approach to understanding the world, for instance – something that leads them into all kinds of delusions about the way the world really works. Intelligent design afficiandos and “Young Earth” believers tend not to have liberal political beliefs and don’t in general vote Dem. That’s a big drag on your demographic, right there.
Then there’s the “New World Order” conspiracy theorists, who believe variants of the notion that the Queen of England and a Jewish conspiracy secretly rule the world together. Again, not well known for identifying as Dem voters – far more likely to be Ron Paul conservatives – and a far bigger demographic than you might think.
And there’s the untold number of mild sociopaths who find that a neo-Adams version of conservative economic and political thought fits nicely with their own mental disfunction in a way that liberal ideology never can – the “I’m alright Jack” demographic. Sociopaths tend to be more willingly self-deluding than other segments of the population, as is evidenced by their broad willingness to describe themselves as having good mental health despite their sociopathy. Mild sociopathy (defined as being a sufferer who doesn’t stray so far outside societal norms that he gets locked up for it) is far more widespread than usually thought by the general public too – just consider all the bullying bosses you’ve ever met.
And yes, the Dems get the vegans who nevertheless enjoy oral sex, the treehugging Indian shamen from Pittsburg and a list of others – but I’d argue that these are minorities in numbers compared even with the three conservative demographics I’ve described.
In short, it’s a close-run race but the conservatives win the delusional demographic stakes by a head and a “wide stance”.
Regards, C
Who has the Truthers and Al Gore, Cernig? Who has the people who think the Bush administration is totalitarian, and shredding the Constitution?
That is brilliant. The needle on my irony meter, it twitches gleefully in the red.
Cernig that’s why the “Fairness Doctrine” is needed.
Sorry, Cernig, that’s convenient, from a rhetorical point of view, but I don’t believe it’s at all true. You are, of course, free to define delusion as you wish. I, for my part, will continue to regard globalwarmingism (for example) as a form of religion without the psychic benefits, and, most glaringly, without the humility.
A lot of Democrats believe a lot of odd stuff, such as that Bush lied us into the war in Iraq, or that (here a point of contact with many capital-L Libertarians), was even part of a conspiracty to bring down the towers. Or, for that matter, that Kerry hasn’t lied repeatedly about his actions as a soldier and after.
I wonder, given this perspective, how you make out that it is self-identified conservatives who give the most, and the greater percentage, of their income to charitable concerns? Is that a function, pace Dawkins, of a particular kind of delusion? And if it really is delusory, then why is it that conservatives continue to arise? Let’s admit all that same sorts of arguments that people use to claim that homosexuality is “normal” (and mind you, I advocate gay rights).
Let us proclaim from the start that all of our knowledge is provisional. How does one then distinguish the relative pathology of what we please to regard as “conservative” or “liberal” without falling under the sway of persistent philauty?
… vegans who nevertheless enjoy oral sex…
Holy crap! Vegans eat genitalia?! No more flirting at Feministe for me!
I don’t go to Feministe without a jockstrap and a cup.
In short, it’s a close-run race but the conservatives win the delusional demographic stakes by a head and a “wide stanceâ€Â.
Regards, C
You conveniently overlook that the basic premise of progressivism is that penalizing success and rewarding failure is a viable political and economic system.
Barry is a Ferengi’08™
Interesting enough, a Kos diarist with the handle of “mindgeek” claims this as his writing. Some Prog on a Yahoo list sent the article from Kos.
Thanks for the heads up, David.
Is that the same Wang who financed the construction of condos on the 18th hole at Bushwood C.C.?
Empire! No blood for oil! We gave smallpox blankets to the Indians! Almost no one had firearms in early America! The Bush administration attacked the WTC! The Israelis attacked the WTC! The stock market decline in 2000 was the pricing-in of the Bush administration, not the bursting of the dotcom bubble! Prescott Bush! Karl Rove outed Valerie Plame! Dick Cheney failed to assassinate a lawyer! Impeach Bush! SCOTUS appointed Bush!
On the flipside of that, to be fair, was the Vince-Foster-murder gang.
Oh, but Clinton was impeached for getting a blowjob.
30. Once again, BMoe draws blood, swiftly and neatly.
12. Comment by TaiChiWawa on 6/28 @ 9:13 am #
Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found.
Who is peddling “FALSE beliefs�
Eighteen percent of the U.S. population would be about fifty-four million people.
No fair, actually making ’em haveta work numbers.
Mrs. Iselin: [at meal time] I’m sorry, hon’. Would it really make it easier for you if we settled on just one number?
Sen. John Yerkes Iselin: Yeah. Just one, real, simple number that’d be easy for me to remember.
[Mrs. Iselin watches her husband thump a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup onto his plate]
Sen. John Yerkes Iselin: [addressing the Senate] There are exactly 57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the Department of Defense at this time!
23. Comment by Cernig on 6/28 @ 12:38 pm #
There are more conservatives who take a faith-based, unscientific approach to understanding the world, for instance – something that leads them into all kinds of delusions about the way the world really works. Intelligent design afficiandos and “Young Earth†believers tend not to have liberal political beliefs and don’t in general vote Dem. That’s a big drag on your demographic, right there…….- just consider all the bullying bosses you’ve ever met.
Just consider all the engineers you’ve ever met.
Zealous, unscientific retreating rubes.
I know more than a few, (but not all of them). The next one who self IDs even mildly left will be the first I’ve met.
In short, it’s a close-run race but the conservatives win the delusional demographic stakes by a head and a “wide stanceâ€Â.
Looks like the GOP’s picking up that wholesale Hollywood vote again.
[…] A couple of days ago, I noted the unidirectional application by journalists of a study involving evidence and bias.  A new study demonstrates that “conservatives” are better people than “liberals”. Posted by Dan Collins @ 9:53 am | Trackback SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Study Vindicates My Affiliations [Dan Collins]”, url: “https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=12666” }); […]
With the “gold” standard of 18% pretty darn clueless, this certainly renders the ‘Obama is a Muslim’ meme pretty darn moot.
How many believe 9/11 was an “inside job” ?