Quote:
Originally Posted by aceventura3
What I find is that my basic views on a subject are, shall we say, dormant. When I am presented with information that I eventually conclude is b.s. in attempts to refute my basic views, they become accentuated, I get a bit defensive. I look for the holes in the b.s. arguments, I find conflicting information, etc. Fundamentally, I defend my basic views, an exercise in critical thinking in my view, my basic views become stronger or I change them. In most cases they become stronger. I did not need a study to tell you that, all that was needed was for someone to ask.
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I think the point is, that's
not critical thinking. That's justifying the rightness of an already-held position. There's no real thinking there, that's just reaction. It's very very automatic. A well-written web spider could do about as well. I think any statement that begins with some version of, "Oh yeah? Well...." is pretty much devoid of actual thinking. Thinking means considering your viewpoint as
just one viewpoint.
In other words, you don't conclude that the contradicting information is BS; you
start from there, and your "thinking" and behavior flows from that preconception. I think that's what this study is implying.
The "you" in this post IS ace, but is also all of us. I think it's interesting that conservatives seem in this study to show this reaction more strongly than others--that is a surprise to me, because I've always thought of this as a fairly fundamental human being phenomenon.