roachboy

i think this is kinda interesting:

The Backfire Effect | Mother Jones

you can get to the paper this is a summary of & other stuff cited by chasing the link above.


i think the findings here are interesting, but i am not sure about the psychological interpretation that drum basically dismisses either. nor do i think his own interpretation goes quite far enough...

i think this is an ideological effect which has the curious effect of making conservative political statements seem non-falsifiable amongst conservatives--at least amongst the group that participated in the study. i think it linked to collective dispositions which are shaped by the way conservative ideology operated---"experts" were assimilated into a cluster of signifiers of persecuting Others, which of course stage conservatives--at least populist conservatives--as Victims. it enables a reprocessing of dissonant information as an aspect of this Persecution, which seems quite central to the construction of conservative identity at the level of how the ideology works in general.

contemporary conservatism used a form of identity politics---the device was what a french theorist called interpellation--which refers to the way a sequence of images or statements positions you as a spectator/part of the audience/part of the political demographic. the idea runs that if you find a sequence of statements or images compelling, you typically do so not only on the basis of the content, but also on the basis of how you are placed in relation to others & to the world by them. so it refers to the ways in which statements are (or are not) processed by folk and positions it as a social phenomenon rather than as a psychological one (in the end, it's a mix of both in the way most social phenomena are---if people didn't invest in them psychologically, they wouldn't be particularly social phenomena...but anyway)

i think we got to see alot of examples of this effect about in the world during the bush period, and you still see some of it around. it's continuous, happens all the time.

but what do you make of this piece?
if you have time to look at the paper, what do you make of that?
if you accept the argument/analysis, what do you see as it's consequences?

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Seaver

Lost me right there. Explain to any 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist (almost completely left wing), you will find the same stubborn conviction as those people who refuse to believe Obama is a legitimate citizen.

Calculate into this equation the head-nodding mentality of many liberal and television hosts when it comes to scientific data which support their beliefs, and the ostracizing of any scientific data which opposes it as propaganda, you can quickly find a reason to question what is shown to you.

Too many times the media which is to provide us with unbiased knowledge is proven wrong. For every report that comes out incorrect for the right (WMD's in Iraq), you find an equal report which is pure propaganda which is shown to be factual. For example, the photoshopped images of Lebanon and the staged child killings (research the Green Helmet Guy) yet are constantly stonewalled to be factual.

The truth is there is no difference in this situation between left and right. It's a mental process we ALL have and ALL use, no matter how opened minded you think you are. It's correlation and multiple categorization the mind develops to make sense of the world. When things don't fit properly, instead of reorganizing your mental grasp of what is reality we mold the new "thing" to merge with what is our proper sense. If Iraq was a good war, and this guy is saying the reason for this good war was an incorrect belief (a belief repeated by Dem & Repub for 10+ years), then something must have occurred to make that true belief appear false.

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filtherton

I think that what the study found was that there was a difference in this situation between right and left.

Baraka_Guru

It's all about the distribution of liberals vs. conservatives in this regard. Just how many liberal conspiracy theorists are there? Does this study reflect on the average conservative? Do conspiracy theorists reflect on the average liberal?

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Seaver

I think it wasn't actually scientific and was a factor of people finding what they're looking for.

How about the study that came out a few years ago that 25% of Americans thought there was a conspiracy behind 9/11, and 40% of Democrats thought so. Much higher than the average American.

Pot <=======> Kettle

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Willravel

I no longer believe that 9/11 was an inside job. It was probably carried out by radical militants. I'm not saying we have all the information, but I'm no longer a "truther".

Anyway, the only reason truthers are liberal is because Bush was in office when it happened. If Obama were president on 9/11, you can bet your ass most truthers would be conservatives, the same conservatives now convinced that Barack Obama had a fake birth certificate created in order to bypass section 1 of Article 2. Or that universal healthcare is a first step to the one-world government. Or that FEMA is creating concentration camps. Or that the government is going to take anyone's gun.

Edit: In response to the article, it's consistent with what I've experienced. There IS a mistrust of experts and verifiable data growing on the right, and I'm not just imagining things. I've witnessed it first hand, in fact.

roachboy

my basic contention has for a long time been that there's something particular and kinda curious about contemporary american conservatism as an ideology (worldview in this case)...that it operates with a particular way of staging relations to that worldview one effect of which is a peculiar relation to information. i've been interested in how the discourse works. so i see it as a sociological and political phenomenon. it's obvious that there are variations within any group of people in how investments in that ideology happen, but that doesn't mean that there aren't constants at the level of patterns within the ideology and patterns that are repeated by alot of folk who hold this political position as consumers if you like.

second, i don't know what conservatives are talking about when they refer to the left. typically it is little more than a phantasm, the mirror image of conservatism, something that is constructed politically as an imaginary referencepoint which positions conservatism along some spectrum that apparently has therapeutic value, and which serves to conceal just how peculiar contemporary american conservatism really is. because it provides something to point at and enables the claim "whaddya mean, we're just doing what they're doing"

but the fact is that there is no left as conservatives like to imagine it and that conservatism in the states is a peculiar entity.
luckily, i don't think it matters so much any more.
but it could matter again, so it's good to keep track of just how strange it is.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

robot_parade

Wait. What makes you say that 9/11 theorists are left wing? Do you have any proof to back up that assertion?

From my very non-scientific observation, conservatives are far more prone to 'the crazy' than liberals.

o Obama birthers
o Global warming deniers
o Young earthers (ok, the correlation with evangelical christianity takes care of this one)

You get the idea. What left-wing specific reality denial do we have? I disagree with the 9/11 guys being almost completely left-wing, but I could be wrong.

samcol

I'm wondering why you no long believe 9/11 was an inside job but that's for another thread or private messages. However, I've noticed more 'truthers' on the right than the left in my own experience. I think many left wingers associated with Fahrenheit 911 and thus consider themselves to be 9/11 truthers. Personally, I don't fee like that movie even began to touch on the issues many have with what happened that day.

My point is that some of the left attached itself to the idea of 9/11 being an inside job and blamed the republicans, but the idea stops dead in its track when it shows the left's culpability.

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filtherton

If you have any specific critiques of the study's methodology I'm all ears.

Jinn

I always find it amusing when people try to "debunk" peer-reviewed studies with anecdotal experience. It's also particularly ironic that presenting this 'expert' research on the matter seems to have had the precisely described affect on those who were already 'convinced' about the "bobble-head" media.

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Willravel

Put simply, there's too much of a vacuum of evidence supporting something.

FoolThemAll

Goddamn. I'm just floored at how you packed so much irony into such a tiny little space. Congratulations for validating the claim of those conservatives of yours who only look like they're bursting with straw because american conservativism is a peculiar animal and it's not overgeneralizing if you do it without caps and have some hokey study to back you up kinda if only you'd ever bother to use even a half-sufficient qualifier like 'many'. There, you happy? I normally only have run-on thoughts like that when I'm subjected to the worst of conservative punditry.

And it looks like Jinn discovered the self-defending nature of the study's working theory: if you attack it, you probably fit it.

How is Limbaugh still on the air with competition like this?

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

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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"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Jinn

He's really not off track. While generalizations of conservatives as a whole aren't fair, if the mouthpieces of the conservative "party" are to be believed, liberals are an entirely different beast than they are in reality. I've recently been reading Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto" ( ) and it's entirely based on a straw man of liberalism. In it, he posits this group of people called "Statists," who he goes to link directly to contemporary liberalism and the Democratic party, and then subsequently blames nearly every government misstep on the Statists desire for "control" and "tyranny." He creates an entire group of people concerned only with increasing federal power, revoking personal property rights, redistributing wealth, concerned with creating Supreme Leading organization. It's entirely a misnomer, and as an extreme liberal who values the national government I can't even identify with this liberal facade he's creating.

And Levin isn't alone among the pundits, speakers, and Congressman of the so-called "conservative" party.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

ratbastid

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.

roachboy

fta:

i thought i made the argument pretty clearly.
but you picked out what you wanted to see. this doesn't interest me particularly, nor does the facile logical trick which you followed it with, you know, the one that amounts to "i know you are but what am i?"

i am not talking about individuals who happen to be conservative as such---i'm talking about the way the field of conservative discourse operates, how it stages relations to information. that many folk repeat this staging is obvious, just as is the fact that not absolutely everyone who find conservative positions compelling repeats this staging. but that not every last person repeats the particular ways relations to information are staged doesn't mean that therefore there is no staging.

it's not that complicated.

if you want to debate me, at least make an effort to talk about the same thing.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

FoolThemAll

But the left has no such staging as accused by your conservatives. The left is better than that. Conservatives have intellectually dishonest patterns and honest exceptions, while liberals enjoy the reverse.

Agreed, it's actually very transparent.

You first. Use better - or any - qualifiers next time.

---------- Post added at 10:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 AM ----------

On there being a lot of Republicans who enjoy strawmen? Sure, I agree with that part. That's about as far as my agreement goes.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

roachboy

so when you talk about this left business, what exactly are you referring to?

this is an organizational and discursive matter so you should be able to point at specifics.


and spare me the snippy flourishes.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

If I have a basic view or belief that it is softly raining outside, I may be indifferent to that fact, but it is a basic belief that I hold at that particular moment. If the weather man comes on TV and says it is not raining, creating a challenge to that basic belief, I may go to the window or go outside to check, I have a rain gauge that I may check to see how much it had been raining, I might look at the cloud pattern to see if the rain is isolated, I might check some other sources I have for weather. After all of that my basic belief will be enhanced or changed.

You suggest that process is not critical thinking? I disagree.

Perhaps you should speak for yourself. I know what I do, and I described it.


I don't disagree with the study, from my point of view it is true. I have observed the pattern described in my own thought processes. Like I said, I did not need a study for that and if asked I would have given an honest answer. I do not know if the pattern shown actually applies more to "conservatives" than "liberals", my gut based on the examples shown is that the person who did the study approached it with his own biases. Aw shucks, there I go again!

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

ratbastid

Not a good example because it can be empirically proven by stepping outside and holding your hand up. Try again with Iraqi WMDs as the matter in question. Assume you can't personally get on a plane to Baghdad and check the country for WMDs your own personal self. Go.

roachboy

well yes. it's a study. if it were some absolute Truth, there wouldn't be much point in discussion, would there? i mean, what would be talk about?

yes this is self-evidently correct yes it is.

personally, i think the data is more interesting than the interpretations offered of it--which is frequently the case.
so i floated an alternate riff that i thought erased some of the interpretive problems above. but it substituted different ones.

back in the day before it ate itself, the conservative media apparatus was pretty easy to delimit. things got trickier in the dismal period after 9/11/2001 for a while because the ways of framing issues and relations to them particular to that apparatus migrated into the mainstream press, which for all it's problems at least hadn't up to that time adopted the language of the contemporary right.

what seems in retrospect to have snapped this was the judith miller business at the ny times, which put the paper's institutional credibility in jeopardy and it was on that basis that the times began to back away from the simple repetition of administration infotainment and the language it was couched in both at the levels of stuff quoted and "analysis"---this ebbing away of conservative discourse from this point accelerated through the second bush term. if you wanted to, you could document the process.

the point is that it's much easier to talk about political language that shapes a given socio-cultural space than it is to talk about a collection of individuals who operate within that space---the language gives you something to talk about, it's sources enable you to define a space or region.

so i don't particularly think that as human beings conservative folk are more or less rigid than anyone else, really--i suppose there's a segment that is, just as there's a segment of any other population---but the degree to which a political language, once internalized, creates regularities, and that these regularities include particular types of rigidity of thinking---that we can talk about.

the problem really is not letting yourself slide off this way of framing things.
it's easy to do it if you're motivated to in any event, if you don't like the argument or information. once you slide off, it becomes a matter of political groups who don't like each other's politics calling each other names.

there are maybe problems of method in the study as well--but to get there you'd have to read it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

My support of the war had little to do with Iraq having WMD or not. My support was based on their capability of obtaining or developing them and them having a leader who I think would have been willing to use them against innocent people. Sadaam had used WMD (chemical) in the past, he killed massive numbers of his own countrymen, he waged aggressive war, he had a goal of disrupting the region perhaps causing WWIII by bombing Israel; he has a proven track record of deceit, dishonesty and ruthlessness. Based on those considerations, if I were presented with a "report" that Iraq had no WMD, I would be all over that report, as Ali would say - "like white on rice". My rational and emotional response would reach a peak level simply based on being presented with the "report".

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Willravel

Right, but even that isn't based in reality. All the crap about Saddam pursuing this and that was nothing but bullshit. We got nothing but lie after lie from the Bush administration, and among those lies were things like "chemical weapons" and "yellowcake", all of which have been verified as completely wrong. WE have a track record of deceit, dishonesty, and ruthlessness.

aceventura3

Like I have stated in the past concerning your analysis - In some cases I don't think it is that complicated, and in my case I doubt I am as "deep" as your analysis suggests. In spite of what you may think, I am not easily influenced by media, talking points, ideology of others, etc., as I have become to understand how I think, reach conclusions, and respond, it has been consistent throughout my life. Perhaps, "conservatives" are born and not made.

---------- Post added at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:29 PM ----------

Of course it is not your reality. I accept the fact that different people reach different conclusions (or alternate realities) based on a number of factors. I respect those differences, do you? I would never tell you that things from your view point are not reality after agreeing that we do not and will not see an issue the same way. We know I thought Iraq under Sadaam was a threat and you did not.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

Willravel

There's only one reality, Ace. Different opinions can occupy it, but not contradictory facts. The facts are these: the US government, under the leadership of the Bush administration, created a story about Saddam getting yellow cake, and when someone tried to call them on their lies, they outed his spy wife.

FoolThemAll

A bunch of liberals that somehow demonstrate a systemic problem with the American left.

How many specifics do I need to point out before I get to say I know you are but who am I?

Spare me the silly overgeneralization dressed up as some serious critique.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

roachboy

so what you're telling me, fool them all, is that you got nothing but you don't like what i'm saying.
that's fine.
i think we're done now.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aceventura3

Wrong.

Using an example: Homsexuality. There is one reality for one group and another reality for the other. Given the same, pardon the pun, stimulus or shall we say input, the responses given those different "realities" will be very different. I believe that if a homosexual was presented with a study that was in conflict with their basic view on sexuality, they may go from an indifferent response to a question to a very opinionated response.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

new man

Makes sense to me that conservatives don't trust experts. After all, they still believe that an imaginary backwoods jew had all the answers 2000 years ago and that his ideas tell us how to handle politics, science, education, people relations, sex, and so forth.

Anyone after him who claims different is obviously not an expert, and probably works for the devil.

Willravel

The only way I'm wrong is it you're moving from politics into physics, in which case one reality would be debatable.
If you showed a homosexual a study about how homosexuality didn't exist, the study would be wrong. If I showed you a study about how caucasians don't exist, the study would be equally wrong. No such study can exist, therefore it can't really be used in an illustration.

aceventura3

Speaking for myself, I don't trust anybody, with only a few exceptions.


Just for the record - I don't insult a person's religious beliefs. And I don't belong to any specific religion. Try again.

---------- Post added at 09:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 PM ----------

A non-homosexual can not possibly understand the reality of homosexuality and the opposite is true. As a non-homosexual, I don't know if homosexuality is real, what it is, what it means, other than how it is described to me. I simply respect the reality of what others say in that regard. I accept that there are different "realities" when it comes to sexuality. The difference in "reality" molds political views on the subject.

A person who sees potential threats the way you do can not possible understand the reality of the way I see potential threats. I have come to understand our difference. the difference in "reality" molds political views on the subject.

When I know how I factor in the implications of taxation in my business decisions, and if perhaps you don't- you may not understand the reality of how tax policy can impact business decisions - then how we have the different perspective when challenging or accepting "reports" that could lead us to very different conclusions based on "reality" even given the same data.

People bring who they are and what they have experienced to the table, that in-part defines their reality. As a child I was intrigued by a fact that in different languages some people did not have words for certain concepts that others had words for. In no way does that mean that certain concepts are not real.

__________________
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."

roachboy

you don't have to get to questions about what "reality" is--hell, i'm not always sure i know and the more i think on it the less i know about what "reality" is and how many of them there are----this is a matter of statements. in the study, you had a series of statements issued by the administration and a series of demonstrations that those statements were false. the problem is the evaluation of these statements--how do you do it? what factors shape that? one way of thinking about that would be to analyze, to the extent that one can, the projections as to the world that each series of statements triggered. another would be to ask about relations toward these statements---that's the route this study went in. what constitutes compelling evidence? what constitutes a convincing argument? what elements or assumptions get introduced that shape these judgments? to what extent can these factors be grouped? once you group them, how to you evaluate that grouping?

like that.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

guy44

Oy vey. Global climate change is real. Isn't time people extricate their heads from the sand?

__________________
"You have reached Ritual Sacrifice. For goats press one, or say 'goats.'"

Willravel

What do you mean you don't know if homosexuality is real? Do you think everyone is playing a joke on you? Some men are attracted to other men sexually. Some women are attracted to other women sexually. These states can be observed and can be verified via observation. It's not unreal or in some Schrodinger state of real/unreal simply because you've not witnessed or experienced it. There's a point at which perception becomes so abstract that communication breaks down. You're there.
I'm not talking about opinion, I'm talking about fact. It's your opinion that Iraq was a threat to the US. It's not an opinion but rather verifiable fact that the administration fabricated the story about Saddam seeking yellowcake in Africa. It's not subjective, but objectively verifiable.
Not understanding something doesn't mean it's not real. I don't understand precisely how the universe came into being, but here we are.

Rekna

Never underestimate the power of ignorance.

ratbastid

ace has conflated "world-view" or "perspective" with "reality".

I'm forced (jarringly) to understand something about conservatives from this bizarre collapse of concepts.

Willravel

I think the ultimate question this thread implies is: how can this be treated? What can be done in order to prevent what could be a serious consequence for this widespread perception condition?

guy44

Moderate Republican Congressman Mike Castle was one of only 8 Republicans to vote for the Cap-and-Trade bill. Then he went to a town hall forum in his home district. This is what he encountered:

Nobody doubts that there are lots of Americans who believe in crazy things (about 10% of people believe in UFOs, etc.). Furthermore, nobody doubts that many of these people are liberals. But let's be perfectly honest - no Democratic congressman would ever face a Democratic crowd saying as many things as crazy as this. These conspiracy theories and flights of fancy are not exclusively conservative, but they are predominantly conservative. Even on a smaller, slightly less crazy level - John Kerry didn't really deserve his purple heart, etc. - conservatives seem more willing to swallow false information that conforms to preexisting prejudices.

After all, how many chain emails making highly charged and unusual (and usually debunked) political claims have you received that were liberal?

__________________
"You have reached Ritual Sacrifice. For goats press one, or say 'goats.'"

Baraka_Guru

The more I think of it, the more I'm relieved that Canadian conservatism is an entirely different creature from American conservatism.

I'd rather deal with my Tories, thank you. And to think that these conservatives actually have a legitimate left-wing politics to contend with. You know, elected politicians who are members of parties that float out in left field, with little concern about the centre. We even have sovereigntists sitting in national seats.

The way the political spectrum is discussed, I'm assuming many Americans have no idea what it's like up here in the Great White North. It's all really quite fascinating contrasting our two nations. It always has been.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot