
People Find It Difficult to Think About Arguments That Contradict Their Politics - sohkamyung
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/01/23/blinded-by-ideology-people-find-it-difficult-to-think-logically-about-arguments-that-contradict-their-politics/
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gonational
“...Native American protesters, one of whom found himself in the midst of the
high-schoolers.”

It looks like the author left us a nice example of ideology impacting reason.

There is zero possibility of watching the video in question and coming to the
conclusion that the Native American “found himself” there.

The video clearly shows him marching directly up to one of the boys while
beating his drum in the boys face.

It’s a really strange force, an ideology so powerful in one’s ego that one can
ignore all facts and reason, even when pretending to reason about such
phenomena.

~~~
happytoexplain
While I agree generally, I think it's ironic that you have a conviction that
you seem to feel strongly about that there is only one absolute, one-sided
truth on this topic (not that absolute one-sided truths don't exist in simple
cases, but to me this is a pretty perfect example of an ideologically
emotional occurrence that is not absolutely one-sided).

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beaconstudios
The key issue that relates to political division:

> As a general rule, the more political and emotional and social ties we have
> to an idea — the more an idea matters, in a deep way, to our sense of
> ourselves — the less likely we’ll be to let it go even in the face of strong
> evidence it is false.

The more you "are a progressive" or "are a conservative" (or whatever
ideology, these are just examples) as part of your identity, the less open to
reason you become. Ideologies give concrete answers that you can just point to
whenever a hard question is raised - but more often than not these concrete
answers are inflexible or only partially useful.

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belorn
> he said that both he and his parent has been receiving death threats since
> the video vent viral

A rather strong indicator how bad the political tribalism has got. An antidote
to the poison of partisan gridlock could actually save lives.

~~~
happytoexplain
Sadly, the extreme prevalence of death threats over nothing, spurred by
political tribalism, has been a constant for years. I would point to real
world violence as the newer, even more depressing state of reality.

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jameskilton
My favorite explanation of this effect:
[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe)

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whitakerch
I feel like the study cited at the end just shows peoples lack of
understanding of how logical syllogisms work or their ability to wrap their
minds around them.

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nerdponx
This research paper has been discussed previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18907614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18907614)

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bryanrasmussen
Because a syllogism is well-formed does not make it factually correct, which
is what the word true means to most people.

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ykevinator
I hate false equivlancies. The left and the right are absolutely not equally
illogical or resistant to logic.

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tristor
I've found that something rarely considered is that even people who are less
informed and less introspective have put /some/ thought into constructing
their world view. Politics is usually a component of this, and at some level,
at it's very basic, is built on top of the moral philosophy you hold as part
of your world view. It's something so deeply personal, that it innately
becomes a component of your everyday character. While it is true that a lot of
people behave in tribalistic political manners, without "walking the walk"
every day (Leftists call it "performance", Right-Wingers call it "virtual
signalling"), on average if someone holds a political viewpoint about an issue
and behaves in response to certain political news, it's a reflection of their
fundamental worldviews.

It's not just a failure of people to logically consider arguments, it's an
unwillingness to completely deconstruct and rebuild one's own worldview. When
I press highly intelligent friends about this in discussions, what I'm often
told is that discussing politics is exhausting for them, and that having
arguments about is something they "lack the spoons" for. This is with people
who are highly informed, intelligent, and typically enjoy argumentation and
discussion based in facts and logic. Politics is different and special,
because to change your mind you have to be willing to deconstruct your world
view and everything that goes into it.

Of all the people I've had very deep political conversations with in my life,
the one commonality was that they had all somehow achieved a level of
introspection which allowed them to understand /why/ they have certain
viewpoints. I'm not sure if their understanding is correct, because often it's
tied to some prior personal private experience, but at least they could make a
feasibly valid claim to understanding. I'm in an interesting position in my
own world view, which has lead me to conversations which made it obvious to me
that many folks who are on the Left that feel most viscerally about modern
political issues do so because of a reaction to some specific personal trauma.
Trauma that they may not yet have resolved, and that may impact their lives
daily in many ways. Often those people are aware of their trauma, but they
haven't yet been able to get through facing it and deconstructing it because
it's emotionally painful, and any argument about related political issues
which reminds them of this trauma elicits a visceral emotional reaction. This
is in some sense is really what people mean when they discuss being
"triggered", but even those people who won't discuss it experience this.

It's VERY VERY difficult for people to be brutally honest with themselves. At
a certain point you can no longer lie to yourself, and you know all of what is
in your head, where others can only guess. It's much easier to obscure the
truth from other people, going through life structuring a world view that
protects your emotional wellbeing based on a facade or partial truth. When you
are deeply introspective, all of this is stripped away. Most of the people
I've discussed this with have admitted that they have skeletons they don't
want to face. I think to a large degree, this is just part of the human
condition. All these aforementioned folks who seem to have gotten past this
either had previously gone through many many years of therapy, which helped
them emotionally mature, or they have some sort of empathy disorder which
allows them to lack even empathy towards themselves and approach things from a
less emotional perspective. Neither are common things in the general
population, and thus we have people with visceral emotional reactions to
nearly every bit of political news without really even understanding why they
have their reactions. News organizations from a revenue perspective are
incentivized to encourage and build upon these visceral emotional reactions as
well, which just exacerbates the issue.

At the end of the day, the reality is that the vast majority of people
integrate their politics into their worldview, but have never deconstructed it
into first principles, and maybe wouldn't even know where to begin doing so.
Trying to change their mind is like the emotional equivalent of physically
assaulting them. You're forcing them to face a reality that they have either
consciously or subconsciously prevented themselves from seeing. The vast
majority of people are not emotionally mature enough to be able to handle this
without eliciting a visceral rejection of any idea that makes them feel that
way.

To a large degree, this is why I don't bother discussing politics with people
anymore. I love thinking about and discussing the topic and all the
fundamental philosophical and moral questions that go into it. But it's nearly
impossible to discuss with the vast majority of people without mortally
offending them. I've probably lost more friends over politics than any other
thing in my life, despite the fact I hold no extreme positions on any topic,
and generally frame discussions with questions rather than statements, using
data to analyze popular viewpoints.

