Why is it so blasted hard to reason with people about politics?..

[Peacetrain]

Even if you have the facts stone cold in your hand.

Because people are hard wired to defend the positions they have taken, even if you can prove how erroneous that position is. In fact the more you point out to them how wrong they are with hard cold facts.. the deeper they dig in.

This is true of everyone.. right, left, center, fringy, etc etc.. male, female.. etc etc.

I saved this article from last year.. it is four pages, but well worth the read..even in the 140 character medium we live in now

So as everyone digs in deeper, right and left.. the great unwashed middle that everyone disdains is going to have to try and move this country forward. Our partisans right and left cannot help themselves.


http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/..._backfire/

"In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger"

[azmouse]

Just one reason why Fox News puts out the lies it does.
They know the people that listen to them will absorb the lies they tell as the truth and when the facts come out to refute the lies, it won't matter.

[Brainwreck]

I discovered that early on when I finally had to give up on friends who had accepted the lies. It was and still is discouraging. Hopefully the researchers in Michigan will discover a way to un-brainwash people so we can more easily regain the country, and I can better cope with brain-dumbed friends. Thank you for posting that information.
Brainwreck

[sandnsea]

Belief Systems. People can't function without some set of beliefs in how the world operates.

My belief system says, given any situation where corporations or humans can be blamed for economic failure - the only reason a human is blamed is if the corporation hasn't been investigated enough.

Therefore, back before the whole mortgage crisis had shaken out, I instinctively rejected anybody who put a set of facts in front of me that said lying borrowers were to blame for the mortgage crisis. A lot of facts have proven me right, but no amount of opposing facts would have gotten me to change my mind in 2008.

I'm sure the people with a pro-corporate belief system are as adament as I am.

[Born_A_Truman]

Last night, Paul and I were watching Ed in Wisconsin and Paul mentioned that the people who really need to see this won't be watching it. Of course, he meant the Fox News crowd.

I have family that I love that when it comes to politics we live on two different planets. Of course I wore my AC/DC Obama t-shirt just for them when I was back there last month for the 4th.

[KonaKane]

There are a few who are actually swayed by information, but they seem to be on the decrease. We are in the age of political religions, where faith in the ideology trumps everything. Oddly enough, I have noticed that liberals have the greatest ability to change their minds when confronted with newer, better information.

In fact, I was told that was the underpinning of the "liberal education" all those years ago. I wonder what happened.

[Treestar]

Of the extreme partisans, that's true. Look at how they reacted to President Obama releasing the birth certificate. It must be a fake, then. They won't let go of it no matter what facts are presented.

[NJMaverick]

The answer is simple, it's a terrible combination of self interest, ego and the need to tolerant or compromise.