Quote:
Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
It's the same thing as every really important topic. People respond to anecdotes, not evidence.
The failure of America to understand math and data is a product of a crappy education system. It's destroying the country, and now that there's going to be no federal department of education, it's only going to get worse.
A democracy only works if it is an informed democracy.
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It’s not just in America - take a look at this board’s American politics threads, all of the following claims have been made:
- The economy in Biden’s term was great because Biden cleaned up Trump’s policies
- The economy in Biden’s term was bad because of Trump’s policies and the pandemic
- The economy in Trump’s first term was bad because of his policies into the pandemic
- The economy in Trump’s first term was good, but only because of Obama’s policies
- Biden’s immigration policies did not effect illegal immigration
- Biden and Trump’s immigration policies were not much different
People already have their narratives and beliefs, then skew any math or data to fit what those pre-conceived narratives are. And it’s prevalent across all demographics. It’s the way we are fed information now and how the algorithms in our news feeds and social media platforms decide what to show us, it all feeds into our tendency for confirmation bias. If we see a piece of information that confirms our internal narrative, it must be correct and great information. If we see a piece of information that is at odds with our beliefs, it’s disregarded or skewed to fit the narrative we believe. There’s multiple examples of this happening even over the last few pages.