Turns out you can actually find a colour scan of the original letter online...
Yeah, no, reading that to mean that she was secretly trying to wipe out black people seems totally reasonable and not at all intellectually dishonest.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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Turns out you can actually find a colour scan of the original letter online...
Yeah, no, reading that to mean that she was secretly trying to wipe out black people seems totally reasonable and not at all intellectually dishonest.
Note also that 2stonedbirds changed the wording from "we do not want word to go out..." to the more sinister "we do not want word to get out," implying a secret being kept. Classic.
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Note also that 2stonedbirds changed the wording from "we do not want word to go out..." to the more sinister "we do not want word to get out," implying a secret being kept. Classic.
It's honestly what happens when you read right wing blogs. There's all kinds of crap like that
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It's honestly what happens when you read right wing blogs. There's all kinds of crap like that
Which is why I'm much more inclined to be charitable than Flash Walken was; I suspect the deliberate dishonesty was on the part of whoever wrote whatever 2Stonedbirds read that convinced him that what he was saying was accurate, and he was just misled. The fact that he didn't bother to check is the usual "can I believe this" side of motivated reasoning. Which gives me an excuse to post another great response to the 2017 Edge Question...
Spoiler!
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Pizarro
Motivated Reasoning
Why, in an age in which we have the world’s information easily accessible at our fingertips, is there still so much widespread disagreement between people about basic facts? Why is it so hard to change people’s minds about truth even in the face of overwhelming evidence?
Perhaps some of these inaccurate beliefs are the result of an increase in the intentional spreading of false information, a problem exacerbated by the efficiency of the Internet. But false information has been spread pretty much since we’ve had the ability to spread information. More importantly, the same technologies that allow for the efficient spreading of false information also provide us with the ability to fact-check our information more efficiently. For most questions we can find a reliable, authoritative answer easier than anyone has ever been able to in all of human history. In short, we have more access to truth than ever. So why do false beliefs persist?
Social psychologists have offered a compelling answer to this question: The failure of people to alter their beliefs in response to evidence is the result of a deep problem with our psychology. In a nutshell, psychologists have shown that the way we process information that conflicts with our existing beliefs is fundamentally different from the way we process information that is consistent with these beliefs, a phenomenon that has been labeled "motivated reasoning." Specifically, when we are exposed to information that meshes well with what we already believe (or with what we want to believe), we are quick to accept it as factual and true. We readily categorize this information as another piece of confirmatory evidence and move along. On the other hand, when we are exposed to information that contradicts a cherished belief, we tend to pay more attention, scrutinize the source of information, and process the information carefully and deeply. Unsurprisingly, this allows us to find flaws in the information, dismiss it, and maintain our (potentially erroneous) beliefs. The psychologist Tom Gilovich captures this process elegantly, describing our minds as being guided by two different questions, depending on whether the information is consistent or inconsistent with our beliefs: “Can I believe this?” or “Must I believe this?”
This goes not just for political beliefs, but for beliefs about science, health, superstitions, sports, celebrities, and anything else you might be inclined (or disinclined) to believe. And there is plenty of evidence that this bias is fairly universal—it is not just a quirk of highly political individuals on the right or left, a symptom of the very opinionated, or a flaw of narcissistic personalities. In fact, I can easily spot the bias in myself with minimal reflection—when presented with medical evidence on the health benefits of caffeine, for instance, I eagerly congratulate myself about my coffee-drinking habits. When shown a study concluding that caffeine has negative health effects, I scrutinize the methods (“participants weren’t randomly assigned to condition!”), the sample size (“40 college-aged males? Please!”) the journal (“who’s even heard of this publication?”), and anything else I can.
A bit more reflection on this bias, however, and I admit that I am distressed. It is very possible that because of motivated reasoning, I have acquired beliefs that are distorted, biased, or just plain false. I could have acquired these beliefs all while maintaining a sincere desire to find out the real truth of the matter, exposing myself to the best information I could find on a topic, and making a real effort to think critically and rationally about the information I found. Another person with a different set of pre-existing beliefs may come to the opposite conclusion following all of these same steps, with the same sincere desire to know truth. In short, even when we reason about things carefully, we may be deploying this reasoning selectively without ever realizing it. Hopefully, just knowing about motivated reasoning can help us defeat it. But I do not know of any evidence indicating that it will.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
It's honestly what happens when you read right wing blogs. There's all kinds of crap like that
For the sake of fairness, this isn't restricted to right-wing blogs. The left does it as well, usually taking a quote out of context from a CEO from whatever industry they're trying to attack.
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For the sake of fairness, this isn't restricted to right-wing blogs. The left does it as well, usually taking a quote out of context from a CEO from whatever industry they're trying to attack.
Sort of like the climate change debate is the same on both sides.
Sorry, the conservatives in the United States have built an entire series of institutions whose job it is to create what they call spin, but regular people call fabrications and lies. One side is responsible for misinformation while the other engages in disinformation. Not the same. Not even close.
Sort of like the climate change debate is the same on both sides.
Sorry, the conservatives in the United States have built an entire series of institutions whose job it is to create what they call spin, but regular people call fabrications and lies. One side is responsible for misinformation while the other engages in disinformation. Not the same. Not even close.
That's BS. The entire anti-science crusade against GMOs, vaccines, homeopathy, etc., is absolutely disinformation at work.
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For the sake of fairness, this isn't restricted to right-wing blogs. The left does it as well, usually taking a quote out of context from a CEO from whatever industry they're trying to attack.
Agreed. I meant specifically in the political sphere
That's BS. The entire anti-science crusade against GMOs, vaccines, homeopathy, etc., is absolutely disinformation at work.
You're talking about a bunch of loosely affiliated fruit loops leading those causes. Show me a liberal comparable to the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and so on, involved in those causes. Most of those people make their claims based on pure ignorance of facts, which the right wing institutions don't get to fall back on. They KNOW the facts and still spin lies to support their pro-business agenda.
That's BS. The entire anti-science crusade against GMOs, vaccines, homeopathy, etc., is absolutely disinformation at work.
I was going to post the same thing.
I think the issue is that the left is anti things that have minor affects on the average persons well being whereas the rights misinformation seems far more damaging. Vaccines with the largest potential to cause widespread harm as opposed to individual harm like homeopathy.
The lefts successes are also minor relative to how effective the right has been
You're talking about a bunch of loosely affiliated fruit loops leading those causes. Show me a liberal comparable to the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and so on, involved in those causes. Most of those people make their claims based on pure ignorance of facts, which the right wing institutions don't get to fall back on. They KNOW the facts and still spin lies to support their pro-business agenda.
Well, I think we can agree that these element exists and I think it's substantially larger on one side of the political spectrum than the other, but mostly that's because it's significantly better financed.
We can argue to the degrees but the things rube listed are all accurate in my view and a lot of rooted in the same mistrust of authority that is being exploited in right-wing misinformation campaigns.
Well, I think we can agree that these element exists and I think it's substantially larger on one side of the political spectrum than the other, but mostly that's because it's significantly better financed.
We can argue to the degrees but the things rube listed are all accurate in my view and a lot of rooted in the same mistrust of authority that is being exploited in right-wing misinformation campaigns.
And those things aren't quite as clear cut as rube suggested. Turns out conservatives are almost as against those things as the loopy liberals. As I said, false equivalency is false. That's without looking at the institutionalization of manufacturing anti-science information.
