Facts are Overrated

Since this thread seems to be merging with the civil war memorial discussion, I thought I'd offer something more relevant to the OP. There wa one point in the OP presented as disturbing but which is, in a way, comforting:

quote:

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"Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic."

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Comforting because it implies that this problem can be corrected with more education. If people knew more, they would be less confident in their rejection of the facts.This view is, unfortunately, not borne out by other studies. I've read of lot of Dan Kahan's Cultural Cognition blog, which dedicates a lot of time to what is actually effective science communication. One message comes through strongly from many polls, and it's emphasised by the left most graph below: The more scientifically literate a conservative is in the US, the less likely they are to accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Lest any climate change deniers reading this take this as vindication of their views, I encourage them to look at the graph again. The more scientifically literate a liberal is in the US, the more likely they are to accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change.The clear implication here is that greater education is not helping people to understand the facts better and come to an opinion more supported by the evidence. On topics which they are already predisposed to a certain view for cultural or ideological reasons, more education is instead simply enabling them to better rationalise and justify their pre-existing views.The implications for fact-based reasoning are worrying (to me, anyway).

But that's not the bit that's supposed to be surprising. The surprising fact is that the more someone knows about science, the more their views on a scientific question seem to shaped instead by ideology.

I think the 'scientifically-inclined folks' are forming their opinions in exactly the same way as the rest - from the social cues of those around them. The difference is just that people with more knowledge of science have more they can draw on to justify their belief to themselves. Not sure how to test this idea.I think most of our ideas come from our social environment. Your placing on the liberal/conservative axis clearly should not influence your opinions of the reality of anthropogenic global warming, but equally clearly it does. I think the same applies to most 'liberal' or 'conservative' issues. I was arguing this idea with someone else on this forum before, but forget who and what thread.I think that the package of ideas that go together to make up a liberal or conservative ideology in the US (ans, with sometimes different labels, everywhere else) are mostly accidental products of political history - not anything necessarily connected. I was reminded of this debate today when reading about the Radical party in 19th cetury Baden. Their political programme proclaimed:"the self-rule of the people, the right of all to bear arms(...),"so obviously they would be libertarians in modern America. Except that it continued:"progressive income taxation, and the guarantee of work by the state."