The Emotional Labor Of Debating In Good Faith
In a world of fixed positions, is debating in good faith really worth it?
I have decided to ride alongside Twitter as it continues its slow downward spiral into the abyss (or until I get that sweet sweet Blue Sky invite). For as bad as it’s getting in some places, there is still lots of great and thought-provoking content on the social media platform. And a thread posted this past Saturday by journalist David Roberts is an excellent example of the gems you can still find on the site.
In the thread, Roberts (who covered Climate Change for Grist and Vox before going independent), uses the Trump Indictment as a jumping-off point to discuss the challenges of debating people in good faith who will not return that favor. You can read the entire thread at Threadreader. He begins by discussing how countless people responded to a recent JD Vance tweet defending the former President in order to point out how the junior Senator from Ohio, unsurprisingly, gets the law completely wrong. Roberts goes on to write:
Over 20 years of covering climate change I have, needless to say, become *very* familiar with all these dynamics. I’ve seen people of good faith pour so much time — I mean 100s of 1000s of labor hours — into crafting arguments trying to “persuade deniers.”
And it never worked. Literally. A 99.99999% failure rate. Because deniers can just say “nuh UH” & go on arguing. There’s no ref to step in & say “you lost this one.” Or if a particular denier myth is, finally, with enormous effort, buried… they just pivot & make up another one!
It’s a microcosm. The deniers were always just defending their tribal position…so they assume that’s what everyone’s doing. The climate scientists were trying to reason from evidence to conclusions…so they assume that’s what everyone’s doing. Ships in the night.
People say the deniers delayed action, & that’s true, but the other thing they did, which no one’s quite put a term to or quantified, is simply drain the time, effort, & emotional energy of tens of thousands of climate-sane people.
It takes virtually no effort to toss some lie or misleading bullshit out into the public sphere; it takes enormous effort to craft an evidence-based argument against it. Just multiply that asymmetry over & over & over & over again & you get a sense of the cost of all this.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1667598256912883717.html
There’s a lot of truth and things to think about in these five tweets. First, it’s worth noting that engaging in good-faith debates requires significant effort. It means carefully unpacking your argument and supporting it with data. It also means fact-checking yourself (asking yourself “what don’t I know?” about a topic). It also means crafting responses in a way that is clear while doing your best to avoid snark. And, it also means being prepared to do that over, and over, and over again.
Arguing in bad faith, on the other hand, is much easier–primarily because all you are doing is pretending to follow (while exploiting) the rules of debate. And there are lots of tools for that, from moving the goalposts of a discussion to the Gish Gallop (which was created to advance anti-evolutionary theories in what were supposed to be good faith debates). Or there’s just the ever popular, throw up an incendiary comment and then just disappear.*
To Robert’s point, I think it’s worth considering how much energy and time are eaten up by a commitment to debate in good faith against people who are not returning that favor. I have definitely thought about this before, but not necessarily in such clear terms.
What I also appreciate about Robert’s thread was this insight about why the two sides talk past each other:
Of course, said climate change deniers tend to ignore the wealth of well-document evidence about how Fossil Fuel Companies and other business interests have done their damnedest to suppress evidence of climate change for decades. Then again, if you follow Roberts’s line of thinking, those deniers accept that this happened (and is continuing to happen) and it most likely only reinforces their assumption that the opposite side must be doing the same thing.
Admittedly, this sort of projection is very familiar to anyone who spends time in the Conservative-Media-Complex.
So this gets back to a fundamental question–if we accept that a lot of folks are arguing in bad faith, is it worth engaging them in good faith? Personally, I think it depends on your goal in doing so. If your hope is to change their minds, probably not. I think everyone needs to accept that it’s really difficult, if not impossible, to win a debate on the internet (or most places) so long as your success criteria are hearing an unequivocal “You’re right. I’m wrong.”
Personally speaking, as someone who has spent more time and energy trying to debate in good faith* than I care to admit, I do my best (though I’m not always successful) to give up on “winning.” I personally engage in that way for two key reasons: first, it helps me sharpen my arguments and make sure I’m on solid ground. And, occasionally, you find a useful nugget of understanding in a bad-faith argument (you can’t spot and name a logical fallacy like the Gish Gallop without first engaging in those debates). But, honestly, this isn’t the core reason I do it.
My primary reason for engaging in that way, as I’ve mentioned in the past here, is that I’m engaging not for the benefit of the person I’m debating. Someone, for example, who wants to advance that the Modern (post-1950) Democratic party is the party of racism is never going to move off their ideologically-rooted position (see, eg, D’Souza, Dinesh). However, carefully pointing out all of the historical issues with this argument and all the counterfactuals in a clear and concise way just might influence the thinking of the countless people who read, but don’t post, on Twitter or OTB. I’m an optimist (albeit a cynical one) who believes in the power of networks. Therefore I believe that helping at least one person think just a little bit differently or be prepared to respond when someone advances a bad talking point makes all that effort worth it.
… at least most of the time.
Ok, commenters, your turn? Good-faith debating, is it worth it? What are your criteria for engaging in one?
* – To be clear, I’m no angel–I don’t always debate in good faith. My public writing record shows that, especially when it’s a long-time “sparring” partner who I know isn’t going to return the favor, I definitely engage in snark and insults rather than persuasive argumentation.
Also, I think many of us, myself included, have topics that we will most likely never move significantly on. For me, it’s things like the importance of LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, the importance of government services, and the ongoing and harmful effects of systemic racism. My views on them have definitely changed over the years and will change in the future. That said, that movement probably will never include a wholesale abandonment of my current positions. So, in my opinion, it’s important (a) that we’re capable of admitting those personal biases, and (b) that we check ourselves even more closely on those topics to ensure we’re not putting ideology above all else.
This is the most frustrating aspect of online life. And my reasons for arguing in good faith are just like yours – for the passersby, not for the person I’m responding to.
I have a sense of responsibility to the world to encourage rational thinking, to encourage self awareness, to encourage pushing down on one’s ego and seeing other arguments – but more and more I’m seeing that sense of responsibility both one-sided, and futile.
As an experiment I took a week off from typing anything into the online world. I just read the news and resisted the urge to comment. My attitude didn’t change an iota. I’m now persuaded that the problem is mere awareness of the “news” and the online crap that exists around it.
But I have been raised from a pup to be a responsible citizen of the world – which includes being aware of what is going on. My overdeveloped sense of justice and fairness fails me daily when guys like Trump get headlines and glory.
I have no answers, just more questions.
Have to disagree with Roberts since I was a climate denier who was persuaded.
@Hal_10000:
Having come to know you over the years, and also knowing your profession, I think you are being overly harsh on yourself here Hal. The fact you were persuaded suggests that you were a skeptic IMO.
Granted that skepticism could have initially been rooted in denial. That was the case for me (I grew up with a parent who listened to a lot of conservative radio). And still, the fact you were willing to, over time, evaluate the evidence differentiates you from folks who are operating on a faith-based system. It’s that group that I reserve “denial” for.
That said, I’d love to hear what led you to reconsider your position. Have you ever written about it?
And, being an optimist, I continually hope that people in that group will eventually be influenced by the evidence. However, as a cynical optimist, I’m also not holding my breath that will happen any time soon for most of them.
Father was a John Bircher. Most of my very large family are in the MAGA camp. Having access to data, easily, via the internet changed me. Getting to know actual, real black people and other minorities and gay people changed me. It was very hard for me to reconcile my Christian beliefs with hating these people who really weren’t different in any important way.
I have a snarky side and that comes out with people in the other tribe sometimes but when it comes to my profession I try very hard to avoid that and argue based upon the literature and science as we know it. It’s damn hard as I find that I am citing papers from real journals or explaining actual pathophysiology and real observed experience while the other side is quoting what some person on a Youtube said or one of the journals where people pay to get published. Why do I do it? I hope someone not commenting and just reading is persuadable. Also, if honest, I do enjoy arguing. Wife and I have been involved with local high school speech and debate team for many years.
Steve
@steve:
Yeah, there is that too. And that’s kinda me as well.
@Matt Bernius: I think it boils down to: are you more interested in figuring out what the truth is, or in defending “your side”?
This is why there’s a great difference between a bunch of scientists arguing with each other and scientists arguing with evolution-deniers. The evolution-deniers are never going to admit that they are wrong, because their “truth” is based on their book and hanging together against the Evil Evolutionists, not what is really out there. Nothing will convince them that their Bible-based interpretation isn’t true.
“Honey, it’s time to turn off the computer and go to bed.”
“I can’t! Someone on the Internet is wrong!“
The people who read but don’t post are my primary audience in online debates, and in some of what I post here. I knocked out a lot of vaccine and COVID misinformation here, where no one needed to be convinced, just for that reason.
You never know who else is following the debate.
@Hal_10000: Congratulations on your status as a unicorn. Once again, I will note that no matter how much you may believe that you are like everyone else, “I used to be but now I’m not” are more likely to make “I” an outlier rather than a data point.
[…]
Moving on to what I actually intended to write about, Roberts topic was the focus of one of my lectures when I was teaching research-based argument composition. Ironically, good faith argument isn’t likely to happen in topics where the things people think are held as articles of faith, matters of belief rather than conclusions based on evidence.* Articles of faith are particularly resistant to persuasion based on evidence because, as Ann Wilson [who didn’t write the song] so artfully put it, “I can’t sell you what you don’t want to buy.”
My peers on the faculty where I was teaching R-BA had agreed that we would not allow students to write on a collection 0f topics that we thought were “articles of faith.” Life begins at conception, therefore abortion is wrong/murder, gun control, evolution v. intelligent design,** and a couple of other topics that I can’t remember (or declined to include on my list, the lists were not hard and fast). We decided to make the list for two reasons: First, we were all tired of reading poorly researched and dumb papers on those topics, and second, because we were persuaded that we weren’t doing either our students or the community any favors by teaching students that you can cherry pick a bunch of crap and that constitutes a “reasoned argument.”***
To emphasize the point about articles of faith, I used to have my students pick topics for an impromptu in-class “debate” where I would play the role of “the believer/unbeliever.” After a few exchanges one of the students would stop the “debate” by suggesting that it didn’t matter what anyone said, I was going to simply deny the validity of the claim. (Yessssss! They get it!) The same process that Roberts describes usually repeats in one form or another. It may be a lot of things, but it isn’t “debate” and it isn’t “in good faith.”ee
(And for the record, I used to be a “climate denier” but am not anymore–I’m a “past the tipping point” now. Different, but just as futile to talk to.)
*and most people, but especially religious and secular ones, frequently have difficulty distinguishing between the two because of apologetics, but I’ma steer away from that tar baby standing in the briar patch for today
**although I did allow a student to research why evolution was a controversial topic once. I can no longer remember her conclusion/thesis topic, though
***yes, we still got a few essays that were a bunch of cherry picking crap–no system is without its flaws
Good post. I struggle with this at times. There are many people on twitter that it’s obvious it’s not going to be productive to engage with, whether they’re trolls, idiots, professional stirrers, or whatever. What galls me, though, is how many people there are these days who are famous and in positions of power and also are clearly not arguing in good faith. Vance is a great example of that, but there are many others. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Interesting post, thanks Matt!
A couple of thoughts:
– Social media was never designed for debate and is structurally very poor at promoting debate. This is particularly true for Twitter. I find that “debating” on social media is largely counterproductive.
– Traditionally, a debate isn’t intended to change the mind of the person you are debating with. Even in moderated debates, the goal is never to convince the other debaters, the goal is to convince an audience. That’s how I try to look at my role in online debates. I’ve been arguing online since the BBS days in the 1980’s and learned long ago that it’s pointless to expect people with strong views to suddenly change their minds. Human cognition doesn’t work that way.
In my own case, when I “debate” someone here or online, I am almost never attempting to convince them. I’m usually trying to convince the people who don’t comment or aren’t involved in the convo. But I admit that I get way too strident more often than I’d like, especially if I’ve had a few drinks.
– The world isn’t binary. For example:
There are wide-ranging views and opinions under those umbrellas.
For example, on climate change, you have people who believe climate change will cause human extinction unless something is done in the next decade as well as people who think climate change is more of a long-term manageable problem. Both think that climate change is real. And both likely have cherry-picked “the science” to buttress their views. It’s very likely that both have never read an IPCC report. A lot of climate change debate is not actually about whether it’s happening but how bad it is and what to do about it.
Government services is another easy example. Very very few people want a North Korea-style government, even one that promotes their particular policies and ideology. At the same time, very few people want anarchy, where there is no government. The question is then about what functions the government should or shouldn’t have and at what level (ie. local, state, national, global) those functions should operate. IOW, just about everyone believes in “the importance of government services” but people have disagreements about which services government should perform, how government should perform them, and how much authority government should have to accomplish its goals.
It’s the same with the others you cite. In principle, I agree with all of them, but I suspect we’d have very different views and opinions once we drill a bit below that surface.
– Another thing that I bring up here from time-to-time, is the importance of understanding and recognizing how humans think.
We are tribal. We rely on pattern recognition and confirmation bias. We usually cannot tell the difference between facts, opinions, analysis of facts, opinions based on facts, etc., without a lot of deliberate thought. It takes us a long time to change our minds about things we think we know well and ideas that are important and valuable to us. People don’t like to admit they are wrong, especially when the person who is right is an asshole or part of the wrong tribe (see most social media “debates”).
I still like to reference this old Brink Lindsay article which is about partisanship, but applies much more broadly:
Matt, you could easily subdivide this topic into a dozen. For instance, we (meaning people) often mix all kinds of debate into one giant mess, leading to frustration. For instance, you can debate values, or the correct application of those values; you can debate how people are, or how they should be; you can debate the meaning of facts, or you can debate the provenance and accuracy of those facts; you can debate what someone is saying, or you can debate their motivation for saying that. I could go on, but I hope you get my point – a lot of debate has one person debating one side of an “or” listed above, while the other side is debating the other. So a legitimate topic for debate (heh) is how often we think we are debating something but are actually just tangentially yelling at each other about two different but related things.
Another topic could be the amount of time spent yammering at each other despite agreeing on virtually every fact except for the crucial starting point: definition of a word (Trump “cult” anyone?)
Another could be whether a long term campaign of debate has any effect, even if you don’t change any minds in the moment.
Yep, I can think of at least a dozen different topics like that.
When I was young I thought engaging in homosexual relations was wrong. I have changed my mind. I didn’t change my mind about this because of arguments. I changed it because of experiences. Sometimes those experiences were uncomfortable, but sometimes not.
For instance, I adore Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I played cymbals and triangle in one performance of it by a college symphony orchestra. Then I learned that Britten was gay, and was partnered with the tenor Peter Pears, who was also a foremost interpreter of Britten.
Hmm. I wasn’t willing to excise them from my life. No more than I was willing to excise the roommate and good friend who came out to us.
When I talk with people about things, I try not so much to prove them wrong as to inspire them to have a different experience, which might well be a pleasant one.
You know, becoming more gay-positive meant I could relax about certain things. I let go of a bunch of anxieties, and life became better.
Embracing the idea of climate change is probably a tougher sell, since it means we have to do something. But how much do we need to do? Maybe converting to mostly electric vehicles isn’t such a bad thing, right? Those cars are really kind of awesome in a lot of ways, right?
And so on.
@Jay L Gischer:
This is a common situation, and the solution is almost always the same — more lube, and go slow until you get in the groove.
@grumpy realist:
Agreed, if the scientists aren’t in the field that is being argued about. In that case, they can be as stubborn as an anti-evolution preacher.
I’d say yes.
But in saying that I might just be trying to deceive you for a momentary tactical advantage.
😉
@Andy:
Excellent point.
@Jay L Gischer:
Great point, and a bit similiar to what @steve wrote. I think it makes sense to differentiate positions held based on feelings versus those held on facts. And I think in many cases we mistake, or misidentify, one for the other.
This reminds me of something I was told at the start of my journey into civic work: you have disagreements based on data and disagreements based on stories. And you can use data to fight data and stories to fight stories. But rarely if ever will stories defeat a data based disagreement, nor can data beat a story based agreement.
A good faith effort to get nearer to Truth is inherently worthwhile. I debate to learn the truth, to understand, and yes to work on the silent audience. But the truth is for me, for my use, no further justification is necessary.
But learning how and when to present the truth you think you’ve found is called politics.
@Michael Reynolds:
To put my temptation to cheap comedy aside for a bit, I agree with this.
I will generally attempt to debate in good faith, trying to use evidence and rational argument (well, and the occasional rhetorical trick, if I can’t resist), and to listen to and address the position of the other party on an initial assumption that they are also being reasonably honest.
Even if and when it become plain the counter-party is not in good faith, continuing to be reasonable is my default.
That’s my particularly sneaky political approach. 🙂
Because it may persuade the audience; Classical rhetoric 101.
More important, I think it’s a good intellectual exercise for me. I’ve even occasionally thought: hmm, am I making a mistake? Part of the reason, perhaps, that I’ve become more economically and environmentally left-wing as I’ve got older.
Sometimes I do run out of patience though.
It’s happened a few times here, when provoked sufficiently.
Saint I ain’t.
@Matt Bernius:
@Andy points out above:
I think I wrote about this in one of my earliest comments here. Over the past few years, much of the attention wrt free speech and free thought has been about perceived illiberalism in attempts to counter speech intended to marginalize out groups. The debate develops differently depending on whether it involves action by private social media firms, language used in government documents, etc. But it all revolves around the boundaries of censorship.
But I think there is another aspect in play that is pernicious and possibly more impactful if only because it is inobvious. Andy hints at it. It’s multifaceted. It deserves more careful consideration than it receives.
It is the notion that opinions can’t be wrong.
That idea, which is entirely reasonable, productive, and true in some contexts, creates the ground to turn any verifiable fact into an opinion via simple assertion. Put another way, one can make an issue controversial by little more than loud negation. Free thought and expression, key pillars of an open society, are exploitable by those who wish to leverage them for personal gain.
It goes beyond, as an example, extending religious belief to the point that it interferes with other key democratic principles. It’s much more general than that. It’s la(z)y person’s pomo; Rufoian bowlderization of CRT; mistaking sophomoric, obnoxious contrarianism for back-of-the-class cool.
Alas, this effect comes with the territory that Americans can have opinions of issues in the absence of knowledge about those issues (one of the things I needed to persuade my students–mostly adults–about while I was in Korea was that one can have opinions even without knowledge specific to the topic*). Kellyanne Conway’s (or has she changed her name in the wake of her divorce) absolutely gobsmacking assertion that while “they” have facts, “we” have alternative facts certainly didn’t help, but the problem predates Trump and his apologists.
*In Korea, it was important to get students to buy into having opinions despite having inadequate information because many used “I don’t know enough about that to say” was a common excuse students would use to avoid speaking. I had occasional students for whom “I don’t know enough…” was the only phrase they knew beyond “hi.” Some students were even very eloquent and expansive in their denials of expertise, but in those cases, I usually let the issue drop. 😉
During the recent East Coast Smoke Season you could find anti-mask covidiots starting up their anti-mask shit because it was an article of faith that masks don’t work, cannot work, must never work.
The only point to interacting with someone like that is sport, if you have a good put down.
I would add that this also goes for people who are saying things that I agree with, but have accepted that belief as a part of their identity. They don’t want to have a discussion, they don’t want to be exposed to new ideas.
A few jobs ago, a woman was going on at lunch about how women earn 70% of what a man does for the same job, and just trying to start an argument because… I don’t know, sometimes you just need to have an argument.
I “helpfully” pointed out that women also weigh roughly 70% of what men do. This was not the argument she was hoping to have.
The “people get paid by the pound” implication was so monumentally stupid that she couldn’t process it, especially since I did not crack a smile. She was prepared for something stupid from a man, but not that stupid.
I think that’s the best way to handle the people who aren’t arguing from good faith. Monumentally stupid counterarguments that get them off script.
You can have an opinion on matters you know little about, but not an informed opinion.
that’s, IMO, an important distinction, and one few people take into account.
@steve:
I don’t know about arguing, but let’s be honest, commenting is a form of entertainment. And I sometimes waste time commenting on conservative sites. Sometimes because I think I see a tiny crack where a wedge can be inserted to maybe get an observer to think. But mostly because some things are just too stupid to let pass unremarked.
I think it’s correct that many beliefs are rooted on religion, or a religious disposition. Normative believes, no matter how you cut it, come down to because somebody said so, so there. No opening for argument. I read piece recently on Cromwell. The author made the point that you can’t understand the history of that time without understanding that, unlike us, those people took religion seriously, it ruled their lives, even silly sounding differences in dogma. They really did decide things on belief and were willing to go to war for belief. Fewer of us moderns feel so, but some do. Judge Kacsmaryk in TX apparently holds a normative belief that abortion is evil and that’s that. Go around him or overpower him, he ain’t changing his opinion, and he’ll lie, cheat, and steal to enforce his belief on the rest of us.
But I think a lot of modern political “belief” is a different thing. We live in a post-modern attention economy with performative politics. People believe, as Hanna Arendt said, everything and nothing. They support whatever belief they find most entertaining. And it’s entertaining to fight over it. Do the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers really believe in MAGA? Could any of them even say what MAGA is? Or do they mostly just like walking around with guns and camo, playing soldier and trying to look tough? There was some discussion here a day or two ago about Gen Z turning conservative. I suspect part of the explanation is they find it more entertaining.
Sometimes I comment as a sort of essay assignment to sort out my own thoughts. And expose them to criticism.
@Hal_10000:
I was as well, although I wonder if a big part of that wasn’t an overall shift in my politics that led me to explore the evidence with a different mindset, where I basically “persuaded” myself.
On the other hand, as I think I’ve said before, my exchange with then-commenter JukeBoxGrad about Benghazi really did result in me reversing my position after reading his comments and replies to me in them. He laid out the factual chain of events in a way that I could not continue to believe what I had up to that point.
To Matt B.’s overall question, I’ve pretty much given up trying to change the minds of the hard-core Trump cultists. Every time I make a good-faith argument, they just pick up the goalposts and move them another 10 yards downfield. It’s pointless.
@Matt Bernius:
I wrote about it here.
@Kurtz:
A common malady among undergraduates
@Hal_10000:
I suspected there might be a OG post about it. Thanks for sharing. After reading it, my take is that you weren’t a climate denier (at least in the way that I think of them), you were a true skeptic in that you interrogated the claims on both sides and followed the evidence.
Likewise your essay (which I recommend everyone read) raises an important point, Hal:
This is sooooo good. It gets to the point that calling oneself a “believer” can be equally problematic because of that issue of faith. Believers’ and deniers’ positions are both based on faith (story). True skeptics are based on fact (data). This isn’t to say there cannot be slippage, especially when we are not necessarily experts in a topic. But it’s a good model to start with.
@Kurtz:
Really great point. And let me add a bit more nuance to this: even in cases where an opinion cannot necessarily be right or wrong, there is also the issue of how informed they are. So there are lots of things I can (and do) have an opinion about. However, the amount of things I have an informed opinion about is much smaller. And the number of things I have a VERY informed opinion about is even smaller still.
And, at least for me, the more informed an opinion I have the more tightly held it tends to be (if for no other reason, because I’ve spent a LOT of time testing and refining said opinion).
BTW, this thing about opinions is a great example of a case where what might appear to be a logical fallacy (arguement from authority) isn’t. Of course, you need to have enough experience with rhetoric to understand why it fails (which a lot of folks who love to cry “arguement from authority” don’t, ironically, have).
@Matt Bernius:
People often misuse fallacies. I think it is a tactic used to manifest.
Some people are really good at expressing their views, but not so good at going through the process of teasing out the things that also must be un/true for their idea to be accurate. Abstracted:
If x is true,
y, a, and b also must be true,
And
z cannot be true
I’ve pointed this out to some regs here and it usually doesn’t go well. The door to question whether z is mutually exclusive to x or whether y is truly related to x is wide open but the usual approach is to claim they didn’t say that. Hell, they could even take responsibility for being unclear by explaining further.
But they usually default to a defensive response which reveals that it’s much more likely to be a display of unwillingness to fully examine their view.
It’s interesting, because the loudest people who express views vehemently are often the ones who hold onto unexamined beliefs. Whereas you do your best to make sure that the views you hold tightest are thoroughly vetted, the opposite seems to be true of most people.
Because it’s fucking hard. It takes time, effort, and mental energy. And it makes sense this is the case. If one spends all their time scrambling just to make sure they have a roof over their head and food for dependents, who wants to spend energy figuring out who to get out the ten tight knots in that shoelace. Especially if you haven’t been taught how to use the unknotting tools.
@Mikey:
Between the extremes, there is a huge playing field. You don’t need to convince hard-core Trump cultists, you need to convince the people at the margins that hard-core Trump cultists have bad ideas and shouldn’t be listened to.
@Matt Bernius:
I think an underappreciated fact is that everyone gets most of their information filtered through other people. We get most of our notions of what’s true or false not from a careful examination of all the facts (no one has the time or expertise to examine all the facts on everything), but from trusted third parties. And the “facts” may have come from these third parties and not primary sources. Cherry-picking studies is part of this too.
We all do it. Occasionally, we ought to step back and question our priors.
And, at least for me, the more informed an opinion I have the more tightly held it tends to be (if for no other reason, because I’ve spent a LOT of time testing and refining said opinion).
But when it’s total bullshit like climate-change denialism, you have spent a lot of time testing and refining your opinion. Not via science, but through advertising and living in a world where money pays the bills. Denialism was just an effort by energy companies to fight the evidence of climate change. It was merely corporate propaganda and we are exposed to that all the time.
It’s like believing that a press release about how bad a corporation feels about a recent mistake they made represents their true feelings, or like actually believing chain-smoking Marlboro Reds makes you a rugged outlaw of a figure.
@Andy:
My problem with this is that I’ve never met one of those mythical “people at the margins”. I only know people who respect reality, and people who respect Trump. Maybe I live in a weird bubble, but I genuinely can’t imagine what corner of reality might still support a viable population of people at the margins.