A comment on the nature of man.

[partygirluk]

In the UK, people are stereotyped by the newspaper they read.

A Guardian reader is anti war, pro high taxes and always complaining about racism/sexism/whatever.

A Telegraph reader is pro military intervention, pro low taxes, pro strong stance against crime, anti political correctness.

A Mail reader is either a housewife and/or a man of the street right wing, beer drinking, vehemently anti P.C or racist, ultra jingostic person.

The Guardian promotes an anti war, high tax and P.C. agenda.

The Telegraph promotes a pro war on terror, low tax, anti P.C. agenda.

The Mail provides lots of stuff of interest to housewives, complains about asylum seekers, and goes on about how great Britain is.

What worries me is that the vast majority of people seem content to read views that support their own. They read the newspaper and happily nod along. They are happy not to challenge their beliefs. How can they have any confidence that they are correct, if they do not read the other side of the argument?

What this creates is a partisan society with most people taking on the political views of their parents or other key life influences. The brilliant minds who argue their case logically and convincingly are often not heard. Progress in society is stifled. Whilst freedom of speech should promote the best views to the fore, people are only willing to listen to views they are comfortable with.

I don't know if things are similar in the U.S. But if you are a liberal, try listening to Rush Limbaugh. Consider his points. Read the views of more moderate conservatives. If you approach them with an open mind, and still disagree, all the better. But if all you do is listen to the liberal media, and speak to liberal friends then your views lose credence in my eyes. The same goes for conservatives. Try reading Noam Chomsky or reading the New York Post. Perhaps you will agree with something, and change your point of view. Perhaps not. But at least you will have more confidence that your views are deepheld and not just a gut reaction.

[Roy Munson]

What do people who are against the war and in favor of low taxes read?

[partygirluk]

There is no mainstream media for them. I guess they read Libertarian monthly or some such.

[ QUOTE ]
What do people who are against the war and in favor of low taxes read?

[/ QUOTE ]

[Kaz The Original]

The economist!

[partygirluk]

The Economist was (and I think still is) pro-war in Iraq.

[admo415]

To your question as to why people only look at certain information I hopefully can shed some light.

Two biases seem to account for this:

The confirmation trap:Individuals tend to seek confirmatory information for what they think is true and fail to search for disconfirmatory information.

In other words, when making a decision or opinion people tend to search for information that supports that decision. For exmaple when you are buying a new car, hiring an employee...etc. However, very little of us search for disconfirmatory information, which would be most useful.

EX: Two consulting firms Yes Person and Devil's Advocate. The Yes Person would respond to any clien's request for advice by telling them that all their ideas are great, sometimes even allowing the cliet to write consulting reports themselves. The Devils Advocate would disapprove of any plans currently being considered by a client and give the cliet the top 10 reasons why they should not undertake the project. Which firms do you think gives more information (Devil's Advocate). However, almost all real world consulting firms are similar to the Yes Person, our desire to confirm our initial ideas is so strong that we will pay people to back us up /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

EX:

Hindsight Bias: After finding out whether or not an event occurred, individuals tend to overestimate the degree to which they would have predicted the correct outcome. Futhermore, individuals fail to ignore information they possess that others do not when predicting other's behavior.

EX:You are traveling in a car in an unfamiliar area, and your spouse is driving. When you approach an unmarked fork in the road,, your spouse decides to right. Four miles and fifteen minutes later, it is clear that you are lost. You blurt out, "I knew you should have turned left!"

Yay for finals....

[snakehead]

how do you characterize someone who makes their posts on the wrong forum?

[partygirluk]

This is a view isn't it? And I am not just referring politics. People tend to be too cosy with their own views regarding race, poker, sports, films etc.

[disjunction]

Quote: The same goes for conservatives. Try reading Noam Chomsky or reading the New York Post.

--------------------------------------------------------

LOL, I think you meant the NY Times. I don't think anyone is going to learn anything from the New York Post, except maybe about what Paris Hilton has been up to lately.

[J_V]

Nice post. I don't remember reading too many of your posts, but I like the what you are doing lately. Very insightful. Alas, they are hard to find these days.

[chezlaw]

A good read, must be because I agree with what you say.

I think you're being a litle hard on the 'quality' press and their readers. The Guardian and Times both had articles attacking and defending the war and covered it pretty well. Even the Independent which was stunningly biased had some articles in defence of the war.

Trouble is, most people don't read the 'quality' press and no doubt, as you say, many who do skip the articles that they disagree with.

[partygirluk]

My family is Jewish. All (yes, all) my parents friends are Jewish. They read the pro Israel Daily Telegraph and the Jewish Chronicle. Their view of the Middle East situation is horribly biased.

They are not fascists like Zaxx. They acknowledge that there is suffering on both sides. But they are only hearing one side of the argument. I simply can not respect their view on the Middle East. My uncle (who is a brilliant man) is similar. He is a keen Labour activist and as such used to read the Guardian and Independent. He recently stopped doing so because "they were too anti Israel". So now he reads the Telegraph, replete with its Barbara Amiel pro Israel rants.

Similarly I volunteered at a 95% Muslim school two years ago. It was avowedly pro-Palestinian. It was also deeply and distrubingly Anti Semitic (the Jews are significantly less Islamophobic). Part of the reason there are such divides in society is because these groups only listen to one side of the argument, and it naturally follows that they will look down upon the other side. If people were more open minded, they would see that the situation is very complex, both sides suffer greatly, both sides have done bad things. Whilst I suspect that the tribal nature of man means that they would still naturally empathise with their own side, perhaps opening their ears and eyes would combat extremism and lead to harmony.

[chezlaw]

If you can get them to calm down enough to consider the question seriously then try asking them if they would have the same view of Israel's behavior if they were Palestinian instead of Jewish. I managed this once and was suprised by the result.

I reckon that a measure of the reasonableness of our belief about the rights and wrongs of an issue is how little the belief would change if we were on the other side.


[ QUOTE ]
So now he reads the Telegraph, replete with its Barbara Amiel pro Israel rants.

[/ QUOTE ]

Presumably the Telegraph no longer suffers from Barbara Amiel's rants. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[jakethebake]

Here's the perfect example of a thread title that just begs to be ignored and yet here I am responding. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Lawrence Ng]

[ QUOTE ]
The economist!

[/ QUOTE ]

That magazine is great.

Lawrence

[Lawrence Ng]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a view isn't it? And I am not just referring politics. People tend to be too cosy with their own views regarding race, poker, sports, films etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Partyluckgurl,

We live in an imperfect world with imperfect information with imperfect people..

Could you imagine if it were the other way around...we'd be like dang clones!!!!

Lawrence

[partygirluk]

I don't want people to be the same. I want them to be different.

Debate and discussion is what drives society forward. But I want to see a debate between intelligent, informed conservatives, and intelligent, informed liberals.

And yes, the Economist is great.

[maryfield48]

[ QUOTE ]
The Economist was (and I think still is) pro-war in Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have detected an ever so careful backtracking from their earlier support.

I generally enjoy (and, horrors, agree with) The Economist, but I thought it was laughable when that supposedly pro-democracy, libertarian newspaper lauded Spain's Aznar for supporting the war in the face of polls showing 90% of his citizens opposing it. Pretzel-inspired logic, it seemed to me.

[Lawrence Ng]

[ QUOTE ]
What worries me is that the vast majority of people seem content to read views that support their own. They read the newspaper and happily nod along. They are happy not to challenge their beliefs. How can they have any confidence that they are correct, if they do not read the other side of the argument?

[/ QUOTE ]

The state of information is well protected by any means. Freedom of speech, religion, rights exist only to a certain degree (and a high degree thankfully) where there a major imbalance in beliefs is impacted upon society. It is not that people don't read the other side of the story, it is that the other side of the story is often discriminated, hidden, locked away in some metaphorical safe behind the highest level of authorities that wield the powers be. Today we have the Internet which IMO shatters this safe. Still however, finding the entire is rather a daunting task.

[ QUOTE ]
What this creates is a partisan society with most people taking on the political views of their parents or other key life influences. The brilliant minds who argue their case logically and convincingly are often not heard. Progress in society is stifled. Whilst freedom of speech should promote the best views to the fore, people are only willing to listen to views they are comfortable with.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why education amongst any sociey is so important. Knowledge leads to understanding which leads to the truth. Without knowledge, one can still believe our earth is the center of the universe. Progress is never stifled. The truth, no matter how slow, how detained it may be always releases itself. It's just a matter of time.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know if things are similar in the U.S. But if you are a liberal, try listening to Rush Limbaugh. Consider his points. Read the views of more moderate conservatives. If you approach them with an open mind, and still disagree, all the better. But if all you do is listen to the liberal media, and speak to liberal friends then your views lose credence in my eyes. The same goes for conservatives. Try reading Noam Chomsky or reading the New York Post. Perhaps you will agree with something, and change your point of view. Perhaps not. But at least you will have more confidence that your views are deepheld and not just a gut reaction

[/ QUOTE ]

The key to liberalism is definitely keeping an unbiased perspective on all view points. This is literally impossible to do. Why? Simply put, this goes back to people being imperfect and as such this leads to people having imperfect information. Opinions, even those which are credited to the highest degree, are formed on imperfect information.

Your post alone is a bias itself. It is a bias towards the liberal media, towards people who are biased towards media. Can you where I am going here? What you seek cannot exist.

Lawrence

[Lawrence Ng]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't want people to be the same. I want them to be different.



[/ QUOTE ]

And God granted your wish many eons ago....

[ QUOTE ]
Debate and discussion is what drives society forward. But I want to see a debate between intelligent, informed conservatives, and intelligent, informed liberals.


[/ QUOTE ]

I personally think monkeys would make better debaters and dicussion members than a bunch of intellects...but that's me. Simply put, truth drives society forward. Without truth we live in a world of disbelief and might as well pretend we are all bigtime Hollywood stars.

/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Lawrence