Friday, December 25, 2015

The irrelevance of reason in politics

IVN published a Dissident Politics article on the biology of why the use of unbiased facts and logic are not persuasive or common in most political discourse.

In politics, unbiased facts and unbiased logic play a small role in shaping our world view and in how we apply logic to it. Both facts are logic are shaped and distorted by innate, unconscious biases and personal ideology or values. Human biology being what it is,  facts and logic that undercut or contradict personal biases and beliefs are usually downplayed or rejected completely, e.g., many anti-government ideologues reject human-caused climate change and/or climate science as a hoax or too unsettled to carry any persuasive weight. Contrary facts and logic are simply irrelevant to those personal beliefs and values.

The article echoes an earlier Dissident Politics article arguing that fact and logic have an unacceptably small a role in modern American politics, which is why our politics is unacceptably irrational.

The article is here.

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