Dwight Waldo said "We can no longer use our little joke that campus politics are so nasty because the stakes are so small. They are now so nasty because the stakes are so large."
I'd argue Motivated Reasoning arises from a position which doesn't have many facts to back it. Political opinions, by my lights, are all shaped negatively, by injustice we ourselves have seen in the world. Religious allegiance, including my own - I'd like to think I'm a rational human being, a scientific man, able to change my mind about things - but I believe in this Jesus Christ described in some manuscripts from the second half of the Roman Empire - we all entertain aspects of Motivated Reasoning.
And I suspect this is true of everyone, this dual mindset.
And how could it be otherwise? All the axioms we've unconsciously absorbed, all the tabus and the mountain ranges of stuff we never question... it's one thing for science to go through the evidence and say "Hmm... after years of looking, there is no sterile neutrino and we can close the door on that idea, along with the magnetic monopole and that statistical blip at 750 GeV at CERN." It's quite another to try to violate our own moral constraints.
We can afford Scout Mentality when we know we don't have enough facts to have an opinion on some subject. But we seldom have the luxury to do a full analysis iteration before decisions have to be made....
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Dwight Waldo said "We can no longer use our little joke that campus politics are so nasty because the stakes are so small. They are now so nasty because the stakes are so large."
ReplyDeleteI'd argue Motivated Reasoning arises from a position which doesn't have many facts to back it. Political opinions, by my lights, are all shaped negatively, by injustice we ourselves have seen in the world. Religious allegiance, including my own - I'd like to think I'm a rational human being, a scientific man, able to change my mind about things - but I believe in this Jesus Christ described in some manuscripts from the second half of the Roman Empire - we all entertain aspects of Motivated Reasoning.
And I suspect this is true of everyone, this dual mindset.
And how could it be otherwise? All the axioms we've unconsciously absorbed, all the tabus and the mountain ranges of stuff we never question... it's one thing for science to go through the evidence and say "Hmm... after years of looking, there is no sterile neutrino and we can close the door on that idea, along with the magnetic monopole and that statistical blip at 750 GeV at CERN." It's quite another to try to violate our own moral constraints.
We can afford Scout Mentality when we know we don't have enough facts to have an opinion on some subject. But we seldom have the luxury to do a full analysis iteration before decisions have to be made....