Does REALITY have a left-leaning bias? Some polls seem to suggest YES.
In research constructed by Frank Graves, a professor at Carlton University, respondents were given a series of questions to test how much or how little they believed in things. It turned out that the people who most strongly believed disinformation where far and away more likely to be planning to vote Conservative or PPC while those with low level of believing disinformation tended to be split more between Liberal and NDP.
How about that, eh? Turns out reality has a left-leaning bias!
[quote]“For this research, we tested four separate indicators of disinformation and we have constructed a disinformation index, a 12-point scale that measures how strongly respondents have bought into three pieces of disinformation and how strongly they reject one piece of correct information:
- Canada’s economic growth lags well behind the G7 average; - Vaccine-related deaths are being concealed from the public; - The right to bear arms is guaranteed in Canada’s constitution; and - Climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions”[/quote]
@SW-User There are people all across the political spectrum that believe in wacky-ass conspiracy theories. But it's only on the Right that insane conspiracy nonsense is so common that it becomes part of party platforms.
The right-wing establishment kinda has to be anti-reality. The alternative is that they just telling working-class people that they want to make the workers as poor as possible. That doesn't sell, so instead they have to invent alternative realities about how welfare actually make people worse off.
Reality doesn't suggest anything, and you can't trust a poll done by Frank Graves.
He is known for his leftwing bias, and inflammatory comments towards conservatives. Last year, he threatened the Conservative Party leader in Canada saying "I will make sure you are never going to lead my country", adding it wasn't an "idle threat."
He will say that his data isn't biased, but his objectives and the way he collects this data are unquestionably led by bias. Even the questions above are clearly biased, as well as being demonstrably incendiary.
I can only assume that this poll is part of his effort to stay true to his threat to stop Pierre Poilievre from ever leading "his country."
2012: Survey: NPR’s listeners best-informed, Fox viewers worst-informed https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/survey-nprs-listeners-best-informed-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed/
2014: 5 facts about Fox News http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/14/five-facts-about-fox-news/ Also http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/
2015 Fox News viewers tend to be less informed, says new study http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/politics/fox-news-viewers-tend-to-be-less-informed-says-new-study/article/4337622015-2019 https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/
Interestingly, Fox won a lawsuit in court ensuring their right to lie and misinform the public. See: http://www.philly2philly.com/politics_community/politics_community_articles/2009/6/29/4854/fox_news_wins_lawsuit_misinform_public
Some would say the nature of being “liberal” is to have an open mind. Open minds are more likely to be interested in learning new things.
A “conservative” is more likely to be interested in maintaining a status quo that they enjoy. Thus being less open to anything that might change that status Kuo away from their favor.
well what people generally associate with the American right wing definitely denies reality on some issues. But so do lefties. I mean, lefties will deadass tell you that someone with a penis, XY chromosomes, and mobile gametes can be a woman. To me, that's denial of reality. Climate change is also real. Why identify as left wing or right wing? What do those lables even mean to you?
@BRUUH In practice, a woman is someone who identifies with a collection of tropes that society assigns to females at birth. For utility's sake, a woman is anyone who identifies as one.
And bee tee dubs, nobody believes a woman is an "adult human female." If that was the case, then Wonder Woman wouldn't be a woman. But do transphobes accuse DC of promoting "woke trans ideology," and do they demand DC change Wonder Woman's name? No, because we all know that gender is mostly cultural, with a small biological element, and we assign gender to non-humans all the time.
The trans issue is one that i'm not myself decided upon although interesting research in that field continues to emerge to the effect that a trans person's brain more closely resembles that of the gender with which they identify rather than that to which they were assigned.
But I'm not litigating that here. I
Being on the liberal side of the political spectrum doesn't mean you don't believe disinformation and being on the political right doesn't mean you necessarily do. It just appears that there exists a strong correlation between believing things which are not evidence based, or indeed, which contradict the evidence and intending to vote to the right of the political spectrum.
Since the Renaissance the whole of human society has been built on a foundation of certain inarguable truths, founded on science. Now we can't even agree on the world being round anymore.
Reality has a "bias" ? ... or is this just the outcome of one of the basic tendencies of conservatism... that gut-feelings (intuitions) matter and gut-feelings are just too simplistic once you start thinking about complex issues?
@Pikachu [quote][i]You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that[/i] [b]we are generally men of untaught feelings, that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them.[/b] [i][u]We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.[/u] Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved.[/i][b] Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.[/b]
- Edmund Burke, [i]Reflections on The Revolution in France[/i], 1790[/quote]
@Pikachu It's not an issue. It's literally what conservatism is... this isn't a secret, you just need to look into what the basic components are of this ideological stance.
[quote][b]Conservatism, political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices.[/b]
[b]Conservatism is a preference for the historically inherited rather than the abstract and ideal. [/b][i]This preference has traditionally rested on an[/i] [b]organic conception of society[/b][i]—that is, on the belief that society is not merely a loose collection of individuals but a living organism comprising closely connected, interdependent members. Conservatives thus favour institutions and practices that have evolved gradually and are manifestations of continuity and stability. Government’s responsibility is to be the servant, not the master, of existing ways of life, and politicians must therefore resist the temptation to transform society and politics. This suspicion of government activism distinguishes conservatism not only from radical forms of political thought but also from liberalism, which is a modernizing, antitraditionalist movement dedicated to correcting the evils and abuses resulting from the misuse of social and political power.[/i] [...] [i]American writer Ambrose Bierce cynically (but not inappropriately) defined the conservative as “a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” Conservatism must also be distinguished from the reactionary outlook, which favours the restoration of a previous, and usually outmoded, political or social order.[/i]
[...]
[i]A common way of distinguishing conservatism from both liberalism and radicalism is to say that [/i][b]conservatives reject the optimistic view that human beings can be morally improved through political and social change. [/b][b]Conservatives who are Christians sometimes express this point by saying that human beings are guilty of original sin. Skeptical conservatives merely observe that human history, under almost all imaginable political and social circumstances, has been filled with a great deal of evil.[/b] [b]Far from believing that human nature is essentially good or that human beings are fundamentally rational, conservatives tend to assume that human beings are driven by their passions and desires—and are therefore naturally prone to selfishness, anarchy, irrationality, and violence.[/b] [i]Accordingly, conservatives look to traditional political and cultural institutions to curb humans’ base and destructive instincts.[/i] [b]In Burke’s words, people need “a sufficient restraint upon their passions,” which it is the office of government “to bridle and subdue.”[/b] [i]Families, churches, and schools must teach the value of self-discipline, and those who fail to learn this lesson must have discipline imposed upon them by government and law. Without the restraining power of such institutions, conservatives believe, there can be no ethical behaviour and no responsible use of liberty.[/i] [/quote]
There are still conservative people out there, that are just honest about it. Mostly in books written by intellectual conservative writers and conservative ideologues. Also, conservatism has a disdain for the general public, because as Burke mentioned: "[i]We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.[/i]". In other words, people are just not smart enough to govern themselves. That's the default conservative position, and has been one of their big criticisms and fear for introducing liberal democracy.
So someone needs too lead society? But the people are not up too the task, they are not even smart enough too choose representatives. Because if we let those that are guided by their passions and are easily corruptible govern? Society would surely end. Which has been a thing in modern conservative circles ever since the 18th century. A huge segment of these big conservative intellectuals moan and complain about how western society is going down the drain. Of course, "western society", is their own preferred vision how that society should be and if the reality doesn't stroke with that then it's automatically in decline or just destroyed. But who will lead us? ... Well, the answer depends on the conservative. For Burke... it was Burkes' wealthy intellectual class that was in service of the aristocracy, and the nobles themselves:
[quote][i]The legislators who framed the ancient republics knew that their business was too arduous to be accomplished with no better apparatus than the metaphysics of an undergraduate, and the mathematics and arithmetic of an exciseman.[/i] [b]They had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature. They had to do with citizens, and they were obliged to study the effects of those habits which are communicated by the circumstances of civil life. They were sensible that the operation of this second nature on the first produced a new combination; and thence arose many diversities amongst men, according to their birth, their education, their professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns or in the country, their several ways of acquiring and of fixing property, and according to the quality of the property itself— all which rendered them as it were so many different species of animals.[/b] [i]From hence they thought themselves obliged to dispose their citizens into such classes, and to place them in such situations in the state, as their peculiar habits might qualify them to fill, and to allot to them such appropriated privileges as might secure to them what their specific occasions required, and which might furnish to each description such force as might protect it in the conflict caused by the diversity of interests that must exist and must contend in all complex society; for the legislator would have been ashamed that the coarse husbandman should well know how to assort and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should have enough of common sense not to abstract and equalize them all into animals without providing for each kind an appropriate food, care, and employment, whilst he, the economist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his flocks but as men in general. It is for this reason that Montesquieu observed very justly that in their classification of the citizens the great legislators of antiquity made the greatest display of their powers, and even soared above themselves. It is here that your modern legislators have gone deep into the negative series, and sunk even below their own nothing.[/i] [b]As the first sort of legislators attended to the different kinds of citizens and combined them into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical and alchemistical legislators, have taken the direct contrary course. They have attempted to confound all sorts of citizens, as well as they could, into one homogeneous mass; and then they divided this their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics. They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures whose power is to arise from their place in the table.[/b] [i]
- Edmund Burke, [i]Reflections on The Revolution in France[/i], 1790 [/quote]
Those leaders that are needed to attend the community flow from tradition. So the current hierarchy needs to be maintained (if condoned by tradition). If tradition was set aside, enter revolutionary conservatism that wants to turn back the clock, and save civilization from itself. The general public, the "different kinds of people", they have their use... just like animals have their use. But they still need to be guarded by a good Sheppard, in Burkes' case Plato's self-appointed philosopher kings. In revolutionary conservatism, the masses are also perceived as sheep that need to be guided by a charismatic leader that the masses intuitively fall for. And that leader needs to guide them back in time, to where people were free of liberalism... and also under strong control of the charismatic leader ordained by providence. It's not weird for conservatism too fear the electorate, too limit people from voting and to manipulate the masses because the masses are only there to stay in their place and keep their mouth shut as the more anointed members of society do what is good for society.
Ofcourse... all of this can be learned, the masses can just look at what conservatism is by reading their ideologues. Sadly, people don't do this... and for the charlatans of revolutionary conservatism this opens the door for saying that the people that they have disdain for that they are actually really smart people... they are so smart... smart enough to vote for a guy that can shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it. That guy also said several times... that he loves the uneducated.
[media=https://youtu.be/rMmiLWDpCno]
The electorate... are just tools to be used by this type of person, that consider themselves ordained to lead.
There is however... or there seems to be, a tendency where the population likes to be called "rational". They don't really want to deal with arguments of "prejudice", "un-scientific" or "irrationality". That's why somewhere in the late 60s, all these conservative think-tanks started poppin' up... trying to rationalise the irrational. A bit like creationists trying too press the bible into a scientific theory. A lot of this stuff never passes peer review, so you have to protect yourself from that criticism by saying that academia is biased towards liberal ideas. The issue, with fields that are objectively measurable, is that reality is just reality. And that it's the conservative prejudice that is not applicable with science that wants to measure reality. But for a lot of conservatives, this intuitive paranoia is cool enough too go with the rest of their intuitions and just pretend that the theories they believe are as good as any other researched toppic. And people that don't go along with it, are just biased towards conservatives. It's kind of bizar too me, that a position that embraces irrationality and exists as opposition towards enlightenment values still tries too tell their followers that they are rational and scientific. But again... the disdain for the general public, is according too me, the reason. The only thing that counts is that the traditional hyrarchie is preserved because something out there ordained that too be the best society there is.
many conservatives were born into a religion and then naturally adoted it, they've never known free thinking and its free thinking that leads to change and progress that's the difference between liberals, as in liberty, or conservative, as in change is bad.
this narrative is only pushing people towards conforming to its narrow ideals of left vs. right. its not helpful socially. you are wasting your time with this stuff not to mention being a public nuisance
Actually i think it's important to call attention to this. This is the result of asking real people real questions and it so happens that the more strongly a person believes in disinformation, the more likely they are to be attracted to the conservative side of the political spectrum.
That's a big damn problem for all of us and not the least, people who have conservative politics themselves.
