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Discussion » Questions » Human Behavior » When you have two sides that disagree strongly, you always seem to find misinformation or even lies on one side or other - agree?

When you have two sides that disagree strongly, you always seem to find misinformation or even lies on one side or other - agree?

Yes, this is a genuine question, no it isn't a veiled insult to anyone.. just a genuine observation.. I was looking up the Northern Ireland debate (no I am not addressing that here!) and i came across some sites that posted downright lies and misinformation heavily slanted and it got me thinking.. it IS like the Trump debate too in that I Have observed otherwise normal people posting things that cannot be true as fact and posting rumours as though they are fact... and the thing is people seem to choose to believe what they want to believe based on their own opinions..  

 But truth is important isn't it? Why do people read things that an intelligent questioning mind would easily see were false and simply believe them.... 

I guess this is one tack in trying to get people to think one way or other.. and perhaps, for all I know both sides do it.. .but my question is. WHY don't people sit back and try to be objective... find out.. open minds... learn.. rather than just believing utterly insane lies?

Posted - December 12, 2016

Responses


  • Often times.  Maybe not flat out misinformation, but skewed information or information with lots of spin embedded in it.   Often I see people using opinion pieces as information as well.  An opinion is still just that no matter who says it.

    I've often watched two people debate and seen both doing it as well.  Sometimes using misinformation to support a valid point I may agree with.   That really drives me nuts.   Good point, true statement, but backed up using false information.
      December 12, 2016 12:45 PM MST
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  • Yes, agreed.. so often i see spin..  And I like you, am able to sit back and watch two people using misinformation on opposing sides. 
      December 12, 2016 1:19 PM MST
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  • It's the absolute worse when you see someone saying something you know is correct use misinformation to try and prove it too.   It's like "NOOOOOOOO!!!!".   You just made it look like you're FOS and the point is incorrect because you used a bad source.

    It's gotten so bad these days there's even misinformation and lies to support the actual truth out there.
      December 12, 2016 1:30 PM MST
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  • 3191
    It has been my experience that there is biased misinformation on both sides the majority of the time.  

    As an example, I live in Flint, Michigan which made national and even international headlines this past year due to lead in the water.  I have followed this as it unfolded, researched it extensively, and compared what I know to what was being reported.  I checked local, national and international sources, MSM and alternative sources, left-leaning and right-leaning sources...and every single one got it wrong.

    All sources put their own biased spin on it, all contained false/misleading information, many contained outright lies.  

    Moral of my story, if an issue is important to you, whenever possible, check the actual source rather than a news outlet's report on it.  Don't limit yourself to one news source or bias, look at what others have to say, do your own research, and critically examine things for yourself.  
      December 12, 2016 12:51 PM MST
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  • 3934
    @Bozette -- Could you please share what you know about the Flint, MI water crisis that you believe media sources failed to cover accurately? I'm genuinely curious.
      December 12, 2016 1:04 PM MST
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  • 3191
    Just a few major points:

    *It was touted on the left as being a racial issue.  Factually, Flint is nearly a 50-50 split, with a slightly higher black population.

    *It was touted on both sides as being a partisan issue.  Factually, the city is Democrats, the state is Republicans, and both screwed up.

    *It was reported on the left that the state forced the city by making the decision, when factually the state endorsed a vote made by the city.  

    *The city had long planned on changing water sources.  It had been in the works for many years.  This is fully verifiable.  

    *Whatever spin one puts on it, each side acts as if the other intentionally caused the lead in the water.  Factually, it was a perfect storm that arose over many years and happened while the city was under state emergency management (that is the city's fault, but the state was working with the city, not dictating to it), and involved a bit of CYAing, a bit of politics, a dash each of incompetence and negligence and it ended up a massive ClusterF*** that involves blame to be shared at the city, state and federal levels...but no one set out to intentionally hurt people based on race or party affiliation.  
      December 12, 2016 1:33 PM MST
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  • 3934
    @Bozette -- Thanks. I would have to do more research to see if I agree with all of your inferences, but I appreciate the perspective.

    My one comment is situations like the media coverage you observed of the Flint, MI crisis happen because much of our media tries to squeeze reality into a GOP vs. Democrats/liberals vs. conservatives framework which doesn't fit the situation. This usually occurs in situations where it's the Corporatist Kleptocracy (i.e. the Rich and Corporate and the politicians of BOTH parties whom they have purchased) screwing over the general public.

    And, or course, since most of our media is OWNED by the Corporatist Kleptocracy, the press is not permitted to frame stories in a way that would point out the CK's culpability.
      December 12, 2016 1:53 PM MST
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  • 3191
    As I said, every single source had something wrong.  That's when I expanded into the international and alternative sources to compare the reporting.  All of them had it wrong.  Each and every one.  Sure Fox spun it one way, but CNN spun it the other.  I checked a great many, including all the major TV, newspaper and online sources, plus a lot of other ones that various people were citing.  Bar none, there was not a truly accurate report.  

    Tbh, part of the reason is this demand for news right now.  Every news outlet is rushing to report the story and they are not taking the time to do the fact checking that was SOP back when newspeople had deadlines...but were not expected to immediately Tweet the story as it happens.  That is cause for a great deal of misinformation flying around these days.  People need to understand that if you want something RIGHT THIS MINUTE, it will likely contain inaccuracies.  If you want the TRUTH, it will require time to investigate.  JMHO

      December 12, 2016 2:16 PM MST
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  • 3934

    @Bozette -- I have no way of verifying what you said, so I'll take your word for it.

    I agree with you abot the problem of instant news. It's one reason I watch almost no TV news and don't put very much stock in initial newspaper reports. I find it usually takes as least a week for enough good information to settle out to have something that approaches usefulness.

      December 12, 2016 4:10 PM MST
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  • 3191
    I turned my TV off 7-1/2 years ago, never Twittered, and take everything I see with a tablespoon of salt.  If it is important to me, I research it myself and I try not to jump the gun on drawing conclusions until enough information is available.  I neither discount nor believe something based solely upon the source, and I encourage everyone to do their own research.  
      December 12, 2016 4:23 PM MST
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  • Absolutely my point.. people should research, learn.. not just blindly read rubbish and believe it.
      December 12, 2016 1:18 PM MST
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  • So true ... Read as much as you can then decide
      December 12, 2016 2:05 PM MST
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  • 3934
    @DTD -- As the old expression goes, people believe what they want to believe.

    What I think is poorly understood by the lay public is just how much most people PREFER to believe what they believe over being empirically correct.

    If you are wondering why this is so, the best explanation I can offer is the parable of the Emperor's New Clothes.

    Human beings are social creatures. For the vast majority of our existence, it has been FAR FAR FAR more important to our survival that we maintain good relationships with our social group than to have a completely empirically accurate view of the world. If the tribal shaman said, "Don't go into the Cave of Evil. Evil spirits dwell there!" you could, in principle, go to the cave and see that there's nothing but a bunch of rocks and some weird eyeless fish in the pond inside the cave. Upon reporting your findings to your fellow tribespeople, the shaman and his followers would denonce you as an evildoer clearly possessed by the evil spirits in the cave.

    Fast forward 10,000 years, and you have RAWFs proclaiming,"Liberalism is a mental disorder."

    Or, to illustrate with the parable, if you are a person in the village of the Emperor, it does you ZERO good to point out to the rest of villagers, who have collectively agreed the Emperor is wearing the finest resplendent robes known to man, that the Emperor is actually buck naked. Even assuming you don't suffer official legal sanction from the Emperor's goons, you will find all of your social relationships tinged with awkwardness. If you own a business, customers will go elsewhere. If you're an employee, your employer might fire your, demote you, or otherwise make your work environment difficult. If your children go over to your neighbors' houses to play, you might find they are no longer invited to do so.


    The same social pressures which caused the tribespeople to denouce the cave visitor as a demon-possessed heretic prompt people today to declare anthropogenic global warming, "...created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

      December 12, 2016 1:29 PM MST
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  • 1233
    Does it not stand to reason that the leftist, whose mentality is far more geared towards social collectivism, would be more vulnerable to the effects you describe?

    The faith you place in so called "empirical data" given to you by an authority, is no different than the tribespeople who are told the cave is haunted. You have not personally verified the data just as the tribespeople have not personally checked out the cave. You feel a social obligation to respect the source of the data.

    What you show here is pure psychological projection. YOU care what others think. YOU fear being belittled by others. YOU need your intellectual vanity flattered by a peer group that see you as clever and informed. YOU are sensitive to social pressure to conform. Just because you're a sheep, doesn't mean everyone else is. :-))

    I can't claim to be completely immune to the pressures that you describe but compared to you, I couldn't give a damn. 

    "The same social pressures which caused the tribespeople to denounce the cave visitor as a demon-possessed heretic prompt people today to declare anthropogenic global warming, "...created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

    This is just an astounding statement. You have it completely backwards. Believing in man made climate change is the mainstream view that exerts a social pressure to conform. Skepticism is politically incorrect. This post was edited by Zeitgeist at December 12, 2016 3:50 PM MST
      December 12, 2016 3:23 PM MST
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  • 3934

    @TrumpianDunningKruger --- Wow, what a fascinating web of bulls**t you weave....


    Does it not stand to reason that the leftist, whose mentality is far more geared towards social collectivism, would be more vulnerable to the effects you describe?

    Leading off with "TEH STOOPID EBIL LIBRUHLZ IS STOOPID...AND EBIL!" I see.

    No, actually, that pesky empirical data shows that authoritarian/right-wing personality types are significantly more likely to engage in this behavior than people who are not refugees from The Reality-Based Community.


    The faith you place in so called "empirical data" given to you by a 3rd party, is no different than the tribespeople who are told the cave is haunted. You have not personally verified the data just as the tribespeople have not personally checked out the cave. You feel a social obligation to respect the source of the data.

    Yes, of course. I cannot personally verify every empirical fact in the world. Hence, I depend upon other people who have done the research, published their methods, and published their findings. You do, too. When you flip on a light switch, you assume it's going to work because lots of other people have done the research on how electrons work, how materials react to electron flow through them, and so forth.

    That is a very different thing then trusting the witch doctor/Der Pumpkinfurher that the cave is haunted/global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese (for which they have NO empircal evidence).

    Your equating the two in the  service of STOOPID EBIL LIBRUHL-bashing perfectly illustrates my original point.


    What you show here is pure psychological projection. YOU care what others think. YOU fear being belittled by others. YOU need your intellectual vanity flattered by a peer group that see you as clever and informed. YOU are sensitive to social pressure to conform. Just because you're a sheep, doesn't mean everyone else is. :-))

    This paragraph is especially rich (and somewhat meta) since you are engaging in psychological projection to claim that I'm engaging in psychological projection. Either you don't understand the term, or your need to belittle THE STOOPID EBIL LIBRUHLZ is so great you don't care that you're misusing it...;-D..

    I can't claim to be completely immune to pressures that you describe but compared to you, I couldn't give a damn. 


    And yet you took the time to compose this pile of bulls**t because you don't give damn, right?

    "The same social pressures which caused the tribespeople to denounce the cave visitor as a demon-possessed heretic prompt people today to declare anthropogenic global warming, "...created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

    This is just an astounding statement. You have it completely backwards. Believing in man made climate change is the mainstream view that exerts a social pressure to conform. Skepticism is politically incorrect.

    No, this is only astounding because you don't understand it. Stating anthropeginc global warming is a real phenomenon is no more a failure of skepticsm than believing the Earth revolves around the Sun, or that matter is made up atoms, or that memory is encoded in the brain by the hippocampus. If you're "skeptical" about any of those statement, it's not "political incorrectnes", it's just stupidity. There are thousands of observations backing up each one of those statements.

    Better luck next time...;-D...

    This post was edited by OldSchoolTheSKOSlives at December 12, 2016 6:46 PM MST
      December 12, 2016 4:04 PM MST
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  • 1233
    "And yet you took the time to compose this pile of bulls**t because you don't give damn, right?"

    I don't care what you think of me. You don't exert social pressure on me. I take the time because I enjoy studying the psychology of leftists. You fascinate me.

    Whether man made global warming is real or not is another question entirely and completely irrelevant to our discussion. We are talking about the social pressure to conform, not science.

    The social pressure to conform is exerted by the mainstream opinion regardless of whether it's actually right or wrong.

    You asserted that social pressure makes people deny climate change. Nonsense. There is no social pressure to deny climate change. Zero. It's a minority view that is shamed by pseudo intellectuals like you. All the social pressure is to shut the f*** up and "trust the experts". This post was edited by Zeitgeist at December 12, 2016 5:07 PM MST
      December 12, 2016 4:55 PM MST
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  • 3934
    @TrumpianDunningKruger -- Yes, there is social pressure to "conform" because society itself would be impossible without some minimum level of people conforming to social norms.

    If we allowed people to drive in whatever lane of the road they felt like and obey red and green lights as they wished, there would be chaos.

    We have "social pressure" (and, in fact, laws) which require people who practice medicine to have certain minimum qualifications and that the tools and materials they use be empirical tested for efficacy.

    So, yes, there is "social pressure" for people to believe the scientists who have done the actual climate science, just as there is "social pressure" to have people believe the medical researchers who do the science investigating remedies for medical ailments.

    But there is also social pressure, despite your denials, to conform to the "Anthropogenic global warming is hoax cooked up by Al Gore and the climate scientists" point of view. If you don't believe me, try going to any right-wing political web site or Warming Denier website and, purely as an intellectual exercise, try debating the actual climate science behind the controversy. Watch how rapidly they will gang up on you and call you names without actually refuting the evidence.

    So, no, anthropogenic global warming is NOT irrelvant to our discussion. There is a substantial body of scientific evidence supporting the proposition it is real. There is a group of people who, solely for political identification reasons, have decided to not believe what the science is telling them. Not because they can show the science is wrong, but because the implications of the science are social changes which would involve "TEH STOOPID EBIL COMMIE DEMOCRAP SOCIALISM." And because the social changes are not ideologically acceptable, the science must be denied. A classic case of ideological belief trumping (pun!) empirical accuracy.

    And because you value your identity as NOT one of TEH STOOPID EBIL LIBRUHLZ, you engage in the exercise of denying AGW's relevance to the topic at hand and resorting to ad hominem attacks ("pseudo-intellectual") instead of actually showing evidence for your propositions. I submit the hypothesis you are less interested in "leftist" minds than you are in hearing yoursel spout your own bulls**t.

    This post was edited by OldSchoolTheSKOSlives at December 12, 2016 6:49 PM MST
      December 12, 2016 5:21 PM MST
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  • 1233
    I don't think online discussions give any real insight into social pressure. On an anonymous forum like this the normal social forces are not present which is why people tend to be more aggressive than they would be in real life interactions.

    I don't believe that two individuals arguing over something are exerting any real social pressure on each other. It's society collectively that exerts pressure on individuals. Mainstream opinions don't experience significant social pressure to change. Only fringe opinions can experience social marginalization. Someone getting angry with you, being insulting etc etc, is not really social pressure. It only becomes significant when society at large begins to turn against you and collectively ostracize you for your refusal to conform.

    "There is a group of people who, solely for political identification reasons, have decided to not believe what the science is telling them."

    I think you're wrong to dismiss deeply held beliefs about morality, ethics, and philosophy as just "identity". Conviction is something to be respected. I hate the communists passionately though a part of me respects their conviction. There is fine line between being conviction and dogmatism. There is a fine line between flexibility and being weak.

    I believe about 95% of the scientific consensus. I don't believe science to be an infallible thing like you seem to. I consider all things to be vulnerable to error and corruption because that's human nature. You have elevated scientists to the status of high priests and are displaying a religious faith in their competence and integrity.

    I don't believe in AGW but even if I did, it wouldn't change my mind. If you really believe this horsesh*t then I suggest you think of a solution that doesn't undermine capitalism. I would rather the land burned and ocean boiled than give global control of the means of production to a bunch of Marxists. There is nothing irrational about this. It's simply a question of priorities. All free people care more about their principles than anything else. This post was edited by Zeitgeist at December 14, 2016 2:36 AM MST
      December 14, 2016 2:28 AM MST
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  • I once read a book where a character was asked what colour a house was.. he replied " the two sides I can see are green".
    I have never yet met anyone who approaches that level of objectivity ... We all have our biases and peer at the world through them This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at December 13, 2016 3:44 AM MST
      December 12, 2016 2:12 PM MST
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  • 32539
    All news sources spin. Some is on purpose some is accidental. 
    One should never get all there news from one source or one side. And you should try and learn which side each source leans and find the truth in the middle. 
    Sadly many times, you cannot find the other side of a story because if it is negative for one side only the opposite side will report on it and the side being attacked will ignore rather than present the defense. Or will simply deflect to another topic to attack on. 
      December 12, 2016 2:50 PM MST
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  • 7280
    Confirmation bias aside, the intellectual ability and critical thinking skills of those promulgating their positions tends to minimize that problem. 
      December 12, 2016 4:54 PM MST
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  • 5354
    Yes.
    Usually such misinformation is easy to find on both sides; but most people only look for it on "the enemy side"
      December 13, 2016 3:41 AM MST
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