A Sad Observation

[billroper]

This is not necessarily true of any given individual, but certainly seems true of groups as a whole:

The farther you are to the left or the right, the more likely you are to believe any purported data point that confirms your biases, regardless of the actual truth of the situation.

Corollary: maybe I should just stop reading Facebook.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Or maybe it's just more obvious with those people.

But it confirms my bias against Facebook, so it must be true. :)

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I fear that at times, I resemble that remark, both now and before my leftward shift.

[lonotter.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the corollary!

[bedlamhouse]

My rules - check primary sources, look for trusted analysis sites (factcheck and politifact - and Snopes, of course), think about findings.

Problem is that people with strong biases:

1) have a completely different idea about what a "primary source" is (Fox News or addictinginfo or some such)
2) Don't trust analysis sites who have disagreed with them in the past (I can no longer use any of the three against certain people on my flist because they at one time wounded a deeply held and cherished belief and therefore are libtard/dumbcon (pick your choice, usually both used to describe the same site from different people))
3) substitute their bias for thinking.