Yet There Is Method In It

I have had a few recent experiences with people cherry picking evidence for arguments and I was interested in reading Dan Kahan view:

“Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values,” says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work.

“If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way,” he says.

And if the information doesn’t, you tend to reject it. NPR

AC1

I am lazy and just reposing comic and satire sites these days, but I am in the middle of The Origin of Species. I have been a fan of xkcd for some time and it often has language and meta-reality based humour.

AC1

MIAMI—As the Super Bowl captures the country’s attention, excitement over the NFL’s championship game is muted somewhat by the persistent question of whether winning, or losing for that matter, holds any absolute value—a question that has many football fans pondering the meaning of the game itself. The Onion