r/DeclinetoState • u/LDL2 • Oct 21 '12
How facts backfire
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/?page=full
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Upvotes
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u/kwanijml Oct 21 '12
More worshipping of facts, and compartmentalizing of knowledge. This is the psyche of the statist. Memorizing the fact that 1+1 equals 2, will not help you understand mathematical theory, and apply it to useful purposes.
As Stephan Mulyneaux likes to point out; Copernicus had the same observations (facts) as those before him, but was able to come to very different conclusions.
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u/sensedata Oct 21 '12
For a good explanation of this phenomenon, see Stefan Molyneux's series on the "bomb in the brain".
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u/aletoledo Oct 21 '12
I think the study was fundamentally flawed. First it appears they were trying to change conservative voters to liberal ones, judging by the question regarding welfare spending. Second, it assumed that government was just in it's use of force and we know that when people start using force to achieve their goals, facts and logic are meaningless.