this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Many conservatives have a loose relationship with facts. The right-wing denial of what most people think of as accepted reality starts with political issues: As recently as 2016, 45 percent of Republicans still believed that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels” (it doesn’t). A 2015 poll found that 54 percent of GOP primary voters believed then-President Obama to be a Muslim (…he isn’t).

Why are conservatives so susceptible to misinformation? The right wing’s disregard for facts and reasoning is not a matter of stupidity or lack of education. College-educated Republicans are actually more likely than less-educated Republicans to have believed that Barack Obama was a Muslim and that “death panels” were part of the ACA. And for political conservatives, but not for liberals, greater knowledge of science and math is associated with a greater likelihood of dismissing what almost all scientists believe about the human causation of global warming.^___^

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My parents are those college educated conservatives and their mental gymnastics are Olympic level. They also donate to charities and do volunteer work like meals on wheels. They don't make any sense to me.

[–] ameancow 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

We don't pay nearly enough attention to how flawed we are as a species, how easily we can discard reason and logic to validate feelings of fear, insecurity or shame, which is what drives conservatism, not reasoned arguments or fiscal responsibility.

When you discover in life that your brain does that trick, where it will ruminate on the things you feel and it's not required at all to make sense or figure out things with logic, you can become free from at least one of your major flaws, which is how we tend to justify our feelings with irrational rumination. Learning to stop telling yourself stories will save your mental health. Smart people sometimes have as hard of a time as stupid people in this regard, because a smart person is equally likely to think their own rumination is factual and reasonable and are less likely to be self-critical.

[–] shalafi 1 points 15 hours ago

“Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors. If self-deception promotes fitness, the brain lies. Stops noticing—irrelevant things. Truth never matters. Only fitness. By now you don’t experience the world as it exists at all. You experience a simulation built from assumptions. Shortcuts. Lies. Whole species is agnosiac by default.”

― Peter Watts, Blindsight