# Can we have a debate on Dunning-Kruger as it relates to politics? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 21, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479 "2018-06-21T00:58:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/41 "2018-06-23T19:11:42Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > This thread consists primarily of a bunch of liberals sharing their opinions of conservatives. Uhh, right. But my point is that I acknowledge that while I hold that opinion, I can’t back it up with facts (although at the same time, I can’t disprove it either). So… not sure what your point is. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/42 "2018-06-23T19:40:17Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Uhh, right. But my point is that I acknowledge that while I hold that opinion, I can’t back it up with facts (although at the same time, I can’t disprove it either). So… not sure what your point is. Sorry that I wasn’t clear before: I thought your post was fantastic. It was an exception. That was my point. Just in case there’s some doubt, I don’t mind people holding opinions, but I found it refreshing that someone (you) was willing / able to acknowledge that it was just an opinion, without clear data on one side or the other, as opposed to various other posts in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/43 "2018-06-23T19:40:57Z")
Conservatives and liberals have no problem agreeing on facts that are\*\* politically neutral \*\*(for instance, not a single conservative or liberal in America disputes the fact that the Seattle Seahawks won a Super Bowl a few years ago by defeating the Denver Broncos by the score of 43-8, or that Mount Everest is higher than Mount McKinley, or that temperatures are generally hotter in Arizona than in Alaska.) That’s because neither side has anything to lose by acknowledging such things. Neither side’s ideology is threatened by those facts. It’s when facts, or “facts,” are perceived as\* politically weaponized\* that one side balks. If one side’s facts or “facts” are perceived as being of a nature that boosts Side A and tears down Side B, then of course Side B will balk and oppose and vigorously dispute or question those facts/claims. If you want your opponents to accept your facts, then present them in such a way that they are not perceived as a political weapon or a “Ha ha I am right and you are wrong” attack. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/44 "2018-06-23T20:17:53Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > It’s when facts, or “facts,” are perceived as\* politically weaponized\* that one side balks. If one side’s facts or “facts” are perceived as being of a nature that boosts Side A and tears down Side B, then of course Side B will balk and oppose and vigorously dispute or question those facts/claims. > > If you want your opponents to accept your facts, then present them in such a way that they are not perceived as a political weapon or a “Ha ha I am right and you are wrong” attack. If I say, “Burning fossil fuels since industrialization has been driving dangerously rapid climate change that must be mitigated to prevent increasingly damaging environmental consequences” I am stating a scientific fact (no quotes needed around “fact”). It’s not a personal attack, not an exaggeration, and in no way a political weapon. It may be seen as threatening, however, to those who perceive it as undermining their personal economic interests. To quote Upton Sinclair, “you cannot get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.” What do you suggest we do when established facts are denied and ridiculed and the scientists publishing them are subjected to personal attacks and politically motivated harassment? The emotion and invective we often hear is not the cause of divisive politics, it’s the _ **result** _ of it. It’s often specifically the result of a partisan ideology that considers factual reality to just be one arbitrary way of interpreting the world. If there’s one good thing about the present administration, it’s that it’s so blatant and has brought these things so much into the open that “alternative facts” is actually a thing now, and daily lying is routine and expected. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/45 "2018-06-23T22:05:55Z")
We have just recently witnessed a rather breath-taking top-level example of D-K in action. There was a speech by that one guy about how we need to go back to the Moon again, mount a mission to Mars, and establish a “Space Force” arm of the MIC. Here is the irony: this guy and his supporters approve of certain facts and disapprove of specific other facts. They have a particular information agenda, and stuff that fails to make them feel good needs to be suppressed. But **P** eople **W** ho **U** nderstand **T** hings (“scientists”) realize that reality does not work like some kind of buffet. You cannot ignore important things simply because they make you uncomfortable, because those difficult things will come back to nip a chunk out of your soft-parts. So, in this selectivist environment, the PWUT are evaporating from significant positions, either departing, being dismissed or just having their work silently archived in the basement. But, the thing is, Space is hard. It will fuck you up. It does not care about your desires, your agenda, your determination or that you really believe that Brawndo is excellent rocket fuel. This administration persists in furthering ignorance, yet they think (or at least assert) that this will be a viable strategy to use against these (and other) great challenges. I mean, how much more D-K can you get? ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/46 "2018-06-23T22:24:52Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > I was just sitting here thinking about the differences in what my conservative vs. liberal friends post on FB. > > Conservatives tend to post videos of a veteran in a truck telling it to you straight, or sound bites of Democrats without context proving THEY do it too!! or borderline-or-outright conspiracy videos trying to show connections between things with only the flimsiest of evidence. > > Liberals tend to post…wait for it…articles with real words, that you have to read. They are also more likely to add their own coherent comments when they post an article.(snip) Most of my FB friends are liberal, and they will post the most appalling glurge no differently from what conservatives do. There was one shared last week that said “White people can see bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, aliens, Jesus in toast, but they can’t see a fascist dictatorship developing right before their eyes.” The subject was political and they chose to make it (and my friend to share) about a racial group. I’m afraid I may have blistered a few eyeballs with my response. Occasionally there is a link to something thoughtful, but it’s not common. So no, liberals are not shining lights of sensible FB posting, in my experience. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2018, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/47 "2018-06-23T22:51:03Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Most of my FB friends are liberal, and they will post the most appalling glurge no differently from what conservatives do. There was one shared last week that said “White people can see bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, aliens, Jesus in toast, but they can’t see a fascist dictatorship developing right before their eyes.” That may be tasteless or incendiary or insensitive or various other such things… but it’s certainly a different kettle of fish from, say, birtherism. It doesn’t involve believing obvious falsehoods. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/48 "2018-06-24T01:14:10Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > That may be tasteless or incendiary or insensitive or various other such things… but it’s certainly a different kettle of fish from, say, birtherism. It doesn’t involve believing obvious falsehoods. I agree. Conservative half-trolls (someone who takes potshots but isn’t full-fledged troll) are more likely to share something outright false on FB. I.e., Obama administration personally funneled billions of dollars to terrorists or something. Liberal half-trolls on FB are more likely to say something that’s stereotyping or projecting or making assumptions or venomous but not necessarily a true vs. false thing (i.e., a meme I once saw: “conservatives complaining about Obama’s sense of fashion weren’t really objecting to the tan suit, they were objecting to the tan President”) ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/49 "2018-06-24T01:32:06Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Most of my FB friends are liberal, and they will post the most appalling glurge no differently from what conservatives do. There was one shared last week that said “White people can see bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, aliens, Jesus in toast, but they can’t see a fascist dictatorship developing right before their eyes.” The subject was political and they chose to make it (and my friend to share) about a racial group. I’m afraid I may have blistered a few eyeballs with my response. > > Occasionally there is a link to something thoughtful, but it’s not common. So no, liberals are not shining lights of sensible FB posting, in my experience. I saw that meme. It isn’t wrong. ~85% of Trump’s voters were white. His core base who are most hostile to democracy is mostly white. Look at all the GOP base and Trump supporters who hate the free press, hate the independent judiciary, hate an independent DOJ, hate legitimate law enforcement, hate legitimate intelligence agencies, support torture and human rights abuses, support postponing elections, support voter oppression, etc and you will find angry old white people most of the time. How is that in any way related to things like uranium one or pizzagate, which are just irrational conspiracy theories. The first statement is an unpleasant piece of info that is quite accurate. The second are lies and conspiracy theories. They aren’t comparable. Having said that, the left can fall for BS. 9/11 truth, Bush cancelling the elections, etc. But an unpleasant truth isn’t the same thing as a conspiracy theory based on lies. You can’t pull them up and say ‘both sides are the same’. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/50 "2018-06-24T08:28:36Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > It’s coincidental that you make this post on the D-K effect, Wesley, as I randomly noticed your post in GQ yesterday as a stellar example of it. > Do you grasp how ignorant those last two sentences are? I don’t mean the fact that they are completely wrong, but the fact that only someone with v low ability would attempt to comment on the origin of life [one of the deepest questions in science] in this manner. > The D-K effect in a nutshell, on your behalf, and science is a far more clear-cut and absolute area than people’s political beliefs. Whether the speaker has experienced the Dunning Kruger effect themselves has no relevance to the topic at hand. All of us have likely experienced it at some point. It doesn’t affect the truth of falsity of his claim. This is why such arguments are considered a fallacy, namely the _tu quoque_ fallacy. And I have a big interest in trying to refute these so we can have better discussions. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/51 "2018-06-24T08:49:35Z")
Yes, the majority of news outlets see it as their duty to refute Trump. But that’s because he’s a well-known liar, and the news outlets are responsible for the truth. Since racism and bigotry are a form of ignorance, anything about fighting ignorance, which include news organizations, have to fight against it. Similar results occur because science denialism is false. None of that makes the news biased towards liberals. What is different are the people who like Trump and thus assume that anything against him is bias, because accepting it as the truth would mean admitting they were wrong–which everyone finds hard to do, and people who decided emotionally more than anyone. . So it’s not liberal bias, or even anti-Trump bias. It’s the other side rationalizing it as such. And, no, you can’t express the truth in a way that doesn’t attack their political ideas, since the truth itself is what is contradicting their ideas. You can try when you can to slip things through (see the _Roseanne_ show that relied on conservative tribalism to slip in liberal messages), but there is no way to present a truth someone doesn’t like for political reasons in a way they will find neutral. Or, if there is, tell us how to do it so we can actually make some headway. None of this, however, is to say that leftists can’t be similarly ignorant, BTW. I’m only touching on a tangent, really. It happens on the left, too. They just don’t tend to have control of the party. Consider a ton of those anti-gun signs, that show a complete ignorance on the actual regulations on guns. They have an underlying meaning that makes sense, but they’re so sure that guns are completely unregulated that they say these stupid things, while thinking they are the smart ones. And that just gives conservatives a windfall in refuting them, while missing the underlying point they were trying to make. It’s not the _quantity_ of regulations that matter. It does however seem to me that I see more factually incorrect right wing stuff, and see it go more mainstream. The gun one seems the exception, not the rule, for liberals. And there is the big conspiracy mindset, which is largely connected to Dunning Kruger, in that it’s people who think they know more than everyone else but are actually saying dumber things. The right is fully in conspiracy mode right now, because the facts are often against them. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/52 "2018-06-24T11:18:54Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > But, the thing is, Space is hard. It will fuck you up. It does not care about your desires, your agenda, your determination or that you really believe that Brawndo is excellent rocket fuel. Fortunately, however, it’s powerless in the face of thoughts and prayers. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/53 "2018-06-24T11:55:41Z")
Well, one thing I think we can all agree on is that both sides have their share of idiots on the topic of vaccines. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/54 "2018-06-24T14:07:50Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > Well, one thing I think we can all agree on is that both sides have their share of idiots on the topic of vaccines. They do, but its a minority luckily. > **[By the Numbers: Republicans, Democrats and the Vaccination Debate](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/numbers-republicans-democrats-vaccination-debate-n298606)** > > Republicans are less likely to say vaccinations should be mandatory, while Democrats are now more likely to say they should be required. > [@](#): > > Thirty-four percent of Republicans and 33 percent of independents told pollsters that parents should be able to decide about vaccinations, versus just 22 percent of Democrats who said the same. > > And, within the past five years or so, Republicans have become LESS likely to say vaccinations should be required, while Democrats are now MORE likely to advocate for the mandatory shots. > > In 2009, 71 percent of both Democrats and Republicans said vaccinations should be required. By last August, that number decreased to 65 percent for Republicans, but it’s increased to 76 percent for Democrats. Either way, of the 1/3 or so who are not in favor of mandatory vaccine, I would hope most will still support it. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/55 "2018-06-24T20:35:32Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > That whole rant is so egregiously wrong and so unfair to **Wesley** that I feel obliged to respond to it. > > First of all, you don’t understand what the Dunning-Kruger effect is. It’s not the state of being misinformed about some particular random fact, which is what this example would be if it were true. The D-K effect an ironic problem of meta-cognition whereby those of low cognitive ability consistently overestimate their own cognitive skills, which has absolutely nothing to do with what you’re talking about. > > Secondly, the hypothesis that life originated around hydrothermal vents is in no way “ignorant” and is [one of the current hypotheses for abiogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Deep_sea_vent_hypothesis), though certainly not the only one. But recent evidence is consistent with the vent hypothesis, like the discovery of vent-related fossilized microorganisms in ferruginous sedimentary rocks that may be as much as 4.3 billion years old. The origin of life remains unknown and speculative, but if “only someone with v low ability would attempt to comment on the origin of life” then a great many scientists must have terribly low abilities, including all the contributing authors to that long Wikipedia article on abiogenesis. > > BTW, the phrase “on your behalf” doesn’t mean what you think it does. That is not, however, evidence of the D-K effect. 😉 I guess it depends on your own knowledge / understanding - I’m familiar with the primary pre-biotic chemistry literature [not my own field, but I like to keep abreast of the important stuff because it is a very singular area of organic chemistry]. It’s not the ignorance of Wes’ statement that stood out at all - as I said, this is a deep area, very few people here could offer an opinion beyond Wikipedia, and that’s not what the board is for anyway. It’s the fatuous confidence of thinking that it could be summed up in a nutshell _resolved, origin of life - it was crystals. That was probably it_! This seemed to resonate (to me) with the thread topic e.g. ‘_many of the conservatives I meet in real life are really really dumb. Brainwashed, profoundly ignorant, wildly misinformed, zero critical thinking skills, etc_’ when I’ve just read something that ticks most of those boxes from the OP himself. In microcosm, though, so you’re right - it is not fair to ascribe the D-K effect to this one statement. We would need more information. If you are interested, and to save you additional trips to wikipedia, no one thinks self-replicating crystals are the origin of life [obviously right? crystals of what?] except one man - a brilliant guy called Cairns-Smith who passed away not so long ago. I’m not sure even he thought it really, just had fun with a very creative idea of clay minerals representing primitive information storage and transmission systems. No convincing evidence for this hypothesis emerged, nor the key part of it which requried a ‘genetic takeover’ by a biological substrate. I’m an admirer of his work [all scientists are, because he was an original], but it’s not part of the picture we currently have of how life got started. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2018, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/56 "2018-06-24T23:27:04Z")
I still fail to see how repeating a respected scientific hypothesis which has some scientific validation as a probable truth makes me an idiot. No, thermal vents are not proven as the way life formed. But they are a probable origin, and it was my understanding that it was one of the more seriously considered origins. Had I said ‘aliens put them there after they fell off their spaceships’ that would’ve been a dumb statement. I sincerely don’t understand that. Also at the risk of sounding arrogant I really don’t have below average cognitive skills. I have a bachelors in a scientific field and can hold my own pretty well in most conversation topics. Granted I do know that people who are slightly above average like myself do run the risk of thinking they are way above average in cognitive skills. So in that regards, yes I have fallen for the D-K effect before in various areas of my life. But I don’t think my statement repeating a respected opinion about life’s origins was an example of it. Other than the fact that you are latching onto any quasi scientific term you can misuse and misunderstand to insult me I don’t understand your agenda. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/57 "2018-06-25T07:03:22Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I still fail to see how repeating a respected scientific hypothesis which has some scientific validation as a probable truth makes me an idiot. No, thermal vents are not proven as the way life formed. But they are a probable origin, and it was my understanding that it was one of the more seriously considered origins. Had I said ‘aliens put them there after they fell off their spaceships’ that would’ve been a dumb statement. > > I sincerely don’t understand that. Also at the risk of sounding arrogant I really don’t have below average cognitive skills. I have a bachelors in a scientific field and can hold my own pretty well in most conversation topics. Granted I do know that people who are slightly above average like myself do run the risk of thinking they are way above average in cognitive skills. So in that regards, yes I have fallen for the D-K effect before in various areas of my life. But I don’t think my statement repeating a respected opinion about life’s origins was an example of it. > > Other than the fact that you are latching onto any quasi scientific term you can misuse and misunderstand to insult me I don’t understand your agenda. Wesley - ocean vents as the cradles of molecular civilisation is completely sensible and uncontroversial. This is not something that needs any defence - indeed trying to make one pitches the exchange at a very low level. Origin of life as self-replicating crystals, OTOH, would need a huge defence, at a very high level, and cannot be rolled out as a trite statement of the way things are. No one is calling anyone an idiot or insulting people here, except for you. Because isn’t that the subject of this thread? Half the electorate (the one’s who vote differently from myself) are mindless fucking idiots. I don’t have any agenda beyond pointing out the inherent idiocy of this position, which has pretty strong DK-overtones itself. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/58 "2018-06-25T17:04:14Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Yes, the majority of news outlets see it as their duty to refute Trump. But that’s because he’s a well-known liar, and the news outlets are responsible for the truth. Since racism and bigotry are a form of ignorance, anything about fighting ignorance, which include news organizations, have to fight against it. Similar results occur because science denialism is false. > > None of that makes the news biased towards liberals. What is different are the people who like Trump and thus assume that anything against him is bias, because accepting it as the truth would mean admitting they were wrong–which everyone finds hard to do, and people who decided emotionally more than anyone. . So it’s not liberal bias, or even anti-Trump bias. It’s the other side rationalizing it as such. > > And, no, you can’t express the truth in a way that doesn’t attack their political ideas, since the truth itself is what is contradicting their ideas. You can try when you can to slip things through (see the _Roseanne_ show that relied on conservative tribalism to slip in liberal messages), but there is no way to present a truth someone doesn’t like for political reasons in a way they will find neutral. Or, if there is, tell us how to do it so we can actually make some headway. > > None of this, however, is to say that leftists can’t be similarly ignorant, BTW. I’m only touching on a tangent, really. It happens on the left, too. They just don’t tend to have control of the party. > > Consider a ton of those anti-gun signs, that show a complete ignorance on the actual regulations on guns. They have an underlying meaning that makes sense, but they’re so sure that guns are completely unregulated that they say these stupid things, while thinking they are the smart ones. And that just gives conservatives a windfall in refuting them, while missing the underlying point they were trying to make. It’s not the _quantity_ of regulations that matter. > > It does however seem to me that I see more factually incorrect right wing stuff, and see it go more mainstream. The gun one seems the exception, not the rule, for liberals. And there is the big conspiracy mindset, which is largely connected to Dunning Kruger, in that it’s people who think they know more than everyone else but are actually saying dumber things. > > The right is fully in conspiracy mode right now, because the facts are often against them. This is motivated reasoning. You admit that your side is factually ignorant on a subject and makes false claims but then say that it doesn’t matter because the underlying point is correct. Yet you don’t extend that same courtesy to those on the other team. When they make false claims it is a result of their ignorance and an indictment of their whole way of thinking. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/59 "2018-06-25T18:08:40Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This is motivated reasoning. You admit that your side is factually ignorant on a subject and makes false claims but then say that it doesn’t matter because the underlying point is correct. Yet you don’t extend that same courtesy to those on the other team. When they make false claims it is a result of their ignorance and an indictment of their whole way of thinking. That’s not how I read that. At all. I read it as saying the same thing as many other posts here, that while one can find examples of ignorance on both sides, extrapolating that to any sort of equivalence between left and right is wrong and is a false equivalence because there’s so much more of it on the right, most notably anti-science and anti-education sentiment, counterfactual economic beliefs, and religious nuttery. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479/60 "2018-06-25T18:31:01Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > That’s not how I read that. At all. I read it as saying the same thing as many other posts here, that while one can find examples of ignorance on both sides, extrapolating that to any sort of equivalence between left and right is wrong and is a false equivalence because there’s so much more of it on the right, most notably anti-science and anti-education sentiment, counterfactual economic beliefs, and religious nuttery. There is no way to quantify nuttery so that you can compare and contrast the two sides. The OP made a claim about ignorance but studies that quantify knowledge consistently show that Republicans are slightly more knowledgeable. The truth is that there are good arguments and conspiracy nuts on both sides. If we want to feel superior about ourselves we focus on the other side’s nut cases and ignore our own. If we want to gain knowledge and improve policies we should take on our opponents best arguments. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-have-a-debate-on-dunning-kruger-as-it-relates-to-politics/816479.md?page=4)