I come from a very conservative area, and the most consistent thing about their reasoning is being very poor at statistics and probability. Everyone I know who is poor at statistical reasoning is right wing. I think, in an almost natural selection sort of way, the current right-wing movement is purely founded on survivorship bias for those who rely on cherry-picking and self-confirming evidence. It's like they weeded out any of the rational people a decade ago, and now we have to witness what a party based around tunnel-vision and loyalty politics looks like. And due to the tunnel-visioning and simple-mindedness, they only understand liberals and leftists from their own standpoint and think we think like them.
I am usually too polite to point it out, but it makes conversation so frustrating with them. Like when the lies about the Haitian immigrants were being spread, I could not convince a single person that the claims were false. Not a single conservative I spoke with could even understand the correlation-causation distinction, let along reasonable sample size. Going through this process during the recent election filled me with a despair I haven't felt before. I really began to understand Sartre's statement about antisemites.
It's an edgy Atheist thing to say, but they believe in God. The foundation of all their beliefs are to listen to what someone above said and to believe it without evidence. And you can't conclusively disprove god, just like you can't conclusively disprove Haitians eating dogs. So they'll just believe it.
The "eating the cats and dogs" claim doesn't require any statistical analysis to argue against. The number of incidents of Haitian immigrants being caught eating people's pets is precisely 0. It never happened at all.
I left a part out. They believed there was video evidence of at least two incidences. I couldn't get them to give up this belief, so I would also pivot to statistics in general to show that, even if there are two incidences, the sample size would mean nothing to the general claim. Conservatives are also poor at simple verification.
When Kirk got shot my Facebook was lit up with friends and mutuals either calling for violence or sobbing over him. After messaging them innocuously asking if they followed him, basically none really knew what he was all about but just knew that their social media circle were rallying around him.
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u/Acrobatic-Visual-812 2d ago edited 2d ago
I come from a very conservative area, and the most consistent thing about their reasoning is being very poor at statistics and probability. Everyone I know who is poor at statistical reasoning is right wing. I think, in an almost natural selection sort of way, the current right-wing movement is purely founded on survivorship bias for those who rely on cherry-picking and self-confirming evidence. It's like they weeded out any of the rational people a decade ago, and now we have to witness what a party based around tunnel-vision and loyalty politics looks like. And due to the tunnel-visioning and simple-mindedness, they only understand liberals and leftists from their own standpoint and think we think like them.