- Joined
- Jul 27, 2020
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Here is a professor of applied psychology and human development from Portland makes the case that we're all suffering from cognitive preferences which make is believe what we want to believe, what 'my side' approves of, and disbelief what our side doesn't believe.
What our society is really suffering from is myside bias: People evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes. That we are facing a myside bias problem and not a calamitous societal abandonment of the concept of truth is perhaps good news in one sense, because the phenomenon of myside bias has been extensively studied in cognitive science. The bad news, however, is that what we know is not necessarily encouraging.
....
Identity politics advocates have succeeded in making certain research conclusions within the university verboten. They have made it very hard for any university professor (particularly the junior and untenured ones) to publish and publicly promote any conclusions that these advocates dislike. Faculty now self-censor on a range of topics. The identity politics ideologues have won the on-campus battle to suppress views that they do not like. But what these same politicized faculty members and students (and, increasingly, university administrators) cannot seem to see is that one cost of their victory is that they have made the public rightly skeptical about any conclusions that now come out of universities on charged topics. In the process of achieving their ideological dominance, they have neutered the university as a trusted purveyor of information about the topics in question.
When the universities make it professionally difficult for academics to publish politically incorrect conclusions in one politically charged area, the public will come to suspect that the atmosphere in universities is skewing the evidence in other politically charged areas as well. When the public sees university faculty members urge sanctions against a colleague who writes an essay arguing that the promotion of bourgeois values could help poor people (the Amy Wax incident), then we shouldn’t be surprised when the same public becomes skeptical of research on income inequality conducted by university professors.
When a professor compares the concepts of transracialism and transgenderism in an academic journal and dozens of colleagues sign an open letter demanding that the article be retracted (the Rebecca Tuvel incident), the public can hardly be blamed for being skeptical about university research on charged topics such as child rearing, marriage, and adoption. When university faculty members contribute to the internet mobbing of someone who discusses the evidence on differing interest profiles between the sexes (the James Damore incident), then we shouldn’t be surprised that the public is skeptical about research that comes out of universities regarding immigration. In short, we shouldn’t be surprised that only Democrats thoroughly trust university research anymore, and that independents, as well as Republicans, are much more skeptical.
https://quillette.com/2020/09/26/the-bias-that-divides-us/
What our society is really suffering from is myside bias: People evaluate evidence, generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes. That we are facing a myside bias problem and not a calamitous societal abandonment of the concept of truth is perhaps good news in one sense, because the phenomenon of myside bias has been extensively studied in cognitive science. The bad news, however, is that what we know is not necessarily encouraging.
....
Identity politics advocates have succeeded in making certain research conclusions within the university verboten. They have made it very hard for any university professor (particularly the junior and untenured ones) to publish and publicly promote any conclusions that these advocates dislike. Faculty now self-censor on a range of topics. The identity politics ideologues have won the on-campus battle to suppress views that they do not like. But what these same politicized faculty members and students (and, increasingly, university administrators) cannot seem to see is that one cost of their victory is that they have made the public rightly skeptical about any conclusions that now come out of universities on charged topics. In the process of achieving their ideological dominance, they have neutered the university as a trusted purveyor of information about the topics in question.
When the universities make it professionally difficult for academics to publish politically incorrect conclusions in one politically charged area, the public will come to suspect that the atmosphere in universities is skewing the evidence in other politically charged areas as well. When the public sees university faculty members urge sanctions against a colleague who writes an essay arguing that the promotion of bourgeois values could help poor people (the Amy Wax incident), then we shouldn’t be surprised when the same public becomes skeptical of research on income inequality conducted by university professors.
When a professor compares the concepts of transracialism and transgenderism in an academic journal and dozens of colleagues sign an open letter demanding that the article be retracted (the Rebecca Tuvel incident), the public can hardly be blamed for being skeptical about university research on charged topics such as child rearing, marriage, and adoption. When university faculty members contribute to the internet mobbing of someone who discusses the evidence on differing interest profiles between the sexes (the James Damore incident), then we shouldn’t be surprised that the public is skeptical about research that comes out of universities regarding immigration. In short, we shouldn’t be surprised that only Democrats thoroughly trust university research anymore, and that independents, as well as Republicans, are much more skeptical.
https://quillette.com/2020/09/26/the-bias-that-divides-us/
