This one piece, of a totally unrelated article by Tim Jones Chicago Tribune correspondent, piqued my interest:
"Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Duke University, said the Internet's role in forming public opinion is gaining strength. WorldNetDaily, for instance, has one of the faster-growing audiences on the Internet, up 62 percent in the past year, according to Hitwise.
Nyhan co-wrote a study this year that said journalists' attempts to correct misinformation is unlikely to sway public perceptions because many people want to believe the misperception.
"People often have a strong bias for believing the evidence they want to believe and disbelieving what they don't believe," Nyhan said. "There is less of a sense that we all have a common set of facts we can agree on. There's a polarization, and we can't even agree on the basic factual assumptions to have a debate.""
Yeah, facts are not just facts. I think that is the main cause of miscommunication and disagreements. People can't even agree on assumptions. In math, if you can't agree on the basic assumptions the conclusions of two different solutions are considered completely uncomparable. Yer... life imitates art, or the other way around?
The Truth is just a good theory... debate is meaningless with idiots and morons anyway, so what is the point? People will believe only what they want to in the end, regardless of the Truth.
