Fact-Checking Is Killing Us
Fact-Checking Is Killing Us
Moderators fact-check the debate and we’re worse off for it
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They talk about the infectiveness of fact checking, and sure, the effect they described is depressingly common. More importantly tho, what’s the alternative? If the left stops trying to keep discussions grounded in verifiable facts, I strongly doubt the right will quit their bullshit and take up the job. Letting politics get even more divorced from reality would only make the right more powerful - we’ll never be able to beat them at appeals to emotion when the only emotions they need to appeal to are the low hanging fruit of anger and fear.
Idk, the article raises a good point but it just feels incomplete to me without raising an alternative or at least acknowledging the need for one.divorced from reality would only make the right more powerful
Liberalism is in of itself divorced from reality.
You are wildly over-estimating the role that things like 'appeals to emotion' have on the right. Most people I know who are on the left are on the left because of their emotional investment into concepts such as 'justice'. The reason the right is in control is because the controllers of the means of production monetarily rewards right-wing (including right-wing liberal obviously) behaviors and ideology. The problem is fundamentally more complex than 'fact-checking', 'ceding ground' and 'appeals to emotion'. Thinking that these ideological methods and arguments are the base or basis for revolution is part of the liberal ideology that we swim in on a regular basis. Not that I have a better solution at this point, mind, just that I know that these things very much do not matter in the long run.
The reason the right is in control is because the controllers of the means of production monetarily rewards right-wing (including right-wing liberal obviously) behaviors and ideology.
Absolutely, on the government scale this is def more of a factor, but at the individual level I really think the appeals to emotion are how they keep their voters in line. To me that’s one of the scariest things about the right, is how incredibly good they are at making people continue uncritically accepting their reality in the face of literally any contradictory evidence.
It’s anecdotal, but nearly every person I talk to who agrees with the right on some issue (eg trans rights, abortion, racial justice, whatever the flavour of the month is) maintains their stance on the issue through anger, fear, and/or hate. If you’re able to get into an honest dialogue with them about it, they’ll eventually reach a point where their talking points/strawmen are exhausted and they can logically see the conclusion that eg. trans people existing is okay, actually - and this is where I find that root emotion comes out. Every time I’ve had any success trying to deprogram someone who’s been brainwashed into these reactions (not often cuz I don’t have infinite patience, but at least five or six times by now), it’s been by following this chain of events and then directly addressing the emotion it brings out in them. I find until they notice it in themselves, they won’t consider any amount of proof or logic unless it’s stuffed down their throat, and even then the next time they’re reminded of it, the memory of the emotion is stronger than the memory of the proof. I’ve literally sat down with someone and gone through every aspect of fucking drag queen story hour to see why it made them so irrationally angry, and after disproving all the misinfo and enough leading questions (“what do you think the kids are learning from this?”, “is there anything to disapprove of in the lesson that different ≠ scary?”, etc) they realized and agreed that it wasn’t problematic after all. The entire thing was based on facts (systematically disproving every bullshit claim they’d heard) and their own reasoning (in response to pointed questions) and they fully accepted the result - but without addressing the root emotion (fear, in this case) they didn’t internalize it and the next bit of right wing lies that came out put them right back into irrational anger about the subject. It took less than a week.Anyway, I definitely agree that the one-sided class war is the fundamental cause of this problem, and I’m not suggesting we ignore it to address the symptoms. I’m just saying that even if stewardship of the objective facts isn’t a particularly good weapon in that war, we shouldn’t throw it away thinking it’s no good to us - that shit is a shield that we would be so unbelievably fucked without. I just cannot imagine a circumstance where the left can win on a battlefront of purely emotional investment - like lets’s treat a random person as a blank slate and have the two sides both talk about their new neighbour with no need to stick to facts. Like you said, we’ve got some inspiring shit: justice, equality - “your neighbour’s a living thinking being too, maybe feeling isolated in a new place. let’s go see if they need any help getting settled in”. Probably gives some good emotions, but requires a little thinking and then conscious action. Meanwhile the right goes “that new person’s fucking awful, I just saw them eat somebody’s cat”. Absolutely zero barrier for entry - it takes conscious effort NOT to buy into their fearmongering. We have a powerful message, and I have no doubt that a lot of people will make the conscious efforts required to try to live up to the ideals; I just also have no doubt that more people will take the path of least resistance and I know I wouldn’t wanna be the new neighbour in this thought experiment.
Ugh, this has turned into a rambling fuckin essay of a reply and I’m sorry about that, I just don’t have the energy to go back and try to wrangle it on topic right now
Look, I get you. I just think you are making the classic blunder of assuming people are literally born prone to being angry at the new neighbor.
What I am saying is that they are not, it is an enculturated behavior, that is again, rewarded and enforced through your life in this society. All culture, including right-wing culture, is learned and shared behavior, it just seems 'more natural' because it is what is rewarded in this society, and most people's are far more interested in material outcomes than anything else. That is why that person went back to believing in shit, a single day of conversation is not going to change years of learned and reinforced behavior. Otherwise talk therapists would literally be miracle workers. It takes conscious effort for some people in this society to be leftwing. Some people just are like that. Again, facts may be a shield, but they are a weak shield, they may provide solace and comfort, but they do not provide a way to power or effective negotiation with it.
You can have facts, but obsession with facts shouldn't define you, imo focusing instead on rewarding good social behavior around you, being open to communication and trustworthy is worth more than any single fact you can offer someone. We don't fight anti-social behavior with facts, we fight it with demonstrating the real rewards, both mentally and emotionally, of pro-social behavior. I don't know if this is revolutionary behavior, but I do think that, and patience helps a lot.
I don’t know if I believe people are predisposed to tribalism (it seems to occur in animals frequently enough that it wouldn’t surprise me, but I also don’t feel educated enough on the topic to really have a judgement) but honestly I don’t think it matters. I fully agree with you that there’s at the least a learned component to it, and imo the nurtured behaviour is more relevant than the “natural” behaviour, if any. I really believe in what you mentioned, that building a culture promoting better behaviours will result in them - and it seems like a good (and literally necessary) direction for society to evolve in if we want it come out the other end of capitalism as anything other than a wasteland.
What I’m talking about is more immediate than a slow cultural shift can be, though - I’m talking about the people around us now, who haven’t had the benefit of the revolutionary behaviour you mentioned. For most of us alive now, it’s exactly like you said - the tribalist behaviours have been rewarded and enforced through our lives in this society. Everything I’m talking about will hopefully be irrelevant when we can raise a generation with the pro-social behaviours you described; it’s just that to get there, we’ll need enough people on board to reach a cultural tipping point, and that’s why I can’t give up on getting people free of the far-right alternative reality. Well, that’s the selfless portion anyway - the selfish bit is that those ideologies are too fucking annoying to listen to so if it’s someone I care about, the only options are to cut them outta my life or try to deprogram them lmao.That is why that person went back to believing in shit, a single day of conversation is not going to change years of learned and reinforced behavior.
Hard agree. That being said, I apparently left the end of that story implicit and not at all obvious (it’s late and I’m sleepy, dumb, and adhd, sorry) - when we went back to the topic and got down to confronting that root emotion, they got better at recognizing what was happening and now question the fear-based anger the topic inspires instead of using it as an excuse to dismiss new info. It obviously didn’t make them a paragon of tolerance overnight, but I consider a lack of unjustified hatred for drag queens and a willingness to challenge that unjustified hatred a huge step in the right direction. The most important element was clearly their willingness to have an honest dialogue and put in the work when they recognized they were doing something wrong, but the facts were critically important to dispelling the far right narrative that inspired the hatred in the first place. That’s where I’m coming from when I say we (everybody left of far right) literally cannot abandon the emphasis on provable facts - for the flawed people we collectively are now, betrayed by our society like you described, I just don’t like our odds in my neighbour example. I really believe in what you said, that we can train ourselves and each other to be better, but we can never get there if we disregard the facts to pick a losing fight with fascists on their own terms.
I’m not saying that fact checking everything will wipe out far right ideologies or lead to any notable result really - just that if we stop trying to hold people accountable for the truth of what they say, we won’t have the time we need to figure out and work towards what will.
Letting politics get even more divorced from reality would only make the right more powerful
The democrats are as much if not more divorced from reality. That's the point of the of the whole article. The libs are so into facts that they don't care about truth - and people know it. People know they're being lied to by Republicans, but they also know they're being lied to by democrats.
I think its also important to point out that the dems and they're supporters aren't the left. We arent a part of that here. Also don't be weird about "appeals to emotion" logic bro crap. We're humans and we have emotions and that's good. The fact that the fact obsessed liars want you to feel that's a bad thing should tell you something.
Democrats are definitely also guilty of living in their own reality, but ime theirs is more created by misrepresenting facts versus the republican dismissal of them. Their lies are more often misleading truths with a massive fucking asterisk - that’s shit behaviour and I’m not defending it or them, but they’re absolutely not “as much if not more divorced from reality” than republicans. They’re not married to reality either, but theirs is a divorce where they’re at least still on speaking terms lol.
You’re right that they’re not part of the left, and I shouldn’t conflate them with the actual left, but thinking about the far right’s misinformation campaigns gets me thinking in very “us vs them” terms and I do still (reluctantly) consider them part of the “us” in that specific area. A very problematic part, sure, but I consider it like how I’d probably be a lot more accepting of police for a minute if I was locked in a room with only an armed cop and a rabid bear.
Also, I wanna be clear that I’m not discounting the value of appeals to emotion - on top of what you said, they’re also probably one of the best ways to really get stuff done on a community scale. My point is just that we’re not nearly as good at them as the (far) right, so throwing away the boring factual components of our messages would be like jumping into the water to wrestle an alligator. We have to accept that we’re just built different for fights on those terms, and focus on other ways to win.throwing away the boring factual components of our messages would be like jumping into the water to wrestle an alligator. We have to accept that we’re just built different for fights on those terms, and focus on other ways to win.
The dems messages are not our messages. Dems winning is not a victory for us.
Dem supporters deny that they are genocide supporters. Dem supporters call what we're experiencing a "vibesession." Dem supporters don't care that Obama is a war criminal. Dem supporters have rehabilitated W and Cheney - the worst living war criminals on earth. Dem supporters believed Ukraine was beating the Russian Federation. Dem supporters deny Ukraine's army is full of nazis. Dem supporters believe in Uighur genocide. They believe in double genocide theory and the black book of communism. They think Maduro is evil and that Guido was the rightful president of Venezuela. Dem supporters lionized literal nazi Nalvany. Dem supporting radlibs think "Nordic Socialism" is socialism fot starters and that it works on anything but imperialist plunder. Dem supporters believe democracy will end if Trump is elected - but see no problem with him being allowed to run and/or not currently improsioned. Dem supporters don't believe smol bean dem presidents can accomplish anything but Trump can literally becomeva dictator. Dem supporters believe that dems are blameless in Roe being overturned. Dem supporters believe "the parlimentarian said no" is a valid reason they can't raise the federal minimum wage.
That's all off the top of my head and I'm sure i could go on and others here could add to this. The dems don't live in anything close to reality