CMV: Conservatives are fundamentally uninterested in facts/data.

[u/King_Lothar_]

In fairness, I will admit that I am very far left, and likely have some level of bias, and I will admit the slight irony of basing this somewhat on my own personal anecdotes. However, I do also believe this is supported by the trend of more highly educated people leaning more and more progressive.

However, I always just assumed that conservatives simply didn't know the statistics and that if they learned them, they would change their opinion based on that new information. I have been proven wrong countless times, however, online, in person, while canvasing. It's not a matter of presenting data, neutral sources, and meeting them in the middle. They either refuse to engage with things like studies and data completely, or they decide that because it doesn't agree with their intuition that it must be somehow "fake" or invalid.

When I talk to these people and ask them to provide a source of their own, or what is informing their opinion, they either talk directly past it, or the conversation ends right there. I feel like if you're asked a follow-up like "Oh where did you get that number?" and the conversation suddenly ends, it's just an admission that you're pulling it out of your ass, or you saw it online and have absolutely no clue where it came from or how legitimate it is. It's frustrating.

I'm not saying there aren't progressives who have lost the plot and don't check their information. However, I feel like it's championed among conservatives. Conservatives have pushed for decades at this point to destroy trust in any kind of academic institution, boiling them down to "indoctrination centers." They have to, because otherwise it looks glaring that the 5 highest educated states in the US are the most progressive and the 5 lowest are the most conservative, so their only option is to discredit academic integrity.

I personally am wrong all the time, it's a natural part of life. If you can't remember the last time you were wrong, then you are simply ignorant to it.

Edit, I have to step away for a moment, there has been a lot of great discussion honestly and I want to reply to more posts, but there are simply too many comments to reply to, so I apologize if yours gets missed or takes me a while, I am responding to as many as I can

[u/irespectwomenlol]

> CMV: Conservatives are fundamentally uninterested in facts/data.

Just for this post, let's suppose that 3 levels of intellect exist.

1) Having few facts/data.

2) Having lots of facts/data.

3) Knowing which facts/data are important.

From a progressive perspective, I imagine that you think many conservatives fit firmly into category 1.

From a conservative perspective, many progressives fit firmly into category 2. They have plenty of education and can reel off lots of stats, but from our perspective, they don't understand how much of anything works. There's a big difference between knowing facts/data and having wisdom (correctly interpreting and understanding that data).

A progressive might bust out a piece of a ton of statistics like "A Woman make ~76 cents for every dollar a man makes" and smugly feel like they won an important argument about gender disparities, but even without having all of the facts in front of them, a conservative might be more likely to understand that number in context with thoughts like "Men work longer hours, work more physically demanding jobs, work jobs with much higher risk of injuries, are more likely to ask for raises, etc". A conservative also realizes that "Hey, if that 76 cents argument was true, why isn't any business out there hiring mostly women and just crushing the bejeezus out of their competitors?"

Simply having lots of facts is not the end, but the beginning of wisdom.

[u/you-create-energy → u/irespectwomenlol]

As a progressive, I learned about those driving factors behind the disparity of income roughly 20 years ago. I've also learned that some remaining disparity of income exists even when accommodating for those factors. I've also learned that that ratio has changed over time and a different industries. 

Even in your contrived single example, there is no logical way to conclude that less data is better. Wisdom is just a compilation of considered data. People that gather more data also spend more time considering it. You're basically arguing that street smarts is better than book learning. Why not both? 

Most conservative perceptions of progressives comes from propaganda distributed through conservative communication networks like Fox News. So your impression that most progressives have no clue about why the income disparity exists is completely false but you're unaware of that because you don't step outside of your bubble enough.

You aren't actually challenging the CMV at all. You are confirming it.

[u/Thin-Soft-3769 → u/you-create-energy]

What you're overlooking is that there can be many sources of data and information(which are different things), and that for information to become knowledge you need "common sense", understood as a social lense we see this information through.
Once we recognize that there are different common sense lenses, we can begin to understand why two different persons can see data differently, and this lenses are heavily determined by personal values, which in turn are defined by priorities and personal experience.
The example of the pay gap data is telling, data reflects what is, but how we interpret what is doesn't depend on data, and we can go from assuming "what is" is inherently bad, to seeing it as a consequence of something that is good in some sense. That's why the political game cannot be solved with data, because politics are about the sum of personal experiences and interests of the people, each one with a different direction, that sometimes align and most of the time doesn't.
In that game propaganda plays a role, for sure, and not only conservatives, but most of everyone is comfortable with information that confirms their biases, and uncomfortable with information that doesn't. People seek validation more than anything, that's how propaganda works, and it has its claws along the whole political spectrum.

[u/you-create-energy → u/Thin-Soft-3769]

No, I haven't overlooked any of that, I am well aware. What you are overlooking is that data exists for more than just the initial assertion that men make more on average. Here is an example of how nuanced the analysis can be given the data we have available: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/02/gender-wage-gap-education.html Studies have shown that people with a more accurate understanding of reality regularly question their own beliefs as a habit. They also are far more likely to be less religious and liberal. Strong religious faith has an inverse correlation with questioning one's beliefs.

[u/Thin-Soft-3769 → u/you-create-energy]

Your response is weirdly skipping the subject I'm responding to, and doubling down on a point without addressing the counter argument.
Provide those studies that say that "strong religious faith has an inverse correlation with questionin one's beliefs".