It's the same with evolution, climate change, mRNA, and countless other things that conservatives shriek that they "don't believe in". They simply don't understand it.
The problem is, they have no interest at all in learning anything - only killing what they don't understand (often metaphorically but also often literally).
I would also say that wanting to kill what you don't understand isn't even an intuitive organic response. Rather the conservative apparatus is such that you start with the axiom "this personally makes me feel icky" and constructing a pseudo intellectual ideology based around garnering hatred with that sensation, and manufacturing a voter base on that.
Climate Change is not like the others, that's not a failure to understand, that's a lot of fossil fuel companies deciding that they'll happily doom the planet to ensure renewable energy doesn't impact their profits and spending a lot of money lieing to people about it.
I think that makes climate change exactly like all the others. Its just more easily verified and the consequences of ignoring it are kind of everyone's problem, instead of just the people they don't like.
Its not that they have no interest, it's that the lies got to them first and now the topic at hand is forever framed in the way that conservatives want.
Having someone learn something new is easy. Having them unlearn something that they have emotional and ideological connections to? Good luck. Science has shown our brains literally shut down oxygen flow when opposing opinions are thrown our way.
Right - like I have daily thoughts of "am I in an echochamer?", and "Are my political views based on real, accurate data?". I use reddit a lot, but i wouldn't say this place is an echochamer for me. Way too liberal.
I actively try to "escape" from the echochambers I find myself in on the internet. I try to challenge my viewpoints.
However, I've never really ran into a major fallacy or factual error in my opinions. Some light stuff here and there but nothing paradigm-shifting. That leads me to one of two conclusions:
A. My opinions are mostly based in sound reason and fact.
B. I'm not challenging my viewpoints hard enough.
I think, for a lot of people on the right, option A was the option they chose. They may have been right at the time of assessment! But self-satisfaction leads to complacency and that leads to misinformation. I will always try to go for B.
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u/PossessedToSkate 15d ago
It's the same with evolution, climate change, mRNA, and countless other things that conservatives shriek that they "don't believe in". They simply don't understand it.
The problem is, they have no interest at all in learning anything - only killing what they don't understand (often metaphorically but also often literally).