A note on perception and reality...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looking at a lot of posters analysis of news reports, polls, ads and stuff an interesting pattern turns up: what poster x wants to be true is percieived to be true by poster x... this is especially true about rumoured internal polls.

[Monty]

Darn brits, with your rumours and colours and labours. 

[John Dibble]

I forget the name of the psychological principle, but people will perceive things such as support for an idea differently depending on their own views. For example, a vegetarian will think there are more vegetarians than a meat eater would think there were(and that there actually are). I see more support for libertarian ideas than a Republican or Democrat would, as a personal example.

"Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anyting. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool" - Terry Goodkind

[Gabu]

Regardless of how much people may say that they don't care about public opinion when forming their own opinions, most people generally do.  If you hold one opinion and everyone else in the world held another and they all told you that you were an idiot and wrong, it would be very hard to continue to believe that you were right because you would start to question why nobody agreed with you.*  Because of that, there usually is a direct corellation between how strongly you believe something and how many people you think agree with you.  For people who have never had to defend their position very strongly, there also is the added thought of, "My position is obviously right.  How could anyone disagree?"

I'm not going to name any names, but there's at least one person who immediately comes to mind who does this a whole lot...

* As an aside, this is why the argument "technique" of repeating something ad infinitum while completely disregarding all evidence to the contrary works so well with most people: they'll begin to ask, "Why is this person so sure of his beliefs?" and will then question the validity of their own beliefs.  Most people make the (completely invalid) connection that being absolutely sure of something means that person is more likely to be right than someone who isn't sure of something.