How do we get people to agree on a common set of facts?

[Mike Thick]

I don't want to get too far into the weeds in the OP, but what's disturbed me more than almost anything else lately is that we can't agree on the basic factual information of current events -- a wide swath of the population in this country, simply, just write off anything they don't like as false, or wrap it in a constructed narrative that suits them. I think it's easy to make fun of the Thomas Jacksons and EnglishPetes of the world, but 40%ish of the country thinks the same way, and if we don't address the underlying problem, it has the potential to continue long after Trump is gone.

So, this is my question for you guys: How do we get America to agree on a common set of facts again?

[Person Man]

Natural consequences?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

As Pete himself might agree, previous consensus was facilitated by a monolithic media structure. The obvious pitfalls of such a structure, or of state media, and so on, is that an institution monopolizing the truth may do with it what it sees fit. The left has a proud history of pillorying institutional and orthodox pillars of "truth" and "common sense". It is only natural that the triumph over orthodoxy would backfire on them (in some way, the right's purported belief in "individual liberty" has done the same to them. Having a non-state institution lead the march to restore sanity (I know I'm pirating Jon Stewart here) only creates another voice in an allegedly pluralistic system. Having state regulations on the spreading of fictions be implemented in a way so as to break down the average American's "bubble" runs the risk it always has--of becoming oppressive, manipulative, or politicized.

[Cashew]

Civil war and suppression/exiling of the losing side's activists/intelligentsia.

[Del Tachi]

The fact of the matter is, at this time, there is actually very, very little that has been established as fact in the Trump/Russia case that actually implicates the President in illegally colluding with the Russian government to undermine the American electoral process.

And let's remember for a minute why the media is having such a credibility problem and Trump's supporters still love him - for the better part of 18 months, the overwhelming media consensus on Trump was that he had no chance - that he was running as a joke, that the Republican establishment was too strong to be defeated, that he would not be able to win a brokered convention, and then that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats would beat him because he was a sexist, racist bigot.  Despite this narrative against him, Trump still won and the media lost big. 

So for many people there's this question as to why the same media would be able to get it right on Russiagate when 1) they got it so wrong before, 2) they are demonstrably anti-Trump in the sense that they 3) do not accurately reflect the way that most Americans feel/think about him (as evidenced by his electoral performance)     

[GlobeSoc]

Assuming we remain a democracy, a national trauma so extreme and attached to one party to such a degree that it makes 60-66% of people not take the moral premises of one side's ideology seriously, and then have those people use social pressure to force the other 34-40% out of the mainstream, and almost require that that 34-40% moderates or shuts up about politics to be included in the national culture.

So in other words, a realignment.

[Santander]

There are no facts.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I don't want to get too far into the weeds in the OP, but what's disturbed me more than almost anything else lately is that we can't agree on the basic factual information of current events -- a wide swath of the population in this country, simply, just write off anything they don't like as false, or wrap it in a constructed narrative that suits them. I think it's easy to make fun of the Thomas Jacksons and EnglishPetes of the world, but 40%ish of the country thinks the same way, and if we don't address the underlying problem, it has the potential to continue long after Trump is gone.

So, this is my question for you guys: How do we get America to agree on a common set of facts again?

In theory, with a slow and thorough positive education reform. I don't know what form (or forms) it will or should take, but you need a very thorough understanding of history, human and Western, how a democracy actually works, practicalmath, critical thinking, and how to self-educate.

In practice, I think we're toast. We lack the ability to teach and educate so many, so we're going to get to live out a nasty, chaotic and destructive version of The Marching Morons because there are too many people incapable of empathy for others or of self-awareness, or who cannot think think critically or understand probabilities or consequences. There are too many of them, and they're too entrenched. I think we get either a low-grade civil war, or we split up, or something worse happens.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

The fact of the matter is, at this time, there is actually very, very little that has been established as fact in the Trump/Russia case that actually implicates the President in illegally colluding with the Russian government to undermine the American electoral process.

His son, son-in-law, and campaign manager (who is also a long-time tenant) went to a meeting for the express purposes of getting damaging information on his opponent from a foreign government. Later that evening, Trump himself promised such information was forthcoming. At the very least he is directly implicated in attempting to collude with the Russian government to intervene in the US Presidential election.

[Associate Justice PiT]

...so as to break down the average American's "bubble"...

     I hate taking pieces out of context, but I think this is really the crux of the problem. Huge numbers of people have built ideological bubbles for themselves, where they consume information from like-minded sources and discuss issues with like-minded people. This echo chamber effect creates a situation where poor arguments and nonfactual ideas proliferate unchallenged, lest one should be accused of being an enemy of the group. This leads to a situation ultimately where large numbers of people embrace dubious notions partially because it is what is believed in their circles, but also to signal adherence to a certain crowd.

     Having identified the problem, the question of what to do about it is a much harder one. Cathcon pretty eloquently assaults most of the more feasible suggestions for action in the rest of his post. People in the end will associate with who they want to associate with and think what they want to think.

[Del Tachi]

The fact of the matter is, at this time, there is actually very, very little that has been established as fact in the Trump/Russia case that actually implicates the President in illegally colluding with the Russian government to undermine the American electoral process.

His son, son-in-law, and campaign manager (who is also a long-time tenant) went to a meeting for the express purposes of getting damaging information on his opponent from a foreign government. Later that evening, Trump himself promised such information was forthcoming. At the very least he is directly implicated in attempting to collude with the Russian government to intervene in the US Presidential election.

Meeting with a random lawyer from Russia who may or may not have had any intelligible information on Hillary Clinton does not demonstrate a willingness to collude with the Russian government in order to break the law.

Random lawyer from Russia =/= Russian government

It would make no difference if this lawyer was from Russia, Nigeria, Holland or Florida.

[afleitch]

Ban over 50's from Facebook

(seriously)

[pbrower2a]

There are no facts.

Yes, there are facts. The fundamental laws of mathematics, physics, the nature of matter and energy, and the most basic principles of formal logic are for fools alone to dispute. Biographical fact (such as that Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809) is a fact. Achievements of the dead as a body of work (such as that Dmitri Shostakovich wrote fifteen numbered and completed string quartets) is a fact. Conventions of naming (such as that a string quartet is either two violins, a viola, and a violoncello; persons performing in an ensemble playing those instruments; or a written piece of music for such an ensemble) is a fact. Legal descriptions of land (such as that the southern borders of Utah, Colorado, and Kansas and the northern borders of Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma are at the northern 37th parallel of latitude) is fact.  Legal decisions or courts of law and  bodies of legislation are facts even if they are subsequently repudiated. Content of books and feature films, the material in paintings, and musical scores are fact once they are set in final form.   Thus I do not expect a story about pirates in The Brothers Karamazov or Citizen Kane; I do not expect Starry Night  by Vincent Van Gogh to have images of pirates, and I don't expect Bach's Art of Fugue to be a cantata about pirates.  

We can all agree that Donald John Trump is President of the United States, whether we like that fact or hate it.  Where the disputes arise is upon opinions. Most of us have some values, and mine compel me to conclude that he is a horrible person. Some others may think him the best thing to have ever happened to America. There are things that we simply do not know -- and the erratic, secretive nature of Donald Trump ensures that  we don't know enough to conclude certain things. That said, I cannot say that January 18 will be or will not be a day in which a blizzard strikes Chicago.

 There are facts suitable for quick, easy judgment, as in allowing the grading of student papers. One generally does not get away with sentence fragments or run-on sentences in academia. Your high-school teacher of French  would never let you get away with interpreting nous avons as "five cats".

There are plenty of facts, and we use those every day. We have trouble with ambiguity, and most of us recognize that when someone says things that violate the facts we have no cause to believe what the speaker says.  

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Ban over 50's from Facebook

(seriously)

[Santander]

Ban over 50's from Facebook

(seriously)

I thought over 50s were the only people who used FB nowadays.

[The_Doctor]

There are a number of solutions accompanying a realignment. Obviously I keep typing about this and have done some research.

Read this article about the disappearance of 'purple America." People are now siloed in ideological bubbles with their own priors. This was not the case back in prior eras and only has been observed in one other major era - the Civil War era. Now, after the Civil war, intense polarization followed because of a series of close elections and a geographic dominion over separate regions by different parties (the South was dominated by Democrats; the Northeast and Midwest by Republicans).

So, one solution is to mix up the ideological bubbles. I'm not sure how we do that though but it would be helpful if everyone was dispersed in such a way that there were no 80-100% GOP or DNC regions. But that would require a massive resorting of the coalitions.

On Atlas, Republicans and Democrats (and #NeverTrumpers) should be willing to criticize their own side about a 3:1 ratio - e.g, every 3 partisan comments should be followed by a honest assessment of their own side. Hillary for example lost the election on her own but Trump really botched a lot of things along the way and the Never Trumpers paved the way for Trump in the first place.

Simply put, the first step is to acknowledge your side is sometimes wrong and do it consistently. This has the added benefit of strengthening your case by weeding out poor facts that do not help your ideological cause.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Not possible.

Elaboration: everyone picks their own sets of facts, ripped out of context, to confirm their deep-rooted preconceptions and biases - which obviously vary depending on the person and the particular influences on their worldview. The uh, fact that things that are demonstrably Not True but conform said preconceptions and biases are readily integrated into the worldviews of so many people just demonstrates the incredible power of the gravitational pull of what we want to believe.

[Reaganfan]

There are basically two Americas.

I mean, being on this forum, I thought Trump would lose, Matt Bevin would lose, Ron Johnson would lose, and if I ever said anything to the contrary, I'd get some red avatar responding with an "LOL".

Well, clearly they were the ones who are wrong. So it's almost like an alternate reality.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Bouncing off of PR's comment, I believe cognitive science has asserted that people in general seek to confirm their own suspicions, and that the idea of the unbiased observer is generally mythical.

That said, one way of "shaking up" people's bubbles would be to institute certain experiences as part of the very fact of being a citizen--national service, for example. This might be something that mandates the mixing of races, classes, and creeds in a way to encourage more agile thinking. Civil libertarians will attack this as slavery, naturally, and this also runs the obvious risk of not working.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Deleted message that was too long and off topic. I'll post it in a different thread.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Time.

The only way a disagreement over basic facts can be resolved is when the two sets of facts collide with reality and one is proven the stronger.

In this country we had a very divisive EU referendum with the winning Leave campaign pushing a set of alternative facts: "£350m for the NHS if we leave", "German industry will lobby to get us a favourable deal", "the EU is on the verge of collapse anyway", "Europe needs us more than we need them because we buy their products", "the ROTW will be lining up to sign trade deals with us" etc. etc., beating out the facts of the Remain campaign. Anyway, this delusion was rampant among government ministers and a small majority of the public and is only beginning to slowly dissipate now that Brexit negotiations have begun and fantasy is crashing into reality.

So with Trump: if he really did collude with Russia, and if he really is as awful and incompetent as Democrats believe, then the only thing they can do is wait for this to be exposed by the investigation and Trump's agenda. Bush won two elections and his incompetence crashing into reality permanently discredited neoconservatives and "compassionate conservatism". So with Trump.

[Person Man]

Time.

The only way a disagreement over basic facts can be resolved is when the two sets of facts collide with reality and one is proven the stronger.

In this country we had a very divisive EU referendum with the winning Leave campaign pushing a set of alternative facts: "£350m for the NHS if we leave", "German industry will lobby to get us a favourable deal", "the EU is on the verge of collapse anyway", "Europe needs us more than we need them because we buy their products", "the ROTW will be lining up to sign trade deals with us" etc. etc., beating out the facts of the Remain campaign. Anyway, this delusion was rampant among government ministers and a small majority of the public and is only beginning to slowly dissipate now that Brexit negotiations have begun and fantasy is crashing into reality.

So with Trump: if he really did collude with Russia, and if he really is as awful and incompetent as Democrats believe, then the only thing they can do is wait for this to be exposed by the investigation and Trump's agenda. Bush won two elections and his incompetence crashing into reality permanently discredited neoconservatives and "compassionate conservatism". So with Trump.

The question is then what will trigger the "I told you so moment" where enough people believe a narrative to the point that there are consequences?

I think people were just tired of Bush when they finally forced him to share power. Maybe because enough people had died in Loiusiana and Iraq and that those fence splitters who went to Bush in 04 were done "giving hom a chance" with his war. The last straw was clearly when it was found out that enough people couldn't pay their bills so that they had to fire millions of people. Then, instead of the 45% who never believed him and the 3% that learned quickly knowing Bush sucked, those 5% who were just giving him a chance also acknowledged that Bush wasn't the right person. The other 46-47% lives were dependent upon their set of facts that the Republican Party's narrative was the only acceptable one. However, they weren't enough to prevent a reasonable response to the facts.
 

Now, it seemed those people who gave Bush a chance wanted to give "someone new" a chance. What will it take for enough people to be convinced of Trump's malfeasance and that there is an alternative

[Antonio the Sixth]

Cultural hegemony.

[EnglishPete]

Cultural hegemony.

[Beet]

It is a fact that anyone who jumps off a 50-story building in normal street clothes will die. If anyone disagrees, please prove us wrong by completing this feat without dying.