Thursday, October 11, 2012

A few observations

I've been watching the vice-presidential debate tonight and I figure it embodied both the best and the worst of American politics.

Now I'm listening to the pundits process what happened and it is, as you'd expect, completely and predictably partisan.  There is no listening, no learning--only an attempt to score points.

What is equally predictable and partisan is the Facebook and Twitter chatter.  A friend of mine on Facebook posted that she sure hoped that the Republicans win the election so that Facebook can go back to being fun.  Her comment was tongue-in-cheek but my laugh was real.

The only thing I want to say at this point is to refer back to the conversation we've had on this blog about confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.  I'm actually hearing a lot of reference to both in the political chatter and I'm glad.

But here's what seems to be lost on most of us:  If you can only see the confirmation bias of the other side, you don't really understand how it works.

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