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To: LongWayHome
The reason folks are reluctant to address it is because it doesn't comport to their ideological narrative; it's discomforting information that clashes (blatantly) with a worldview that can perhaps be best described as episytemic closure. I took at look at jackmercer's work, and both he (and Nate Silver) were extraordinarily accurate. Kudos to them both; should I ever need a pollster, I certainly know who to look up. For me, one of the things I've noticed about some of the reactions to President Obama's re-election is that it's similar to reactions experienced by members of malignant cults once the truth is made all too clear. Shock, anger, denial, etc. You know; how could they be so wrong? How could they have come to believe what they did? That's why it's always good to look at multiple sources of information, even those you may disagree with. Confirmation bias is perhaps a normal human condition, but when such things lead to the aforementioned episystemic closure, false-consensus effect, and willful rejection of any ideas that might disrupt one's worldview, there's a problem. Remember; the first rule of any malignant cult is to isolate its adherents from any conflicting data or information that disagrees with the views projected by the cult itself. After awhile, the cult adherent does this mental trick by themselves, voluntary. George Orwell certainly noticed this in "1984" as blackwhite. The ability to not only accuse your political opponent of impudently saying that "black is white" contrary to logic, but to be able to convince oneself that "black is white" if the situation demands it. Come on, folks. Conservatives must be able to dispassionately analyze information and arrive at a logical conclusion based on the available empirical evidence. jackmercer certainly did that, and did so very well; bravo. Should we do otherwise, we run the risk of becoming little more than political cultists.
36 posted on 11/10/2012 4:28:15 AM PST by AnAmericanAbroad (It's all bread and circuses for the future prey of the Morlocks.)
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To: AnAmericanAbroad

You explained this better than I ever could. You notice that they keep skipping over jackmercer’s work here on FR before the election:) I too was guilty of pretty much the same behavior. I was looking almost exclusively at Ras & Gallup for my polling data this year & we see how that turned out.


45 posted on 11/10/2012 10:52:45 AM PST by LongWayHome
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