Posted on 10/28/2013 2:30:23 AM PDT by markomalley
All human beings have their assumptions, their biases. But there is something vast and indestructible about the bias of those who have convinced themselves that they, unlike the rest of us, have risen above perspective to inhabit a world of pure facts.
It's amazing how often we let them get away with it, too. Plenty of people believe, for example, that the Economist is more impartial than the Daily Mail or the Guardian. In fact, all three papers have their prejudices. Name an issue and I'll tell you, with 80 per cent certainty, where each of them will stand on it. Sure, they can all surprise us on occasion, but the Economist is no less predictable than the others. The only difference is that it goes through a little on-the-one-hand-on-the-other routine before reaching the conclusion that you knew at the outset it would.
Don't be fooled by an Olympian tone. High-minded centrists, just like Marxists or libertarians or Islamic fundamentalists, incline instinctively to certain conclusions, and then rationalise those conclusions to themselves. As Jonathan Haidt would put it, their elephant (their intuition) leans, and its mahout (their conscious mind) scampers around seeking to explain that lean with suitable facts.
The brilliant Tom Chivers hilariously satirised the attitude of what he calls "the self-righteous vacillating centrist stats bore" – a label he cheerfully applies to himself. For a long time, I thought his blogpost was a parody. Then I came across Jonathan Portes, who runs the National Institute for Economic and Social Research.
The NIESR is a think-tank whose conclusions fall safely and predictably into the soft-Left BBC-approved part of the political spectrum: EU good, austerity bad, immigration good, bonuses bad, etc…
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
bttt
Daniel Hannan begged us not to pass Obamacare.
Sooooooo typically liberal - wanting to give the appearance of being open minded - without really being open minded...
Yes, a straight out psychopath, barely.
I can’t find the article at the links provided ... its 404s ...
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