Question

In what ways is factual evidence sometimes used, abused, dismissed and ignored in politics?

Answer 1

Answer:

Our ability to reason did not develop simply to help us find the truth. Instead, reasoning evolved to fulfill fundamentally social functions, like cooperating in large groups and communicating with others.This is one of the arguments advanced in “The Enigma of Reason,” a book by cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. According to their theory of reasoning, reason’s primary strengths are justifying beliefs we already believe in and making arguments to convince others. While this kind of reasoning helps us cooperate in a social environment, it does not make us particularly good at truth-seeking. It also makes us fall prey to a number of cognitive biases, like confirmation bias, or the tendency to search for information that confirms what we already believe.Their ideas also help explain why politics seems to make us so bad at reasoning. If most of reasoning is for social cohesion instead of truth-seeking, then belonging to a particular political party should distort our reasoning and make us pretty bad at finding the truth.A number of studies document the many ways in which our political party distorts our reasoning. One study found that people who had strong math skills were only good at solving a math problem if the solution to the problem conformed to their political beliefs. Liberals were only good at solving a math problem, for instance, if the answer to that problem showed that gun control reduced crime. Conservatives were only good at solving this problem if the solution showed that gun control increased crime. Another study found that the higher an individual’s IQ, the better they are at coming up with reasons to support a position—but only a position that they agree with.

Answer 2

Politics in its purest form is the way people who share similar views on the way of life in their respective areas make decisions.

• These decisions can affect agreements with others, so they can coexist in tribes, communities, ethnic groups, countries, alliances, or other organizations.
• However, most people understand it simply as the actions of governments regarding their country's political relations with others. It is rational and understandable to know that people expect those who are placed in positions of power to understand their needs and wants as the ruling force and make the right decisions accordingly to achieve what the people want.
• But politics is messy and leaders have to use acceptable rational reasoning to make agreements and arguments with each other using factual evidence and reasoning, so our ability to reason has basically been to fulfill social functions and cooperate by communicating ideas as a matter of course.
• The bones of knowledge and politics. Since we tend to use factual evidence as the most common way to establish truth, politicians use many tactics to manipulate raw factual evidence to make their point and support their course of action.

• Politics in its purest form is the way people who share similar views on the way of life in their respective areas make decisions.

Physical evidence itself can be used to support a claim, such as in a lawsuit, or it can be exaggerated and stretched, as is commonly found in propaganda.

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