This begins to explain something I'd noticed back in the 1990s with the early bulletin board discussion groups. Some posters never cited sources but suffered from what today we call "cognitive dissonance." They stated what they felt never mind empirical facts and data: 'We conclude' or 'I believe?' Study finds rationality declined decades ago Scientists from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Indiana University have discovered that the increasing irrelevance of factual truth in public discourse is part of a groundswell trend that started decades ago. While the current "post-truth era" has taken many by surprise, the study shows that over the past forty years, public interest has undergone an accelerating shift from the collective to the individual, and from rationality towards emotion. . . . This could be a method to measure the degree of empiricism versus emotionalism in any text. This might lead to an automated screener that flags the more accurate posts from wishful postings. Curiously, I had already noticed the 'style' of less accurate posting but did not have a hard set of rules. Bob Wilson
I'm not sure that quite matches what I understood "cognitive dissonance" to mean. I've always understood the term to refer to those times when you notice there are conflicts between different things you believe, like when you've bought into two different claims you then later notice contradict each other. (Around here, that could be when you see one post that both suggests EGR clogging is a bad thing, and advocates EGR blocking as a good thing to do.) To notice that, a person has to be paying at least a certain minimal amount of attention. The thing I've been noticing more and more in recent years is how many people have managed to make themselves totally immune to cognitive dissonance—they'll believe combinations of things that flat-out can't be simultaneously believed, and not notice any dissonance at all.
Cite a specific URL source and no problem. Just try to be accurate as you will be 'fact checked.' Bob Wilson
In a previous life I reincarnated as a squirrel. It was punishment for a earlier life, but still totally worth it. Squirrels face a lot of prejudice, especially in where they're allowed to live. Red and grey lining is everywhere. I don't feel that you are validating my lived experience. Squirrel lives matter!
