Ideologues pair extreme doubt toward disfavored facts with total credulity toward favored ones

Evidence

Yet the real problem here, I claim, is not merely the content of any particular (outrageous) belief, but the overarching idea that—depending on what one wants to be true—some facts matter more than others. It is not simply that climate-change deniers don’t believe in facts, it’s that they only want to accept those facts that justify their ideology. Like all conspiracy theorists, they feel entitled to a double standard whereby they simultaneously believe (with no evidence) that the world’s climate scientists are part of a global conspiracy to hype the evidence on climate change, but then cherry pick the most favorable scientific statistics that allegedly show that the global temperature has not gone up in the last two decades. Deniers and other ideologues routinely embrace an obscenely high standard of doubt toward facts that they don’t want to believe, alongside complete credulity toward any facts that fit with their agenda. The main criterion is what favors their preexisting beliefs. This is not the abandonment of facts, but a corruption of the process by which facts are credibly gathered and reliably used to shape one’s beliefs about reality. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 48

Categorization

• XREF: The asymmetric-doubt-plus-credulity mechanism anticipates Kahneman-style confirmation bias and resonates with vaccine/climate denial literature. — connects to: Motivated reasoning is the motive while confirmation bias is the mechanism — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 100; Trumpspeak treats belief and usefulness as substitutes for factual truth — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 342; Fighting post-truth requires doubting one’s own favored beliefs first — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 330 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Fighting post-truth requires doubting one’s own favored beliefs first #expands (0.82) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 330
• Conspiracists falsely portray themselves as skeptical critical thinkers #exemplifies (0.82) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 265
• Some policy debates feature one side uninterested in truth where scholarship is propaganda #exemplifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 829
• People hold logically contradictory beliefs when elements aren’t subjectively linked. #exemplifies (0.72)
• Copying others’ opinions rather than criticizing them yields contradictory compartmentalized beliefs #exemplifies (0.72) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1209