Resumen de Seeing reason
Politicians spin and politicians lie. That has always been the case, and to an extent it is a natural product of a free democratic culture. Even so, we do appear to have entered a new era of "post-truth politics", where the strongest currency is what satirist Stephen Colbert has dubbed "truthiness": claims that feel right, even if they have no basis in fact, and which people want to believe because they fit their pre-existing attitudes. In recent years, psychologists and political scientists have been revealing the shocking extent to which people are all susceptible to truthiness, and how that leads to polarized views on factual questions from the safety of vaccines to human-caused climate change. The fact is that facts play less of a role in shaping our views than we might hope for in a species whose Latin name means "wise man"--and the problem seems to be getting worse. By figuring out when and why we have a partial view of factual information, however, researchers are starting to see how we can throw off the blinkers. Here, Jones examines how all skew evidence-based information to fit people's beliefs--figuring out when and why could show them how to restore the delusion-busting power of facts
