Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Ignorance and evidence rejection

In my hall's bathroom there were two paper-sized posters put up. The one had pictures of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and one other person who I forget, with respective quotes all essentially saying the same thing: The minimum wage should be raised. Although, Clinton and Sanders' quotes were more specific (15/hr). The other had a picture (which I can't seem to get from my phone to this blog) explaining that when adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 is lower than it was in 1968, that in 2013 there were 3.3 million people in the U.S. being paid minimum wage ($15,000/year), and "While whites comprise the majority of the minimum wage workforce (77%), nearly 5% of African-Americans earn the minimum wage or less- that's higher than any other race or ethnicity." The poster also showed which states have their own minimum wage higher than $7.25. the sources cited at the bottom of the posted by their URL links were PBS.org and pewresearch.org. Two reputable organizations.
My friend, the same one who made the comment about public schools, asked, in a tone of voice that insinuated he thought they were absurd, if I had seen the posters. I said they were in all of the bathrooms I have seen and he said he was taking them down, and that they wouldn't be in his bathroom and called the statistics and the message stupid liberal hippie bullshit. That is not an exact quote, but those words were present in the remark he used. I simply said "I assume that you have evidence to support that those statistics are false then, since you don't believe them." His response started with "no I don't have any evidence and I don't need any" (red flag for his argument) then went on to rant that they (whoever "they" are) pull statistics that are false out of nowhere and we don't know if they are true because you can find evidence to support whatever you want. Obviously he was already lacking any logic in his argument, and I told him that no, you can't find evidence for whatever you want- he tried to cut me off and say that you could- and I cut him back off to keep on with my point, saying that you can fabricate false "evidence" but you can not get actual evidence to support whatever you want. That is counter-intuitive. He began saying again, obviously annoyed (I've been priding myself on keeping pretty calm in a lot of confrontations) and grasping for straws to support his opinion, that "they" just go off and pull up whatever statistics they want to support what they think and that it is hippie bullshit, and said quite a few other remarks which, in all honesty, I forget. I cut him off then, and calmly but assertively stated: no, that is not what happened and you are being extremely ignorant of evidence. The pew research center (I hadn't noticed PBS as the second source before this) is a very reputable source and not a source of fabricated information. You are literally looking at objective evidence and out of no reason, other than it contradicting your preexisting beliefs, are stating that is MUST be false without any reason to support that claim. You are not looking at evidence objectively and then coming to a conclusion based off of the information presented, but are outright denying evidence because it refutes what you already believe (what that specific opinion was I'm not sure, but only know that it apparently found fault with the study results). I finished by saying it was illogical and he had no basis for an argument. A brief moment of silence, since he realized there was not a way for him to argue his point, and then tried to play it off and soften the mood by making a random statement, which was something along the lines of "but man, all I'm saying is..the Jews." I stood there for a second, realizing if I pretended it was randomly funny it would be like saying there were no hard feelings and him being wrong wasn't a big deal, and just let the silence sit for a couple seconds before walking out.
I'm aware that retelling the story may paint myself in a bit of a conceited light, and I tried to tell it in a way that this was not so, but I would lie if I said I wasn't confident in my argument and my handling of a lot of situations. This event was on my mind afterwards though and it did irritate me. What we argued over wasn't a huge deal, but the stubbornness and argument from ignorance dumbfounded. Literally denying evidence because it goes against an opinion you already have which is, itself, based on no logic and only close-mindedness. This, the underlying point behind why I felt the need to write about this in the first place, is what is important. I see this type of thinking around me quite a lot, both in my college as well as in my home town. Although it is arguably easy to fall into this mode of thinking, where we make judgments and arguments based off of no actual evidence, but rather off of preexisting beliefs and justifying our points with broad statements which, if looked at critically, give no supporting evidence themselves. It is a pure lack of reason, and it is hard to ignore the fact that such modes of thinking are commonplace throughout the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment