Harper’s Magazine’s Index is always a treasure trove of American wackiness.

Here’s a sample from this month: “Percentage of Democrats that Republicans believe are atheist or agnostic: 36. Percentage that are: Nine.”

And this one from July: “Proportion of Republicans who believe high-level Democrats run a child sex-trafficking ring: Half.”

Half of American Republicans think Democrat leaders are paedophiles! Good grief.

This thinking is not just wacky, it’s bad thinking. And it is not just in the United States. For example, the new British Prime Minister Liz Truss believed that borrowing money to provide rich people with a tax cut was a good idea; in fact, it was bad thinking, which backfired quickly and spectacularly.

In Australia, only 81 per cent of people believe climate change is happening and 8 per cent of the rest actively deny it – twice the global average of deniers. And a lot of those 8 per cent are in positions of power or influence.

A recent book describes all this, and more like it, as an “epidemic of bad thinking”.

The book is called When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People; it was written by two philosophy professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro, and it starts like this:

“Something is seriously wrong. An alarming number of citizens, in America and around the world, are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas.”

Ideas like – vaccination causes autism, or that prominent politicians and movie stars are involved in a cannibalistic paedophile ring, or that climate change is a hoax or that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

“There is nothing to substantiate these beliefs, and easily available evidence shows that they are actually false. And yet people – often educated, smart, and influential people – continue to believe them.”

The authors explain that bad thinking is a kind of stubbornness, and that when someone refuses to tailor their beliefs to the evidence, it’s “epistemic stubbornness” (that is, relating to the validity of knowledge) – for example, denying climate change or the theory of evolution, or the benefits of vaccination.

This sort of bad thinking is different to stupidity or ignorance, but is instead a sort of rampant confirmation bias, where countervailing evidence is ignored or simply disbelieved, and any information or assertions that help their case are fastened onto.

Nadler and Shapiro focus mainly on the United States because they know it best and, well, there’s more craziness there. But the US certainly does not have a monopoly on bad thinking.

Epistemic stubbornness led Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng astray because they ignored the clear evidence that trickle-down economics does not work, and pressed on with the ideology that tax cuts promote economic growth.

READ MORE:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/10/06/bad-thinking-epidemic-kohler/

MEANWHILE, THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE DOING:

The U.K. government on Monday said it was dropping controversial plans to scrap the highest rate of income tax for high earners, an embarrassing u-turn for Prime Minister Liz Truss after the policy drew international condemnation, roiled markets and pushed the pound to record lows.

Truss’ government confirmed it was backpedaling on plans to cut the top 45% rate of income tax—for people earning more than £150,000 ($168,000) a year—announced by finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng just 10 days ago. 

Kwarteng said the proposal, one of several unpopular fiscal policies that sparked widespread public outrage and accusations of unfairness during a cost of living crisis, had become “a distraction” from the government’s mission to promote growth.

READ MORE:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/10/03/uk-ditches-tax-cuts-for-richest-amid-growing-backlash-and-market-mayhem/?sh=25624f162efe

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