The Importance of Reasoning Rationally

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There's bettiger's law which is any any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered no right. wine tasting if you don't know how much the bottle costs oh no i can't tell yeah exactlyYeah so um are we living in a post truth alternative facts uh fake news world well there's bett Tiger's law and pager makes his point in his book rationality, he says. Pager: We're it's really hard to reason rationally about these issues when even if you're trained to look out for all these cognitive biases there's still the bias bias that is you.

The democratic ideal demands that the citizenry think critically about matters of public import. Yet many Democrats and Republicans in the United States have fallen short of that standard because political tribalism motivates them to acquire, perceive and evaluate political information in a biased manner. The result is an electorate that is more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavorable democratic outcomes.

Shermer and Redmond discuss: why we have political duopoly (Duverger’s law) • parties vs. policies • Are we living in a post-truth, fake-news, alternative facts world? • How do we know political polarization is worse now than in the past? • acquiring, perceiving, and evaluating political information • evaluating: false political information, political numbers and arguments, claims of rigged election • whataboutism • cognitive responsibilities of citizenship • cognitive biases • political polarization • myside bias • numeracy vs. innumeracy • solutions to the polarization problem.

Timothy J. Redmond received his PhD in political science from the University at Buffalo. He is an award-winning educator and author of over one hundred articles on critical thinking and politics. He is a professor at Daemen University where he teaches a political science and history course for education students.