Quick - someone answer me this. How do you have an intelligent and reasonable (ie, not dissolving into insults, name calling, and shouting) discussion with someone who refuses to accept the same facts as you? Could they possibly be right? What if you are 100% sure your facts are correct... but so are they. How should they go about informing you that it may actually be your dearly held "facts" (assumptions) that are wrong? Is it possible to both try to persuade another and yet be open to persuasion yourself? If one party of a discussion is willing to examine facts with an open mind, and the other party isn't, doesn't that give an advantage to the one who resolves not to examine alternate facts? If one party is willing to compromise, and the other isn't, who wins? Therefore, is not the dominant strategy usually to steadfastly hold to your own "facts" or interpretation thereof, regardless of what arguments are presented? Seeing that each party in a discussion may have an incentive to refuse to look at alternate facts, of course, lands us right back where we started.
And what, oh what, does this mean for American politics?
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