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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 07:19 AM Nov 2013

What Americans don't know and don't understand is quite an obstacle to progress

http://www.alternet.org/media/americas-information-inequality-least-shocking-its-economic-inequality

If you think the widening chasm between the rich and the rest spells trouble for American democracy, have a look at the growing gulf between the information-rich and-poor.

Earlier this year, a Harvard economist’s jaw-dropping study of American’s beliefs about the distribution of American wealth became a viral video. Now a new Pew study of the distribution of American news consumption is just as flabbergasting.

According to the Harvard study, most people believe that the top 20 percent of the country owns about half the nation’s wealth, and that the lower 60 percent combined, including the 20 percent in the middle, have only about 20 percent of the wealth. A whopping 92 percent of Americans think this is out of whack; in the ideal distribution, they said, the lower 60 percent would have about half of the wealth, with the middle 20 percent of the people owning 20 percent of the wealth.



What’s astonishing about this is how wrong Americans are about reality. In fact, the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent of the nation’s wealth, and the top 1 percent hold more of the country’s wealth – 40 percent – than 9 out of 10 people think the top 20 percent should have. The top 10 percent of earners take home half the income of the country; in 2012, the top 1 percent earned more than a fifth of U.S. income – the highest share since the government began collecting the data a century ago.
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What Americans don't know and don't understand is quite an obstacle to progress (Original Post) xchrom Nov 2013 OP
The condition is called cognative dissonance beachbum bob Nov 2013 #1
No, the condition is called ignorance. Igel Nov 2013 #2
+1 daleanime Nov 2013 #3
 

beachbum bob

(10,437 posts)
1. The condition is called cognative dissonance
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 07:32 AM
Nov 2013

and it is rampant and growing more and more dis-associative with reality in America.

Igel

(35,197 posts)
2. No, the condition is called ignorance.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 12:35 PM
Nov 2013

And it's almost always self-inflicted.

Cognitive dissonance is when you have a belief that isn't just at odds with reality, but with what you know about reality--and you know this is the case.

So it's been widely reported that high debt to GDP ratios lead to long-term reduction in economic growth. Let's assume that you accept this to be true.

At the same time, let's say you firmly argue that the only way to have higher growth is to have deficits that produce an extremely high debt to GDP ratio. Let's assume that you believe this to be true.

What you can't state if you have both of these in your mental toolkit is that you can easily have incredibly high deficits for years to trigger high growth rates and then cut the deficits and assume growth rates will continue to be high.

There are resolutions to cog. diss.

1. "Oh, I was wrong." Then you reject the erroneous assumption or conclusion. We humans would rather have our appendices removed with a fishing hook through our noses without any anesthesia than do that if there's any measure of self-worth on the line. This is called "learning." We're bad at it, most of the time and so we usually move on to (2).

2. "Oh, the study I don't like was wrong." Why? You find a reason. Ad hominem reasons are the high-school graduate rationale of choice, those with some college prefer straw-men rationales. Whole-part confusion has been spotted, as have shifting definitions, but the truly partisan on both sides have a predilection for appeals to authority. But there's a range of menu items for any intellectual palette and numerous others work just as well--and are all equally convincing. This is called "bias."

3. You turn around with your fingers in you ears and do a Babe imitation--"la-la-la-laaaaaa!" Then you turn back to face the person you were talking to and say, "I'm sorry, I just had a ministroke. Do I know you?" Drugs and alcohol--or prime-time tv or talk-shows--help smooth the existential pain. This is too common to have just one name. Mostly we get by using faith or we just don't really have sufficient metacognitive or observational skills to recognize there even is a problem. Rather like watching a video of people throwing a ball and missing the man in a cheesy gorilla suit that slowly wander through the group. No, that is not a snarky made up example. It's a snarky true example. This is really just (3) for the overwhelmed, but it's such a prominent instance that it seemed worth stating it twice in different words.

4. "Oh, that's not the right conclusion." And you proceed to exhaustively show why both facts can be true at the same time, the reasoning becoming more and more convoluted until an Escher print becomes a model of clarity and you find yourself humming Ive's "Simple Gifts". Or you ramble on, making allusion to Alice in Wonderland's "believing 5 different things before breakfast" and how that's the sign of a truly great mind. However, often at the end there's a little voice in the back of your mind--and you're not having a psychotic break--that says, "You know, that's not really as convincing as you let on."

(4) is what we usually mean by cognitive dissonance, but learning theorists prefer (1) because it leads to learning and if teachers create the conditions either the kids learn or the teachers are amused (or outraged) when they observe (4). (2) and (3) are simple lack of awareness, rather like a deaf person listening to a diminished g7 chord with an added minor 2nd. Dissonant as hell, but they're oblivious to it.

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