Your team will be wrong

It might be my scientific education, but I see with increasing worry the increasing political polarization both in the US and Europe (I admit that unfortunately I am not informed well enough about other parts of the world to comment on their situation). I believe that my methodological training could be the culprit of my worries because the whole scientific process revolves around the concept of falsifiability, the prerequisite that any idea presented as hypothesis has to come with a series of conditions attached that, if fulfilled, will prove the hypothesis. Of course, enumerating the conditions necessary for your hypothesis to be correct implicitly means that you accept that the hypothesis could be wrong. However, in political panorama these days partisanship has reached such levels that we have started to wield the outlandish argument that the people of our political color cannot be wrong. However, this is nothing but a flagrant case of argumentum ad verecundiam, or appeal to authority: since these are the opinions of people I respect, they have to be right. But this conclusion is completely unfounded.

Photo: Juanita Mulder from Pixabay

And the situation would not be so bad if the lack of criticism were limited to the opinions, but the problem is that the same blanket of approval is often extended to the acts of the politicians (or actors, writers, celebrities of every kind), excusing them even in several different ways at the same time: "he did not do it, if he did it was not illegal, and if it was illegal he did not know it was", And that is only speaking of the motives for the actions, but sometimes this blanket extends to their outcomes, explaining that it was not our favorite personality who did it or that the unsatisfying result was the consequence of "undue interference" by third-party elements. But the hard truth is that, with the number of decisions we all make every day (and politicians are nothing but humans regardless of the aura they might have) it is statistically very unlikely that we never make wrong calls, hasty judgements or simply show bias in our choices.

Conversely, the followers of opposite parties can never be right: first and foremost because the belong to the wrong party and "everybody knows" that if you belong to the wrong party you are wrong (this is a flavor of the ad hominem fallacy called "guilt by association"). Besides, since their opinion is contrary to mine, their being right would imply that I am wrong. But that cannot be the case, because I am right (I will never pick the wrong option), so my ideas are right and theirs, being opposite, have to be wrong. Of course, much of this discourse happens without any regard for the actual argument, just based on the positioning of the different factions. It is so much so that occasionally we find ourselves defending a policy proposed by our party and attacking it later when a different party decides to support it. Isn't it ironic?

The one hope that I have left is that the recently inaugurated 46th President of the US will manage to calm down the rhetoric, mend the wounds and build bridges, because not only that is the only way to move together inside the country, but it will also set an example that is much needed in several countries of its sphere of influence. I hope you have a nice weekend and I will see you all on Monday.