Van Jones Quotes

People of a certain political view tend to read material of only that point of view … except to cast contempt on the other points of view.

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.

In an ideological, polarized political environment, people see the reality that they want to see.

Not only is our electorate polarized, but their sources of information are polarized. Voters choose the sources of information that tells them what they want to hear.

The point is, folks, for people on the left - and I don't care what kind of clothes they wear, or where they live, people on the left, America is guilty. And there is not a set of facts in the world that's gonna change it. There's not a set of facts in the world that's gonna change anybody's mind.

People have now been absorbing only that they agree with. You know, part of it is if you're liberal, you consume liberal information. If you're a conservative, you consume conservative information. And there's a certain stridency in both that you know everything, and if somebody doesn't agree with you, you think they don't know what they're talking about, and you become intolerant.

For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses, or places of worship or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.

If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line to our own, we become more polarized, more set in our own ways. It will only reinforce and deepen the political divides in our country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

I always think there are people looking not so much for information as for reassurance and reaffirmation of their views.

The stupidity of tribalism has made politics primarily about partisan identities, not persuasion or policy. The screamers on the right and left fuel one another. In a nation as big as ours, there is always someone somewhere saying something stupid—but tribalism takes this fact as its lifeblood. And it’s the excuse for otherwise civic-minded Americans to ignore the nuts in their own party and obsess only over the nuts in the other party. We’re tempted to think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It takes a genuine leader to remind us that most of the time, the enemy of our enemy is still a jackass.

What Americans seem to prefer — or at least the subset of them who live on social media — is a private square of people who already agree with them. The most successful of these preachers we call “influencers,” which basically means they get paid to manipulate you, and somehow you listen to them anyway.

Anybody who tunes into Rush Limabaugh already knows what he's going to say and is already inclined to agree. So it winds up creating tribes.

As people's opportunities to succumb to confirmation bias increases online - only seeking out information that confirms their prejudices - ignorance, extremism and close-mindedness have continued to rise unabated.

Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.

Politics is always antagonistic and tribalistic. But social media puts us in isolated information bubbles. We're not just disagreeing on politics. We're disagreeing on reality in very fundamental ways.

I still strongly feel that a lot of people who participated in Gamergate, who participated in this sort of thing, are doing so because they go into it with - they'll believe the version of events that fits their world view.

The separation of audience into tribes preferring to reinforce their own views with media of similar ideological stripe makes true debate impossible.

Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.

If you're always in the company of people who agree with you, you're going to think of people who don't agree with you as venal or stupid. I constantly tell my students that if they're in the company of people who always say "amen" to what you say, find other company. And that is the source of illiberalism, when you are unable to listen to someone who thinks differently. That's when democracies are in trouble.

We have more information than ever before, and it is harder to avoid actually seeing what the other side is saying. Yes, we in Business insider focus on publications that we feel speak to us, but that is the same way it was 20 or 100 years ago. In the US, two million people have subscribed to the New York Times and many more millions think it is a terrible, liberal paper they would never read. We can choose to put ourselves in a bubble of only people who agree with us, but in the digital world there are many more ways of saying "Hey, here is something you might want to consider".

I explain how America hatred and Jew hatred are [INDEMIC] to Modern Liberalism and delve deeper into why it is the otherwise good and decent people will INVARIABLY side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success.

People readily believe what they want to believe.

The most active people in the country know different things, and because each one tends to hear mostly and deal mostly with people with whom they agree, they are reinforced not simply in the conviction that they are right, which is totally appropriate, but that they are the majority. So you have both sides, the Left and the Right, thinking that the majority of the country is really with them.

No matter what it is, I think people want the answer they want, they don't want the truth.

People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.