IDEOLOGY BASED OPINION VERSUS EVIDENCE BASED OPINION Matter of Thought versus Matter of Fact
Ideology driven opinion is fundamentally different from evidence driven opinion. For the sake of this article, I will shorten these terms to IBO ( Ideology Based Opinion) and EBO ( Evidence Based Opinion). It is important to distinguish these two patterns when we engage in any meaningful debate. It is also important to identify individuals who consistently maintain IBO for two reasons: no meaningful debate or exchange of conclusions can be achieved if the debate is between two IBO positions. EBO is not an easy position to gain or maintain. It requires years of retraining to achieve the mental sanity to make EBO. This is because the human moral landscape is full of biases that are based on biological, social and cultural disposition. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt discusses the divide on social and political issues as being fundamental to the way humans perceive things across five standards: harm/care , fairness/reciprocity, in-group loyalty/tribalism/territorial sense, authority/respect/deference, purity/sanctity. Based on a massive database of cross-cultural comparison, Haidt found that ideological difference on social and political issues is based on the variations by which people grade these five standards of morality. For instance, liberals have a high grading on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity standards, while social conservatives have a higher grading for authority, ingroup loyalty and purity/sanctity standards. Libertarians – free economy champions – are like liberals on most standards, like in-group loyalty and purity/sanctity, but are low on indexes that signify compassion – the standards of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity.