You write, And what's even more remarkable is that their change of heart probably isn't dictated by their absorbing new factual data but rather their reevaluation of the trustworthiness of their data sources.

I do think it's extremely good that people are starting to question what's presented to them. But isn't a large part of that precisely because the media finally told them it had been wrong? It's the self-correcting journalists and bloggers that are helping fuel this.

I think your insight about political views is probably true for most people. Personally, my political view have changed radically from my youth. I was much more conservative in high school and college than I am now. My change was part of an overall re-evaluation of myself that took place in my late twenties, early thirties. Some old thoughts were kept, some discarded in the process.

Your description of people seeking their comfort level is apt. I look for opposing views, but not as much as I look to sources I myself trust, because I find the opposition raises my blood pressure and makes me angry. On the other hand, anger is one of hope's lovely daughters. You have to face what's wrong if you want to change it.

But coming home to like-minded souls online is nearly as comforting as chocolate :-)

Lazy thinking is one way of putting it. To me, it comes across as a kind of pre-civilization thought - the sort of intuitive thinking that comes natural - a product of evolutionary heritage. Real thinking is a developmental skill.

The Rush Limbaughs of the world, aren't thinking at all. For example, I remember hearing a meme circulating that Rachel Carson was to blame for 30 million deaths. I didn't feel like looking into it, but I assumed it was typical nonsense.

Then in this years list of Top 100 Discover magazine stories I noticed that DDT which had been banned 30 years ago was going to be used in Africa to combat malaria, where a million die from malaria. And that explained it - Coulter, Limbaugh, etc. - they did 30 X 1 million to get 30 million and then because Carlson was influential in getting DDT banned in the USA.

And that was it. That's all the "thought" that went into the assertion. No regard for looking to see if one million deaths has been the malaria death rate for the last 30 years, no consideration of the fact that Rachel Carson did not argue in Silent Spring that DDT should not be used in a controlled fasion to combat malaria in Africa, and certainly no consideration of whether her argument was right then in the context of what was known and not known about DDT.

I think Steve Allen called this phenomenon "dumth." Ok, I'm being coy ... I know he did, he wrote a book titled the same.

"... and since Rachel Carson was influential in getting DDT banned in the USA they blamed her for 30 million deaths in Africa"

and the Steve Allen book is Dumbth, not dumth.

Noam Chomsky, if I'm not misstating his thesis as I understand it, has suggested that journalists and their editors "internalize" the prevailing worldview of the priveleged classes, and thus believe they are reporting "objectively" when in fact they are promoting the agenda of the priveleged classes. In short, they do not even see where their reporting may, in fact, be partisan, or distorted so as to minimize the alternative point of view and to affirm the establishment point of view. Their minds have been colonized such that they see a political agenda as objectively factual and true...in other words, as ungarnished "reality."

Or, in other words, Upton Sinclair's quote, posted a page or two before this, holds.

While there may be such a thing as ungarnished reality, it will not be found in any reiteration of events by those who tell the tale. We all see through our own biases, and this actually does color how we perceive events around us. Perhaps only when every aspect of the world is surveilled and recorded to audio- or videotape will we be able to gain a glimpse of an objective reality. But then, the "reality" will be controlled by those with access to and control over the recorded data.

Oh good grief! I had not heard of the Limbaugh lambaste of Rachel Carson until your post; I googled it and was appalled! Talk about dumbth!

Apparently it was even worse when viewed in detail: "According to Limbaugh, Carson is responsible for more human death and misery than Stalin or Mao, claiming that the environmental backlash generated by her book led to the banning of DDT, which until then had been used to eradicate Malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Malaria, Limbaugh claimed, now infects upward of 400 million people every year, and claims some 2 million souls each year (a death rate of 500 per 100,000 — or about 0.5% of those infected)."

http://www.darwincentral.org/blog/2006/07/11/inconvenient-facts-bite-limbaughs-ddt-claims/

This is exactly the kind of criminal negligence that makes me see red. Makes you wonder how he lives with himself.

Re: To me, it comes across as a kind of pre-civilization thought - the sort of intuitive thinking that comes natural - a product of evolutionary heritage. Real thinking is a developmental skill.

Your point on the langauge use is well taken. I have to think about better phrasing.

That said, I think you're right on target. I think it's adaptive to conserve energy from one perspective, and lazy "thought" is one way of doing that. People need to realize that at this point, actual thought is more adaptive than low-energy thought. As V.S. Ramachandran put it, speaking of mirror neurons and learning, "...One could almost argue that there was a greater behavioral/cognitive difference between pre-18th century and post-20th century humans than between Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens."

The time to start thinking is now.

I think you mean to refer to "unvarnished" reality. Unless, of course, you demand your reality served with a sprig of parsley!

Sinclair actually had something to say about this subject, he wrote a book on the press and how interests of the ownership affect the coverage. It was called The Brass Check

http://www.teleread.org/brasscheck.htm

The first 9 chapters are available on-line (from above), the rest can be downloaded.

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s03/sinclair.html

In this systematic critique of the structural basis of U.S. media--arguably the first one ever published--Upton Sinclair writes that "American journalism is a class institution serving the rich and spurning the poor." Likening journalists to prostitutes, the title of the book refers to a chit that was issued to patrons of urban brothels of the era.

Fueled by mounting disdain for newspapers run by business tycoons and conservative editors, Sinclair self-published The Brass Check in the years after The Jungle had made him a household name. Despite Sinclair's claim that this was his most important book, it was dismissed by critics and shunned by reviewers. Yet it sold over 150,000 copies and enjoyed numerous printings.

That's a link to where a print copy can be purchased.