Epistemic closure and political disinformation

By M.S.

ONE OF the problems with discussing how to keep Americans from believing political falsehoods (see, for example, the "epistemic closure" debate) is that the people having the discussion must first agree on what's false. But in an ideologically polarised environment, that kind of agreement on the underlying facts is becoming harder and harder to achieve. For example: the new health-care-reform law passed in March is an entirely private-insurer, free-market-based reform. If someone were to refer to it as a "government takeover of the health-care sector", that person would hold a factually incorrect ideological belief. But at this point a huge number of Republicans hold this factually incorrect ideological belief, making it hard for Democrats to engage in a conversation with them on the meta-issue of how to get people to stop embracing factually incorrect ideological beliefs.