Lies in Politics?

Into The Desert Ideas

We explore the complex nature of truth and deception in politics, discussing how accusations of lying are prevalent in political discourse, the role of confirmation bias, and the importance of understanding different perspectives. We emphasize the need for critical thinking and open communication to navigate the often murky waters of political claims and statistics.  Tired of divisive finger-pointing? We need your support. Join us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/IntoTheDesert  Purchase your copy of Preserving Democracy by Elgin L. Hushbeck Jr. today: https://amzn.to/3C3oTGO   Audible Version: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0D3NJV2WC/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-397936&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_397936_rh_us   Purchase your copy of Seeking Truth by Elgin L. Hushbeck Jr. today: https://amzn.to/3UCWnSS   Audible Version: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0B399JRWY/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-310976&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_310976_rh_us   Takeaways  A lie is defined as anything said with the intent to deceive. Politicians often mess up facts, but not always with intent to deceive. Confirmation bias leads people to interpret information in a way that supports their beliefs. Both sides in political disagreements can be correct depending on how they define terms. Understanding the context of statistics is crucial in political discussions. Everyone lies at some point, most often to themselves. The economy has both positive and negative indicators, politicians can always find data to support them. Politicians are like salesmen, promoting their side's agenda. Critical thinking is essential when evaluating political claims. Open communication and understanding differing viewpoints can reduce conflict and help find the truth  Chapters  00:00 Intro 00:29 The Nature of Lies in Politics 05:10 Understanding Confirmation Bias 08:20 Navigating Political Deception 10:39 Finding Truth in Political Discourse  On These Math Problems, Smarter People Do Worse : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno&t=469s  Image by pngtree.com

Transcript

00:00We often hear that politicians are just a bunch of liars. You can't trust a word out of their mouth.

00:05But is that really true? Do they all just do nothing but lie?

00:11Lies and politics?

00:13Welcome to Into the Desert, exploring the wilderness of ideas.

00:17Don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button.

00:19And if you want to support our channel and our mission of encouraging discussion and not division,

00:24please join us on Patreon. The link is in the description.

00:27So, Elgin, it seems like you can't go very long without hearing somebody in politics

00:35accusing the other of lying. Everybody's, they're lying, you're lying, this statistics is lying,

00:42that statistics is lying. It's very confusing. Is everybody really big, huge, fat liars?

00:49Can't we trust anybody? What's really going on here with all of these accusations on lies?

00:55Well, it really comes down to what is a lie. And in its fundamental form, a lie is anything said

01:02with the intent to deceive. And it's a very powerful definition, but it's also one that's

01:09not always easy to apply. So, for example, if a politician tells you a statistic that they believe

01:16is true, they're not lying. They're just giving you false information. And this is the big distinction

01:23is because there's what is true, and then there's what is false. But then there's what you think is

01:29true, and there's what you know to be false. And in there is the concept of a lie. If you are trying

01:36to deceive somebody, you're lying, whether what you said is factually true or not. And if you're not

01:43attempting to deceive somebody, then you're not lying. You're perhaps making a mistake. You could be

01:49dead wrong. But being wrong isn't the same as a lie. And you see this a lot in politics.

01:56Yeah, Elgin, stealing from one of your examples in Preserving Democracy, you talk about a study

02:02about tax rates. And you talk about how the left was saying one thing about tax rates in the study,

02:10and the right said something else about that study.

02:13It said the exact opposite.

02:14Yeah, you want to like share that example?

02:18Well, yeah, there's a study on whether the tax rates increased the burden on the middle class.

02:23And they had a CBO study and the Democrats came out and said, yes, this CBO study increased the tax

02:30rate. This was the Bush tax cuts in the early part of the century. And the Republicans came out and they

02:35said, no, the study showed that it increased the burden on the rich. Well, who's right? I used to do

02:41this in class when I was teaching. And no one could make sense of who was telling the truth or who

02:47wasn't, at which point I would bring out the CBO study and have them break off into groups and figure

02:53it out. And they would always come back and they say, well, actually, both were correct. It depends

02:58on how you define tax burden. And it depends on which charts in the study you look at. And depending

03:05on how you define things, both sides were correct. And that's what you actually see a lot of in

03:11politics. I've seen, you know, congressmen who will talk about congressmen on the other side and

03:18say, well, if this particular congressman tells you something, you can take it to the bank. He may

03:24be wrong, but he believes it and you can trust what he says. He's acting with integrity. On the other

03:30hand, if there's other congressmen says something, you can't believe a word they say. They lie and

03:35they make stuff up. So when it comes down to that, and you've seen this, I mean, there's countless

03:41studies where, you know, they create this graph, but it's kind of skewed one way or another. It's the

03:46same exact numbers and graphs, but they kind of skew it depending on who they're talking to. You see that

03:54if it supports your view, people are much more willing to believe the study. But if it doesn't support

04:00your view, they're more willing to explain it away or discount it or whatever. The only difference

04:09is now that data is presented in a political context. And the biggest difference in performance

04:14is among the most numerate people. They're scoring a lot worse than they should have.

04:18The low numeracy people are about 25 percentage points less likely to get the right answer if that

04:24answer is threatening to their ideology than if it's consistent with their ideology. The people who are

04:28high in numeracy, on the other hand, 45 percentage points less likely to get the right answer.

04:34Rather than using their mathematical ability to come to the correct conclusion,

04:38they somehow selectively apply it to justify the conclusion they already believed beforehand.

04:44People believe what they want to believe.

04:46We had the study we just talked about in another video on political violence, where it showed the

04:52right was responsible for political violence from 1994 to 2024. But then from 2025, the right violence

05:02dropped, the left violence increased. And so in this year, 2025, the left is responsible for 80% of the

05:10violence. Now, a rational person would look at that and say, yeah, this is what it was, but it's changed.

05:17But you see the left reporting the previous period and the right reporting on the current period as if

05:24the other two periods didn't exist.

05:26So when we're talking about lying and not lying when it comes to politics,

05:32our politicians, and I know, broad general statements take them with a grain of salt. Not

05:38everybody fits into the broad general statements, but we want to talk at the broad general statement

05:43level. When politicians are saying, see, look, we're doing the right thing. Look at how wonderful

05:49we are. Or look, they're messing us up. Look at how horrible things are. Are they really doing it with

05:55the intent of deceiving? Is that I want to be right a way of deceiving? Or is it just something they

06:07believe and they're advocating with the tools that they have? Well, an important fact to remember is

06:14everyone lies at some point and the person people lie to the most is themselves. So if you're lying to

06:24yourself and you're ignoring your confirmation bias and you're looking at the economy and you're only

06:31seeing the parts that support your position, are you lying when you then say that to somebody else

06:38as well? Confirmation bias is very powerful. The other thing is when you have issues like the

06:45national economy. Well, the national economy is so large, so vast, that at any given time, there's going

06:53to be a lot of positive indicators and there'll be a lot of negative indicators. Nothing is positive

06:59overall. I mean, for example, if oil prices drop, that's great for the majority of people who see

07:06their gas price and their energy costs go down. But if you're in the oil industry, that's really bad.

07:14And so there have been times where people really like the low prices and the oil industry is really

07:20suffering. So, you know, what's good for one is bad for the other. Low prices are good for consumers.

07:28Not necessarily as good for producers. High prices are good for producers to an extent,

07:34but not necessarily good for consumers. So there's always trade-offs in everything.

07:40Yeah. That reminds me of an I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel decide that Lucy's recipe for

07:50salad dressing was just so good. And they get their group together and then they go advertise it.

07:56And then they start making it at home and they sell so many of them. Right. It was so great

08:02that they had so many orders that they couldn't fill it in. And so then they had to, like,

08:06you know, say how bad it was. So people would stop their orders. But what ended up happening is

08:12Ricky came home and he was calculating out the price of the ingredients.

08:17721. Yeah. And $1.20 for the jars. $1.20 for the jars. $10 for the labels. $10 for the labels.

08:30That's, um, $8.31. And, uh, how many jars are you making?

08:4323.

08:4423 jars.

08:48And, uh, are you selling it for what?

08:5140 cents a quart.

08:52And found out that they were losing 10 cents a jar for this. So yeah, they were selling lots of

09:10product, but they were losing 10 cents a jar. Now the thing for you to do is fill these 23 orders

09:16and get out of business. That way I'll only lose seven or eight dollars.

09:21And I think at the end they ended up buying store brand and putting their label on it.

09:26But yeah, it's that kind of thing.

09:29Yeah. So it really comes down to, you know, if you're trying to sell your position as the,

09:35as the right position, yeah, there can be some deception in it, but there may not be. So

09:41bottom line is on the one hand, they're not lying as much as we actually think they are. They're not,

09:48yeah, there are definitely politicians who do, who just flat out lie. Um, and you can tell that's

09:55probably true. If you get somebody from the other party who says this particular person,

10:01you can trust this particular person, you can't trust at all. Okay. They're probably being more

10:07objective about the, uh, the people in the opposition party than the opposition party who says,

10:14you can trust everybody on our side. Um, that's rarely ever going to be the case with a large

10:20group of people. How do we stop this? I mean, if people, again, majority general look, if they're

10:27not really trying to do this to deceive the other person, if they're really doing it because they're

10:32coming from a place of, this is what I'm seeing. This is my confirmation bias. So the other side,

10:38isn't really lying. They're just seeing things differently. And there's a million examples of where

10:43they're literally just talking past each other. Your example from preserving democracy is a great

10:48example of them literally talking past each other. Um, how do we stop it? How do we stop this?

10:56You're lying. I'm telling the truth. I'm telling the truth. You're lying back and forth that we see

11:03all the time. Well, for one is to remember they're politicians. So which means they're ultimately

11:08salesmen. They're trying to convince you their side is correct and their side is the best. And

11:15I actually take them at the word in that sense, because I do think the vast majority of them,

11:21they are trying to convince you that their side is, they're not trying to deceive you. They're trying

11:27to convince you of something they actually really believe. They can be dead wrong, but they think

11:32that's what it is. I don't look to them. I don't look to a salesman to tell me what's bad about

11:39their product. So for example, if I go to buy a car, I don't expect the salesman to come up and

11:45tell me all the flaws about the car he's trying to tell me. That's just, that's just never going to

11:50happen. What I do do is I try to, you know, cultivate information sources. And one of the really big

11:57ways I do that is I watch for the news people and I watch them very carefully as to, do they report

12:05pros and cons? You know, they may be on the left, they may be on the right, but do they report fairly

12:11the pros and cons of their side? Because everything has pros and cons. Everything does, particularly in

12:19politics. So there is no, like I said with the economy, what's good for one person is not good for

12:25somebody else. Do they change their position to always support? You can see that, you know, when

12:31politician A gets in trouble, do they celebrate that? But when a politician B and their party

12:37gets in the same sort of trouble, they come up with a whole bunch of fuses of why it's not so bad.

12:43But they'll say, okay, this is the particular policy that they're pushing. Okay, what are the good

12:48side? What are the downsides? If they can't tell you both, then they are not being objective. And that's

12:55actually a good question for yourself. When you think about, I support, you know, a particular

13:00policy or a particular politician. Can you say, okay, these are the reasons I support them?

13:07Can you then also say, these are the five things that they trouble me about? I wish they weren't

13:12doing that. If you can't say the cons of the things you support, you really are not thinking

13:19the whole process through. And you really need to be able to look at both the pros and the cons,

13:26evaluate them. And you may end up thinking, okay, this is better, but you need to be able to look

13:32at both sides. So do the information sources you look at, look at both sides?

13:38Yeah, that's a great point too, because, you know, when we think about

13:43anybody, right? Think about your best friend. Do you really agree 100% with your best friend?

13:50You never fight, right? So you've got to be able to see the flaws.

13:56Yeah, well, we don't fight, but we disagree.

13:58Yeah. Do you have friends that you disagree with? Do you have people that will keep you in check if

14:09you start spinning off into the realm of absurdity? Well, let us know what you guys think down in the

14:16comments. Do you think that our politicians are big liars and you can't ever believe anything they

14:24say? Or are they really just people who have a very strong belief and use confirmation bias to present

14:33their side of the story? Do you have other ideas for how we can find the truth and stop finger

14:41pointing? Let us know down in the comments. We do read your comments and respond to many. And if you

14:48made it this far in the video, consider watching or one of our other videos and supporting our channel

14:52on Patreon. Thanks again for watching Into the Desert, exploring the wilderness of ideas.

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