Well, yes emotions tend to cloud the issues increasing the chance of making wrong decisions. But wrong decisions are better than no decisions because wrong decisions can be corrected while no decision may ever take place.

I'd like to read the link you provided but I'm not willing to subscribe nor give them my email. Oh well.

I believe this might help you. It's a natural part of some humans to block that ability to redevelop their opinion out of the fear of being wrong.

A couple of points: It's not rational to expect consistent rational thought from people. We are capable at our best of applying logic intelligently, but it is by no stretch of the imagination our standard operating mode. We have to work at that, and many are just never going to have much reasoning capability. I hate to break it to you, but even you are irrational sometimes. I know nothing much about you but can say that confidently, because none of us is a paragon of logic. Second point: Logic is only going to be effective if the factual knowledge the person has at their disposal is sound. Especially with complex issues, we all look selectively at various facts of a situation, and often the "stupidity" of another person in our view is actually just them coming from differing priorities and having different information at their disposal than we do. They may look at us and shake their heads at our hopeless "idiocy" or "blindness." And since none of us has all the information, the information we do choose to pay most attention to is going to tend to be that which is consistent with, and supports, our personal value system.

Having said all that, I agree, we're surrounded by idiots and it's highly frustrating. I, of course, am brilliant.

People try to shift ideas by using radical examples. The media reports a shooting making it seem over dramatic, there should be a regulation that makes them have to report the counterintuitive as well. Example Reports say agun man robbed the mini mart killed 5 people. The versa should be Because 100 shopkeepers had guns with permits there shops were not robbed.My point is if people won`t conform to the ideologue standards they tend to show extreme examples to make a point to grab the common person's attention.

No link there.