partisanship is a misleading mental shortcut. rather, loss aversion (a cognitive bias) can explain a fair bit of the behavior here. people with (perceived) sta

partisanship is a misleading mental shortcut. rather, loss aversion (a cognitive bias) can explain a fair bit of the behavior here. people with (perceived) status or privilege don't want to lose those statuses/privileges, so seek to rationalize their position. if it means attacking the underpinnings of facts and evidence, so be it (as the bias goes). it's part of our primitive brains to do so, and requires the use of our modern brains to keep in check. also, facts and evidence live on a continuum, where facts have low margin of error while evidence has high margin of error. the way you address a high margin of error is to gather lots of evidence, so that statistically, you narrow the margin of error to something tiny, and then you can call it a fact. for example, the sun rising tomorrow has a margin of error that's approximately zero, so we call it a fact. most reasonable people are not interested in arguing facts, especially if those calling into question those facts have no basis of expertise or credible counter-evidence. you can have your own beliefs, but you don't get to have your own facts. moreover, it's reasonable to discount people who believe something without evidence, especially in the face of evldience to the contrary.