I was sloppy at noon because I was in a hurry. I am now going to plead being sloppy because I am tired. I understand your point about bias. I am going to insist that I did not ignore this: "Of course, some beliefs aren’t justified with any obvious logic – not even merely inductive logic. If we believe that the theft proposition is true because it plainly makes intuitive sense, we are justifying the belief with a narrative. A narrative is essentially a coherent framework constructed from one’s own prior assumptions and imagination. It depends on the assumption that ideas that are easy to believe are probably true. We can, of course, believe all sorts of silly and erroneous things and still be coherent, because coherence (in the non-philosophical world) only demands we avoid intolerably obvious affronts to logic. Narrative arguments need little evidence; they only need an air of plausibility.3 When faced with problems that are beyond our full comprehension, we actually have no choice but to content ourselves with either oversimplifications or narrative conjectures. Since both of these alternatives are generally presented in the form of truths (typically as declarative statements) they carry more persuasive weight than they can rationally bear.4" This is, I believe, the same thing you are talking about. When people don't know any better, either because the issue is too complex to the data is inaccessible to them, they fall back on what they already think they know. I stand by my basic complexity claim too -- because I think, nasty and philosophical as it is, it is a fact. (I have a longish, picky, tedious epistemology essay I'll be posting here eventually. I am deeply shocked and delighted that people will actually read it. That is genuinely wonderful...) I won't be baited into defending Palin. I would not want her to be President, though my opinion of her is higher now then it was in '08. Not high -- just higher. It really wasn't my intention to have a fight over politics at this point. Epistemology is enough for one day... A good line of argument, by the way. I just don't think our views are mutually exclusive.