Do People Want Rational Arguements?

It's election season in the US and perhaps nowhere in the country is an election nastier and fueled by more money than the Colorado Senate race between incumbent Democrat Michael Bennett and challenger Ken Buck from the "Republican/Tea Party" ranks.  The polls show that the race is a toss-up - Rassumsen has it split 47% for Buck and 45% for Bennett - and money has been pouring into the state from the national parties at a ridiculous pace.  Last Tuesday, for example, over $3.6 million was spent in a single day according to a Politico.com report.  The TV and radio here in Colorado have been spitting out attack ads against both sides full of half-truths and out-of-context quotes almost non-stop.

Switching gears, the climate science community has been rocked recently by Dr. Judith Curry, head of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech and a respected researcher into things like Arctic ice and hurricanes, who has the audacity to engage so-called "climate skeptics" on their own turf - blogs like Climate Audit and Open Air - which some claim legitimizes them.  She has also publicly criticized the IPCC as suffering from groupthink and called for a reform in the way they present and analyze risk.  She sees herself as reaching out to climate skeptics for a more civil discourse, while some accuse her of propping up bad science.

I'm really not interested in discussing the politics of Colorado's Senate race or climate science here - that's not really our thing. What I would like to explore is the question of whether most people even want a rational argument. It often seems like most of the time it is more effective to call names or break off dialog rather than have a measured rational discussion.

I suppose the real question here is how do people react to things that are supported by reason or evidence that contradict what they think should be true?  Maybe it's really a contest between truth and truthiness.

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The Word - Truthiness
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So what do you think?  Is there any rational discourse to be had or are we all thinking with our guts only?