On my old blog – which alas does not exist any longer – I asserted accurately that even during the Great Recession crime was continuing to fall and would keep doing just that.

I was attacked (for some reason) mostly by a group of people from one website that had a vested interest in believing that crime would rise during the Great Recession. The details are unimportant, and would distract. The point is that they had a narrative they wished to push and reality did not matter to them even though normally they and I would have been natural allies.

Well, I was right.

I don’t understand the narrative pushers. Yeah, everyone is biased but I try to temper this with updating my beliefs with the evidence as often as humanly possible.

As I’ve mentioned many times before and surely will do so again, I get evicted from many groups (or self-evict) because I refuse to just go along.

It means that often I hold no beliefs or partially incorrect beliefs about something for longer than those who just “buy in.” But it also means I really do know more than the average fish swimming through water whose response to, “The water sure is cold today” is “What the hell is water?”

It took me several years in the 1990s to accept global warming either way. But I wasn’t one of those knuckle-draggers going around screaming about how the scientists were attempting to shake down the NSF for all that sweet, sweet grant money.

I just waited till I understood, and learned.

Rafe Colburn at rc3.org has a phrase as his blog tagline that I’ve always liked. “Strong opinions, weakly held.” That’s how I try to arrange my mind. I don’t care about tribal beliefs, which is what informs the majority of most people’s beliefs. But I do care about being able to have actual, real evidence for what I believe.

I have no tribe, nor do I want to be part of one. Ever.