Here is an excellent video on Media and Human bias you should all watch.
To summarize
- Natural Human Bias - Limited world view from small environment you live in. Evolutionary assumptions to always assume the worse not as useful nowadays. People also tend to be over confident in the information they have, thinking they have the best information.
- Outdated information - Teachers teach what they learn in school, but don't keep up to date with new information. What was true in the past isn't true because things change over the years.
- News Bias - Over exaggerate events to get more views. Negative stories gets more attention than positive ones. Human evolution makes us pay more attention to the negative rather than the positive.
Swed's score worse than the U.S. of Knowledge about the world.
European media just as bad as U.S media. Lots of media around the world is pretty bad with bias.
Good rule of thumb assumptions to prevent bias.
- Most people are in the middle - (e.g. Gap between rich and poor is shortening. Most people are in the middle. And wage gap is improving.)
- First Social, then Rich - (Social development comes first before improvement in money. Countries don't need to be very very rich in order to get the social development they need. Majority are in the middle, having education, electricity, and so. Of course doesn't apply to everyone, but its a more accurate generalization to assume things are in the middle and improving, then to assume they are getting worse.)
- Danger of things are over exaggerated - Danger of things much less than media says.
Many people really have little faith in our species, and ability to tackle issues properly. But data shows otherwise, and things are improving.
And also have little faith in the intelligence of humans. Remember its not always peoples fault they are misinformed. Many factors can contribute to this. Best we can do is have a calm rational discussion without insulting the intelligence of others. Once you get to name calling people will shut you out.
People are not as stupid as someone will make them out to be, and there could be reasons why they believe what they believe. Even if you think you give the best information, there might be something else contributing to why they wont easily change their minds. Its best to understand why to better tackle the debate than to insult the person.