At city council meeting last week, City Councillor Blaine Hyggen suggested that a third party independently audit the numbers claimed by Arches in their report to city council.
Except Hyggen doesn’t actually care whether Arches gets audited. Hyggen operates on confirmation bias: he seeks out frontline cops and paramedics whose claims support his ideological stance on harm reduction; he seeks out a statistician friend who agrees with his assessment that the numbers can’t be true; he accepts bunk documentaries, like “Seattle Is Dying”, as fact.
And when data or peer-reviewed, published research conflicts with his opinions, he dismisses them.
See, if the data Arches released to city council matched his perceptions, Hyggen wouldn’t be calling for an audit. Because it’s not about how Arches operates; it’s about facts disagreeing with his feelings.
To him, the only possible explanation for the discrepancy between the facts and his feelings is that Arches must be lying. To him, there’s no possibility that he might be wrong.
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