I'm not Bothered: My Battle with Smarty-Pantsness

I have this really bad habit that drives a lot of people I know crazy, but I ain't bothered. Whenever I read something, or hear something, or and told something, my brain immediately goes "is this true?". And if it turns out to be true, my next question is "what explains it?". This reflex, much like swatting away flies, has gotten me far, but does not always make those around me happy.

So I comment on people's memes that have inaccurate information in them, I tell them their most deeply held beliefs, that they have organized their lives around, are bunk, and I frequently tell people, I will have to look that up later. They insist that I trust them, or I believe them for once, but that is not the issue for me, this is not a question of trust. If you have engaged me in a topic, I owe it to myself, but also to you, to have a full understanding of it. But rest assured, I know the difference between facts and opinions, and if you have a strongly held opinion, you are well within your right to hold it. But if you base your opinion on incorrect facts, I would just like to politely correct them. 

People can look at, and accept the same facts, and come to different conclusions, but it would be nice if we could agree on those baseline facts. I suppose that is why when the revolution comes the intellectuals are always the first to go. Facts are inconvenient, they are messy and get in the way of a good story. Who needs historians reminding the Minute Men that we've seen this anti-immigrant story before, or economists telling Republicans trickle-down economics does not work ever, or scientist warning us that global warming is real and we are causing it, or sociologists demonstrating that when you put a marginalized group on marginal land and cut them off from society and provide them few opportunities for advancement or integration you get violence and there are thousands of years of evidence in a variety of societies that shows this. 

These realities are inconvenient to power, to people's sense of self, to the bottom line. But it does not change the facts. So sometimes when you are trying to correct the record and popular misconceptions you'll annoy people. But that's ok, because I'm not bothered.