We had an interesting discussion yesterday about the tendency we all have to choose information that validates our beliefs and reject the information that doesn't. The conversation focused mostly on the politics of the moment, both the conservative/liberal divide and the Obama/Clinton divide. Certainly, we can see in some of the discussions that devoted supporters of both sides have a tough time digesting bad info but love to trumpet good info. That's an important thing for us as a community to contemplate.

But it's also essential, I think, to broaden the focus from just our little world of debate to the whole world itself. In fact, I think Obama has pointed us in a direction that encourages us to break out of these mindsets even beyond our partisan politics.

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I just posted some instructions over on the reader blog posting page. Check them out and let me know what you think, what I should change, if I've horribly misspelled any words, etc.

We've been reading your feedback closely and thinking a lot about how to adjust the discussion elements of the site to improve your experience. In that light, we've made two changes to how the reader posts are presented that we hope you'll like. Details after the break.

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Atrios:

It's important to remember that none of us are above the fray, that we all have hackish tendencies to suppress information which doesn't fit our worldview and privilege information that does. We're more likely to excuse behavior from people we like and exaggerate the ills of people we don't like. I try to fight hackish tendencies especially during this intra-Dem battle, but I don't claim to have superhuman Nonhack powers.

We're very excited that this week we'll be discussing Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. Joining Zakaria is a great group: Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, Ann-Marie Slaughter of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, The Atlantic's Matt Yglesias, and prolific journalist David Rieff.

It's going to be fascinating, so finish up your reading.