Richard Jernigan -> RE: The Trump Nightmare is Over! (Jan. 8 2021 22:20:31)
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From USA Today: "WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought and received assurance Friday from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that President Donald Trump would not be able to order a nuclear strike in a fit of rage." https://tinyurl.com/y5ngqh94 As I have mentioned before, I have a number of Facebook "friends" who are, or at least were until day before yesterday, staunch supporters of Trump. At least some of them still are. They are people whom I know well from years of close association while we lived and worked on a U.S. military base in the Marshall Islands. All suffer in varying degrees from confirmation bias. In fact the phrase is too weak to describe their afflictions. "Confirmation mania" might come closer. Any action by Trump or his enablers that is legitimately criticized, deplored or despised in conventional media is immediately excused by the flimsiest and most transparent fabrications circulating on the internet. Any news organization which is the least bit critical of Trump is immediately demonized. This even includes Fox News. They are now labeled as traitors. So are scientific experts like Anthony Fauci. Two of my friends will swallow any lie, no matter how far fetched, which excuses one of Trump's enormities. Their cravings are not assuaged by the deluge of falsehood that floods the web. They contiue to engorge themselves. Furthermore, any important event or issue the Trumpocracy has opposed or disaparaged is governed by an elaborate conspiracy of occult forces. For example, yesterday evening I read an "explanation" of the COVID-19 epidemic which began by breathlessly "informing"us that the "Wuhan virus lab" is owned by "Glaxo." The subsequent dense mass of text wove together details of the plot, incriminating the usual suspects: George Soros, Bill Gates, etc. etc. Three minutes of Googling brought up an article on Reuters which I cited, summarizing, "Not only is this post false, nearly every sentence in it is a lie." My friends earnestly believed that Adam Schiff's sister is married to some dangerous evil person, despite the fact that Schiff has no sister. They are further motivated by extremely intense fear of the Democrat Party, who are bent upon subjecting them to communism, thus destroying democracy, the United States and the Christian religion. Their fellow Trumpists could not have invaded the Capitol day before yesterday, since they are all peaceful, right thinking, patriotic Americans just like my friends. As soon as it wafted across the net that it was really antifa who ransacked the seat of government just to make Trump supporters look bad, my friends latched onto the idea with a death grip. From my account, anyone who didn't know my friends would be inclined to ridicule them as fools and simpletons. But I know they are not. My diagnosis is that they have developed a form of mental illness. I'm about halfway through Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow." The main theme of the book is a depiction of several perceptual and cognitive biases that are characteristic of nearly all humans. Kahneman cites prominent instances, and narrates psychological experiments that confirm the near universality of cognitive flaws like confirmation bias. People will pay attention to something that confirms their beliefs, and ignore anything that conflicts with them. Having spent about a third of my time in the intelligence business for twenty years, the prevalence and danger of this universal human flaw were obvious. My idea is that social media provide such a devastating flood of false narratives appealing to confirmation bias, that previously sensible people have now been reduced to malignant credulity. The CEOs of social media titans make noises in Congressional hearings about their diligent efforts to limit the flood of disinformation on their platforms. As the business is now structured this is practically an insurmountable task, and the media barons have a strong disincentive to tackle it seriously. Facebook, Twitter, et al make their money by collecting user data, parsing users into convenient packages, and selling their attention to advertisers. Casual observation makes Mark Twain's dictum obvious: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is putting on its shoes." Studies have aimed to quantify this. One that I read concluded that falsehood fueled by fear or anger traveled six times as fast as the truth, so it spread exponentially further. Falsehood, fear and anger attract much more user engagement and make a lot more money for social media. Any attempt to stem the flood of preposterous bullsh1t on the net is going to face powerful political opposition. Meanwhile villains like Trump will take advantage of it. RNJ
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