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To the great shame of the human race, it’s not about truth or lie. It’s about what a person thinks first. Like, literally, if you don’t have an opinion on something, and then you hear about it, and the first thing you think is, “That sounds reasonable,” then that’s a big wall to overcome if that information is wrong.
And after that is even worse, because then you already have an opinion, and confirmation bias kicks in. So, everything seems to support that opinion.
And that, of course, is one reason why conservatives are so against public schools, and especially against them teaching anything verifiable like science or accurate history. A school has the chance to counter the parents’ indoctrination because the children are still young.
To add, our brains are lazy (or “efficient”) and it’s literally more work to rearrange knowledge (accommodation) than to just adjust new knowledge to fit current schemas (assimilation). It’s likely a product of evolution since wasted energy gets us killed, thus we kind of have to force it into cognitive thought to overcome it.
Apt this comes from social psych, given that discipline practically emerges from post WW2 “why would people follow Nazis?” questioning.
There’s the aspect of rearranging knowledge but also the distress that lies in dealing with difficult aspects of reality. Right now many people deny human caused climate change because if they didn’t they’d see themselves confronted with a bunch of uncomfortable changes and difficult problems.
It’s not just “oh, this thing I believed to be true is actually untrue” but also “ahhh now I have to deal with a bunch of overwhelming issues and the stress that comes with that”
Personally, I would love to know how they have no trouble ignoring reality like that. I would go mad cause deep down I know better.
Yup, and that’s cognitive dissonance. Now we’ve covered an entire lecture, lol.
That’s a big part of my theory as well. Until the social or economic consequences of the tribe rise above the concern for energy demand, neurons aren’t going rearrange or build, because that takes too much energy.
I agree. But the cool thing about it is that you can change it (on an individual level) if you pay attention. It’s just kind of hard. But I guess it is not something to expect on a broad scale, given the course of humanity
If I was smarter and younger I’d probably go into neuroscience to study this very thing, but I’m curious how much you can plant a seed of change, even if the front-facing conscious mind resists. Most people won’t admit fault or yield in conversation, but does that mean you didn’t sway them subconsciously in some way that they later come to appreciate by way of neural rewiring that happens under the hood anyway?
I don’t have a great scientific answer. But if you follow the advice from the guy in your profile picture, training your own mind and acting skillfully would on average have the best chance to inspire others to do the same
At thos point my strategy when something horrible happens is to tell people literally anything other than the fascist lie that’s gonna come out, so the fasch lie has to overcome that.
“This school shooter was a maga dude” or “incomprehensible 4chan shithead” even if there’s literally no info and we dont even know if he’s finished, so the totally unfounded also-before-we-even-know-who-did-it “was trans antifa!” line doesn’t stick.
Edit: shit. Last comment on this account.
And why “entertainment news” stations allegedly start spouting and blaming whatever is convenient for them. The first line sticks, and the correction afterwards bounces off.
Horrible, but I can’t say I am against it… my approach of “let’s wait and see before making a judgement” is usually completely drowned out…
My in-between is to say, “Well, statistically, they’re far more likely to be a right-wing extremist. We should explore why this ideological side exploits the mentally unwell at a far greater rate!”
The only way to counter a firehose is bring in a even bigger firehose
Or more importantly, which option is more convenient or comfortable.
If you are raised to think minorities have it tough and you believe it, you may see hardship in your life and an initial reaction that wow, it must be really bad for the minorities.
Then someone comes along and says “actually, the government is giving your potential wealth and prosperity to undeserving lazy minorities”, and that person might find it easy to believe and blame the government and minorities for hardships.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
- Mark Twain
Ironically, this quote is itself misattributed.
“I’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
- Michael Scott
Prove it!
“It doesn’t matter who said the quote, just attribute it to a random famous person to add legitimacy to your argument”
-Sun Tzu, Art of War
I feel like too many people took the wrong lesson from The Boy Who Cried Wolf and believe the lesson was “always believe the liars because one day you might be eaten by wolves when the liar who is famous for lying actually tells the truth for once and you don’t believe them,” and not “you shouldn’t lie because eventually no one will believe you when you tell the truth.”
Or people who say “Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day” with the implication that sure, they’re often wrong but what if they aren’t this time? Shouldn’t we at least take them seriously just in case they randomly got it right? I’ve never wanted to physically shake someone so badly before.
I thought that expression is for when they’re unexpectedly right about something, like MTG and releasing the Epstein files.
Yeah, but what if she’s also right about the Jewish space lasers? /s
It is, but the point of the expression is (I think) that you shouldn’t give credence to an unreliable source just because they happen to call one correctly, e.g. “I know that clock says 2:15 and it’s actually 2:15 now, but that’s just a coincidence because the clock always says 2:15, don’t be bamboozled into thinking the clock sometimes gives useful information, it does not. It is never to be relied upon, even if it is 2:15, because there’s no way to tell just from that clock. Use a different one”. MTG deserves zero respect or credibility just because she happens to be “right” (for now) about the Epstein affair, because she has demonstrated so clearly in the past that she prioritizes saying what will keep her in office over any genuine concern for protecting children from violence. People say “but even MTG wants the Epstein files released” like it is some barometer of the clarity of the situation, but it also carries the implication that Greene’s opinion suddenly carries weight. NO it does not, fuck that clock and fuck MTG, no one should care at all what she thinks, on any issue.
Sounds like an abusive relationship imo.
Of course we all know the true lesson
Wait, did the townspeople all get eaten by wolves in that story? I did not remember the story ending that way. I thought it was just the boy… Or just his sheep.
You just discovered Brandolini’s law (or the bullshit asymmetry principle)
“A lie can travel the world while the truth is still trying to put on it’s shoes” or something like that.
A lie is your own creation. You can tweak it to make it more palatable. You can’t do that with the truth - you didn’t make it, you can only use what it already is.
The right seeing this: “Yeah, liberals will believe anything.”
Been pretty much the entirety of their range of argument for years now. “I know you are but what am I?”
I don’t believe this.
Ain’t that the truth… no, wait.
I believe this
People believe what they want to believe
They really do. Also your name is great
He’s just zis guy, you know?
It’s because of emotion. You need a good analogy for your point rather than facts.
Facts do not care about emotion and that is their biggest flaw.
We have a fundamental flaw in our understanding of humanity, we tend to think that our brains are tools of logic and reason, like big, natural, squishy calculators.
Nope. They are story-telling machines. They take whatever you’re feeling, positive or negative, and look for connections in the world around you to weave those feelings into a story, and that story doesn’t have to make a lick of sense if it helps validate the feeling.
The sooner you understand this about your brain, the sooner you can break free from personal issues like rumination and long-lasting anxiety spells. But it also means that people are going to believe a thing that gives them both emotions and a story that explains it far more readily than purely intellectual knowledge.
This is why you have anti-vax doctors and flat-earthers with educations, it has nothing to do with knowledge, it’s entirely about feelings and the inability to separate feelings from factual knowledge.
The problem is people believing things at face value. Asking for evidence is good though.
There are facts, there is scientific consensus, there is research, etc. However, “truth” as a word gets abused so much by quacks and nutjobs that I’m always a little wary of a person when I hear it from someone.
Unfortunately cognitive biases we all have that were developed over millions of years of evolution as heuristics and intuitions to use when scared or angry to help us in survival situations aren’t reliable justification for knowledge. Faith is lauded by the majority of humanity when it’s the very method needed for self deception.
I can’t believe that
The truth feels like a lie.
In the first case, the lie is more congruent with lived experience. This is heavily influenced by culture, since culture is where people get their morality.
In the second case, what people call true is something that they themselves find congruent with their own experience.
Both sides insist their truth is objective. Both sides are rationalizing their own experience.
We need to center human experience as a part of science and political discourse. Not replace, since pure empiricism is as idealistic as pure positivism. Objectivity in science and objectivity in morality are two sides of the same authoritarianism.
We insist our beliefs are truth and others beliefs are lies because that’s what the ruling class does. They insist that our suffering isn’t real, that others (but not the ruling class themselves) are the cause for it, that our truth must dominate the lies of the other. We disregard the experience of the other because our experiences are disregarded.
Therefore, this whole dynamic is essentially political. Rather than trying to spread truth by mimicking the oppression and domination of hierarchal authoritarianism we need a new politics based on democracy and socialism.
Through political struggle and real democracy, the opportunism of the people who personally benefit from the corruption of others will have their lies exposed for all people to see.
Corruption can be seen everywhere. Similar to how individuality is an expression of freedom, corrupted individuality is an expression of alienation. By fighting for freedom, we fight for the best expressions of human nature to reemerge, we expose and dismantle corrupting influence, and we cast light on everywhere that corruptors can hide their dark intentions. Sooner or later, they will have to face the corruption within themselves or be forced to place themselves in the dustbin of history.
