“.... what Gilbert demonstrated is that if the brain is overloaded, it will accept lies as truth. The reason is that when the brain becomes taxed, it essentially shuts down. .... As Gilbert explained explains it, “when resource-depleted persons are exposed to .… propositions they would normally disbelieve, their ability to reject those propositions is markedly reduced. .... We wear helmets to protect our brains from physical injury but no such device exists to prevent us from mental entanglements [lies and manipulation]. Until then, the best we can do is to avoid shallow forms of information or anything that is likely to contain a lie.”
This general concept of an imbalance of power has been on my mind for at least 3-4 years. It seems timely and urgent now. Liars, emotional manipulators and purveyors of flawed reasoning are out in force on both the hard core left and right. We are absolutely awash in lies, deceit, manipulation and logic fallacies. People who support trump claim this true for people who oppose the president and essentially all of the mainstream media. They believe that extreme crackpot liar sources such as Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are telling the truth. People on the hard core left rely on extreme crackpot liar sources such as Sputnik News and RT News because they are perceived as telling the truth.
Both sides absolutely rip mainstream sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, CBS and NPR as extremist liars and deceivers.[1] In my lifetime, I've never seen anything close to this kind of extreme polarization and bitter disagreement. Facts are subjective and personal, not objective. At present, there is probably no way to bridge the different perceptions of reality, possibly absent a massive shock accompanied by mass destruction and/or death. But maybe even a disaster won't help much. The liars are probably never going to go away. There is little or no penalty for lying and destroying civil society.
What does it all mean?
Obviously opinions will differ. In my opinion, it means we are in very serious trouble. Authoritarianism on the left and right is pressing hard to fill the power vacuum left as democracy recedes. Power flows from the government tasked with protecting the people and their liberties to powerful authoritarian ideologues, special interests and the politicians they can buy or coerce. The relentless attacks from the left and right and their lies and false realities clearly is slowly pushing democracy, truth and the rule of law aside.Authoritarians the world over, including Putin, Trump and Xi, are rejoicing over the fall of truth for so many people. Their tyrant power increases in step with our ebbing democratic power.
What does it mean for political and broader discourse? It means that people who still believe in values like truth, democracy and the rule of law need to up their messaging game.[2] They need to do that because they are at a major disadvantage in messaging wars. Why? Because the messaging that people who rely on facts, truths and sound reasoning is far more constrained and significantly less persuasive than lies, emotional manipulation and bogus reasoning.
The human mind evolved to respond strongly to irrational emotional manipulation, especially fear, but also to other negative emotions such as anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance and bigotry. The best way to foment those things is to lie. Truth tends to have less emotional impact because reality is usually less awful and threatening than lies and irrational manipulation can easily make it seem. If truth and sound reason have X persuasive power, my estimate is that lies, deceit, manipulation and irrationality have about 3-5X persuasive power.
Why might that be? Because if the world of rhetoric truth and sound reason is Y big, the world of lies, deceit, manipulation and irrationality is at least about 30-50Y, and most useful stuff is at least 3-5Y. Just consider how freeing it is to just blow off facts, true truths and sound reasoning. Even I can make up some whoppers if I just blow off facts and reason.[3]
In other words, the good guys are fighting with one hand tied. The fight isn't fair. Maybe that just reflects the fact that politics isn't usually fair. Neither is life.
Footnotes:
1. The left and right attack and reject even the fact checkers as a pack of lying liars. No source is respectable any more except those that convey their own versions of reality, truth and reason. That's a huge win for things like actual and aspiring demagogues, tyrants, kleptocrats and liars. It is a huge loss for things like American democracy, the rule of law, truth, reason and civil society.
2. That assumes we are not going to engage in a full-blown civil war with tens of millions of deaths and mass destruction of infrastructure running in the tens of trillions.
3. For example, by blowing off facts I could argue this: The president demands that pro-military personnel interests buy at least $400 million per year from his commercial properties each year, even if the price is inflated two-fold for such special guests. In return for such "honest" business and the enhanced profits that would flow to the president, he has agreed to not cut military and veterans salaries and benefits by 50%.
Or, I could argue that the president secretly promised his supporters at least 25% lower taxes for voting for him, while taxes for Biden voters will be increased by 50%.
Well, at least I hope those are whoppers.
No comments:
Post a Comment