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“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.
- Michael Scott
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.
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 to be a right-wing extremist. We should explore why this ideological exploits the mentally unwell at a far greater rate!”
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.
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 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.
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.
