LogFAQs > #966201692

KodyKeir posted...

We largely live in a post secret world, the problem is there is so much information, you can tell people the truth and it will only have minimal effect proportional to the people that it reaches.

Worse than that. Based on everything we know about human psychology, people are actively resistant to the truth.

First, humans tend to prioritize information we receive in the order we receive it - so if someone feeds us misinformation, we're more likely to continue to believe it even if we are later shown definitive evidence disproving the misinformation or proving an alternative. The harder you try to convince someone that something they believe is wrong, the harder it actually causes them to believe it.

Second, humans are much more likely to believe information that seems to fit a narrative. Even if something is a tragic accident or ridiculous coincidence, humans will always look for patterns and assume they've found them (even when there was no pattern in the first place). It's why we always need villains for our assumptions about the world, why we often tend to assume deliberate malice rather than mere stupidity or ineptitude. Worse, if we can't find someone to blame, we generally stop caring about the story at all. This is what fuels most conspiratorial thinking - the idea that everything needs to fit neatly into a story that makes sense.

Third, humans are far more likely to believe information that appeals to their emotions than they are information that appeals to their logic and reason. This is why rhetoric is a thing, and one of the most powerful tools in political discourse (and yes, every political side uses it, not just the one you dislike). Something doesn't have to make sense so long as it makes you feel. And dispassionate attempts to disprove emotional arguments will almost always fail.

And as a tangentially related fourth, we've reached a point as a culture where there is far more information flowing on a regular basis than any single human can hope to process. Optimists used to talk about how the Internet would usher in a new golden age because it would allow everyone access to the sum total of human knowledge, implying that everyone would be far more educated and informed. But optimists are usually wrong and always stupid. Because there's no real curation on the Internet or direct means of separating false information from accurate information, the massive flow of data has simply led to a massive signal-to-noise ration that makes it difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood (and thus reinforcing the three problems listed above). Additionally, the Internet provides near-infinite distractions, so rather than researching important things, people are far more likely to go look at cat pictures or watch streaming videos or complain about stuff on message boards or Twitter.

Ironically, the massive storehouse of all human knowledge and information seems destined to make humans more ignorant, not less.

And now it's time to post this again!

https://www.anorak.co.uk/359349/keyposts/huxley-vs-orwell-the-comic-inspired-by-neil-postmans-amusing-ourselves-to-death.html