BEWARE THESE CRAZY THEORIES
SOME people are so desperate to be right that everything they see confirms even their craziest theories. Right? It’s called “confirmation bias”, and we seem now to be drowning in it.
Some examples are bizarre. Take celebrity “human rights” lawyer Julian Burnside, QC.
He last week found a tweet that flattered him by confirming everything he thought in his hatred for Donald Trump.
It was actually written by “realDonaldTrFan”, clearly not Trump, himself. It was also the most obvious and heavy-handed satire: “Arrived in Argentena [sic]! First time that any US president has visited! They love me hear [sic]! I’ve never been to Africa, so its [sic] very exciting! BIG CROWDS! Haven’t seen them yet since I’m still in the bathroom. Bush & Obama had SMALL crowds when they visited! Done with bathroom. gotta go.”
At least 10 things about that tweet screamed it was fake, including the bizarre misspellings, dumb punctuation, and tweeting from a toilet.
Yet to Burnside this was 100 per cent Trump.
“Wow,” he tweeted. “Leave aside that he can’t spell, Trump thinks Argentina is in Africa! President of the USA, and a Grade A moron.”
If this happens even to a Queen’s Counsel who makes his living from a careful analysis of facts, who else will fall for this confirmation bias? You’d be surprised. Here are other examples from just the past week.
The ABC — Barrie Cassidy, Jon Faine, Fran Kelly, etc — claims the wipeout of Victoria’s weakly led Left-leaning Liberals actually proved the Liberals’ Right wing is on the nose.
Former premier Jeff Kennett and the ABC (again) said a key reason voters instead re-elected a tough Labor government that got lots of things done was that, er, the Victorian Liberals’ president was Michael Kroger.
In Canberra, journalists and allies of Malcolm Turnbull claimed the federal Liberals were stacked with women-hating bullies, although none have ever given a single example.
On Saturday, a Fairfax journalist blamed the Liberals’ Right wing for making MP Julia Banks quit the party, even though the one MP Banks said had spoken “forcefully” to her was a Turnbull supporter.
Journalists, again on the ABC, now blame the Queensland fires on global warming, even though NSW just had huge rains and the United States its sixth coldest November on record.
Believing what we want to believe. Beware.