STREET DOGS

From Michael Shermer at Business Insider on why people ignore facts and believe fake news:

George Orwell identified the problem in politics and the English language in 1946 when he wrote that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful” and consists largely of “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness”.

But if fake news and alternative facts are not a new phenomenon, why do we still believe them? Four reasons:

● Cognitive simplicity. It is easier to just believe it and move on. When our brains process information belief comes quickly and naturally, scepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity;

● Cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. It’s easier to dispute the facts than to alter one’s deepest beliefs. Creationists, for example, challenge the evidence for evolution … because they fear that if the theory is true they have to give up their religion;

● Backfire effect, that peculiar phenomena in which people double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them; and

● Tribal unity. We are a social species and we want to signal to others that we can be trusted as a reliable group member.

The solution? When in doubt, doubt. Remembering that we are the easiest person to deceive. As Orwell, again, wrote: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle … the point is we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time.”