Persistence of Myths

The Washington Post had an interesting little article on "The Persistence of Myths". It seems that since some people see a connection between 9-11 and fighting terrorists in Iraq (which is clearly a "myth" to the Post), so they feel it is time for some "research". One of the many good quotes out of the article:

Many easily remembered things, in fact, such as one's birthday or a pet's name, are indeed true. But someone trying to manipulate public opinion can take advantage of this aspect of brain functioning. In politics and elsewhere, this means that whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later.

Wow, The Washington Post has realized that humans have a "first heard / often heard" bias, and we are prone to remember "stories" as opposed to "sets of facts". I guess Journalists aren't exactly "scientists", so this recent discovery may not be too surprising. I wonder how many years it will be before they realize that such things apply equally as well to the left as to the right, in fact they even apply a bit BETTER to the left? 

Of course, it is only the evil right that would EVER try to manipulate public opinion! We can relax completely that folks from the left would NEVER stoop to such a thing, they just deal in "pure truth". If one takes a study on how well one does in the more facts based parts of learning -- math and science for example, vs the more "right brained" things like art, music, journalism, etc, I wonder where the political leanings would be?

Uh, that has been studied a couple of times. Artists, writers, creative people, journalists are usually right brained, Democrat, and liberal (you might notice that Hollywood isn't exactly a bastion of conservatism) So, there are more folks of a right orientation over in the math/science group since they tend to be forced to live with some level of "meritocracy". Blaming others is always going to be a tempting way to deal with problems, and the left has raised that to an art form. 

Why would the left be more story oriented  and less factually oriented? Because the right brain is exactly what their "recent research" points out. It sees the "whole" (the story) as opposed to "the parts" (the lists of "facts"). The folks that "write the stories" have a bias for a certain way of thinking, and they ALWAYS repeat their "facts" over and over ... ". There is no way to win in Iraq", "Humans are raising the temperature of the globe", "The economy is bad". Their "facts" are a lot more like "stories", and although they may claim there is some hard data someplace, they (or most of us) find hard data to be less compelling than a "good story"--and "good" is usually "popular", gives us an "easy way out". 

The story seems to indicate  that "somebody else" is responsible for our problems--big business, the system, George Bush, our parents etc. One person's "fact" is often another person's "myth". People that have an exposure to science and maybe especially those that have an exposure to computers realize that there ARE many things that are either true or false and the difference is known and ACTUALLY factual. (We don't call on Journalists, Actors or Artists to figure those out though). 

 The MAJORITY of things have supporting points and non supporting points, and a negative assertion is NEVER possible to PROVE as a fact. For example; "Saddam Hussein is dead" can be shown to be true or false based on existing discoverable knowledge. The statement "Saddam Hussein had no part in 9-11" is impossible to prove. It may indeed be true, but any one piece of evidence would disprove it. "All swans are white" or "no swans are black" are of the same ilk, but removed from having a political overtone that will lead folks to get excited. 

One black swan anywhere makes the case. Did OJ kill his wife? I don't much care, but a court of law found him innocent. OJ is innocent in the same way that Saddam had no WMD--nobody got him dead to rights enough for there to be "positive proof". There was a lot of "evidence" in both cases, but it didn't get "proven". In OJ's case, 90% of white people think he is guilty and 90% of black people think is innocent.Race DOES matter -- and the fact it matters is not "racist", just human -- we tend to default like those like us in any way. Fans of same team, same religion, family, same interests, same political party, etc. Only Christ inhumanly ways "love your enemies" -- he is God, he can do it even when his fully human nature probably has a cat. 

 Most people are just afraid to say anything that could be construed as positive about George Bush, so you probably can't even get a straight answer on that one. I always find it kind of fun, you can usually have a lefty ready to take a swing at you in about 5 min by simply just a tiny kind word about Bush, one thing they are usually good at is anger. For a lefty, not getting caught and being innocent are the same thing for themselves, criminals and dictators. For Christians, businesspeople and Republicans, the same lefty is ready to convict for all manner of crimes without any evidence at all. It turns out that liberals actually are pretty consistent, it is just that they are consistent in an inconsistent kind of way!