Mindforming: Why Grownups Believe the Strangest Things!

BLUF

Okay! So, you believe lizard people run the country! Or that only brown cows can produce chocolate milk, which explains why chocolate milk is so expensive! How did you come to such a conclusion???

Outside our biological development process, only 3 to 10 percent of our World Model (see previous blog) comes from direct interaction with the environment. The rest is based on data, facts, information, knowledge, truths, and lies other sources provide. Therefore, our wisdom, or the ability to make sound judgments, is only as reliable as the sources of our World Model. How did we get here?

In the Beginning

The current dolt plague has been in the works for a long time. Its roots are ancient. As we transitioned from primates into humans, we built the world model through direct interaction with the environment, mediated only by our senses and musculoskeletal system. We "felt" the environment and "acted" upon it, sometimes by running like hell, but we survived. The main advantage of having a reliable model of the world is that it makes our lives more predictable. It allowed us to simulate what would happen if we stood up to that saber-toothed-tiger. If we did, poof! No more world model! No more offspring! Evolution at work! Fortunately for me, the simulations my prehistoric ancestors ran led to a better outcome; therefore, here I am, ranting away!?

For the last few millennia, until the nineteenth century, human populations lived in contained, small communities where most information came through direct experience. However, some information started to be conveyed through trusted agents such as family members, schools, clergy, leaders (many with an agenda), and, to a lesser degree, by travelers like merchants and returning soldiers. Religion filled in the blanks and made the model self-consistent.?

Information in the Twentieth Century

Since the currency of knowledge in the pre-Tik-Tok era was the written word and education was expensive, only the wealthy and powerful had the means to become literate. Consequently, only the elites of the time were more knowledgeable (owners of more accurate world models) and, arguably, smarter than the hoi polloi. They were the "trusted agents" helping the rest of us build our own world models. They told us who the superior races were, identified witches, and cured toothaches with leeches. Then things started to get complicated.?

Global literacy at the beginning of the twentieth century was 21% but considerably higher in the US and the wealthier parts of Europe. As reading ability increased, the amount of knowledge accumulated by humanity exploded. By the early 1920s, experts in almost any domain were already failing to keep up with relevant developments in their own field. That trend is still accelerating today.?

The deluge of new information became increasingly distributed through new channels besides books and established newspapers. Such channels included the telegraph, telephone, radio, and eventually TV. Humanity's information universe became infinitely larger than the ability of any individual human's ability to absorb it. Information was also easier to find and tap into.?

Saddled with limited capacity, the minders of these distribution channels introduced standards so that only vetted information was allowed, such as the Seven Standards of Quality Journalism we covered in an earlier post. Most other information distributors followed similar standards. ??

On the other hand, dictatorships had - and still have - different standards. This "Dear Leader" style of news reporting is still in vogue in remote places like Kim Jung Un's North Korea and, to some degree, in Putin's Russia. In the twentieth century, government-controlled news dominated more than half the world. ????

Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, we got cable TV and the 24-hour news cycle. From a handful of television stations, we got hundreds, all competing for paid subscriptions and advertising dollars, or "eyeballs" in industry parlance. That spelled the end of the Seven Standards.

Misinformation in the Twenty-first Century

The internet expanded the pool of available information sources to millions, many without an easily identifiable origin or meaningful standards. In the twenty-first century, social media pushed the boundary further—to make an enterprise successful, more than passive viewership was required. "Engagement" became the key. Engagement requires an operational capability that further deepens an individual's world model without regard to the model's proximity to reality. How often do we check the veracity of a post before we "share" or “retweet” it (is it called Xing now)???

What shapes our perception of reality? The myriad of daily interactions we have with our environment. Part of it reflects the physical world, including our in-person activities, but an increasing portion comes from the virtual world. Almost half of us get their news from social media. And we are about to "enhance" the delivery methods for the virtual part with new tech such as "augmented reality" and "virtual reality,” both terms oxymoronic in nature. Reality can neither be "augmented" nor "enhanced," more than science can be "believed in."???

The more unusual or threatening the "information" provided by these new “sources,” the more likely it will trigger an amygdala response, which, in turn, facilitates its incorporation into our world model. We are primed by nature to detect danger, and over eons, nothing proved to be more dangerous than "the others." For a political pundit, fascism and socialism sell better than bipartisanship; on a weather channel, hurricanes make more money than fair weather. In short, the apocalypse is good for business.?

The Role of Religion – Blurring the Reality Boundary

Throughout the ages, an essential partner in crafting our survival strategy was, from the beginning, religion. It explained the unexplainable. It guided how we behaved towards each other and protected us against real and imagined enemies. So important was religion to our evolution that we developed specialized neural circuitry for spirituality and religious beliefs, the so-called "God Spot. "

But religion also softened the line between beliefs and physical reality. Religious writings are replete with magical creatures, cataclysmic events, and one-eyed monsters. When grafted on top of childhood fairytales, adult fantasy, sci-fi movies, and realistic video games, religion became the sharp edge with which the "imaginary" intrudes on real life.?

It shouldn't surprise anyone that, conditioned by religion to ignore critical thinking, some equate beliefs with facts. If enough people believe a particular set of propositions to be "facts," they can reinforce each other's thoughts and merge into social media groups with real power, even into virtual states like ISIS.?

By the time ISIS coalesced into the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant," it recruited an estimated 300 Americans from 31 states, 68% of whom have previously served in the US military. Young men and women from all over the world rushed to join the devil slayers of the caliphate, which seemed to have emerged straight from the colorful pages of the Arabian Nights. How did they come to associate so closely with lands they never saw and people they never met? Constant interactions within social media and the virtual universe.?

The Dark Side of Online Freedom??

So vast is the amount of information available on the internet, dwarfing by many orders of magnitude anyone's capacity to assimilate it, that an individual can pick and choose what they want to believe. The more time one spends selectively surfing the net, the larger the number of interactions confirming one's view of the world. Without allowing corrective feedback, it is easy to see how this vicious circle can lead to extreme beliefs and behaviors.???

According to a recent survey by OnePoll, 16 percent of Americans, about 53 million, never left their state, while the US Census informs us that 72 percent live in or close to the city where they grew up. This limits the number of direct interactions with the outside world and increases the reliance on trusted agents, most notably through the internet, where few of them are verifiably trustworthy.

Misinformation peddlers are not necessarily nasty people. Just paying their bills by hooking you to your screens and amplifying your wants and fears. Disinformation and fake news pushers are the real plague. They are driven by greed or political ambitions. The prolific output of misinformation and disinformation outlets, if consumed, becomes part of the way you see the world. It's a small wonder that 12 million of us believe lizard people run the country.

To be impactful, the information need not be diverse in content, just be repeated often enough by a few sources perceived to be different. The Center Countering Digital Hate found that only a dozen websites are responsible for 65% of the millions of "shares" of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. The result is that many avoid a potentially life-saving vaccine for fear of real but very rare side effects. An unvaccinated Covid-19 patient has a 97 times higher probability of dying than a vaccinated person.

Dictators have a more straightforward way. If you ride Seabiscuit to work every day, you can ban dissenting sources and let your state-controlled outlets fill the information hose. That is how your people learn that Ukrainian women throw flowers and panties at your freedom-fighting troops. Doctors who refuse to treat Covid-19 patients also learn to avoid open windows.????

Ultimately, we build our view (or model) of the world with information from two kinds of sources: the observable, the real world (independent of our beliefs and wishes), and stuff made available to us by others. In the past, we relied on newspapers, radio, and television. Today, we use the multiverse of virtual realities hosted by the internet, which we can choose to be either based on observable facts (which may require extended learning curves) or aligned to our pre-existing beliefs and prejudices. Usually referred to as "confirmation bias," the latter is considerably less demanding.?

Why Conspiracy Theories Work

According to National Geographic, conspiracies bring simple, if unsettling, answers to questions about a seemingly chaotic world.7 "Covid was 'engineered' in a Chinese lab" is much easier to understand than "Covid arose through spontaneous and unpredictable natural mutations in the mRNA of viruses inhabiting vampire bat colonies in some random Asian caves." It also gives us a convenient, culturally different villain to blame: the Chinese. This does not preclude the possibility of the virus escaping from a virology lab that routinely studies such mutations, of which there are hundreds worldwide, including in China. But a weapon that prefers to kill the old and feeble rather than the strong and able (like the Spanish flu did) is stupid.

Our brain wants fewer changes and simple explanations because they require less learning, and learning is biologically hard. For American admirers of Vladimir Putin, the changes in our world happen all too fast, and Putin seems to offer the most straightforward and most effective answers. Dictators have a knack for doing that.

The authors also point to "collective narcissism," a group's belief in its exaggerated importance as a driver. Believers in conspiracies are keepers of "truths" others are incapable of understanding. They seek simple explanations, embrace grandiosity, and need a convenient enemy to vanquish. Such groups treat fact-checking as heretical.

Delusion is not necessarily an involuntary affliction. Some may find collective narcissism rewarding. It elevates their status among their peers and enhances their perceived competitive advantage compared to others. Some may even anoint themselves as experts in far-flung fields without spending countless nights studying useless "brainwashing" subjects in elitist schools. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. "Common sense" and a few YouTube clips are all it takes. If one can explain the world, even in its coarsest form, it becomes less confusing and scary. So, some may look to delusion as a way of coping.

In others, misinformation may give rise to anxiety. In rare cases, millions may join in some righteous yet misguided crusade, such as banishing the lizard people. Neither anxiety nor delusion are healthy outcomes. The question then becomes: How can we differentiate facts from fiction? Do we want to? How can we qualify trusted agents? That will be the subject of a future post.

Next Post: Why "Think Outside the Box" is an Oxymoron!

References

A.?????????? Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind; Yuval Nosh Harari; Harper?

?1.??????????? Literacy - Our World in Data

2.??????????? Is the “God Spot” Rooted Far Below Our Brain’s Thinking Cap? | Psychology Today

3.??????????? The Islamic State: Foreign Fighters (jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

9.??????????? This Is How Many Americans Have Never Left Their Home State, According to a New Survey | Martha Stewart

4.??????????? Do Most Americans Still Live Where They Grew Up? | Exclusive Study (northamerican.com)

5.??????????? How to Spot the Reptilians Running the U.S. Government - The Atlantic

6.??????????? Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows : NPR

7.??????????? Why people latch on to conspiracy theories, according to science (nationalgeographic.com)

8.??????????? The Dunning-Kruger Effect: What It Is & Why It Matters (healthline.com)

9.??????????? News Consumption Across Social Media in 2021 | Pew Research Center