Question on a math test:
If you choose a random answer to this question, the probability that you’ll be correct is:
a) 25% b) 66% c) 50% d) 25%
The first option looks good. Four answers, one in four, 25%. Some people stop there and move on. But they’re wrong. Why? There are two answers that have 25%, and random choice gives that even odds — 50%. So obviously the correct answer is c… except if it is, the odds are back to 25% again.
Right now most people have a headache and are seriously considering if the right answer could possibly be c. Some of the more well-adjusted among us ticked one at random and moved on.
There’s a lesson in that.
It’s not what you think it is.
If you look for it, you’ll find it: propaganda. It’s everywhere, from the news we read to campaign slogans, from press releases to the color of your jug of Tide.
We call those who don’t look for it naive.
And yet in doing so, we may well be falling for the “Propaganda Narrative”, which is designed specifically for those among us who habitually read between the lines in search of the truth. They find the obvious lies and discard them, and what’s left is what they believe. Except that too is a carefully crafted product, one aimed at those who find it. There’s another underlying that, and still another surrounding the whole thing. Sift through all the lies and what’s left? Good question — or is it?
But that way madness lies. Stop thinking about the framework of lies and half-truths and move on to what underlies the whole thing.
There’s a reason people are so easily fooled.
Oh, yes, a part of it is that very smart people design the things that fool us. But the reason they are able to is that the meat machine that is the human brain functions regularly by fooling the mind driving it.
Consider if you will human vision.
As you know, every eye contains at least one blind spot, the point where the optic nerve attaches. Over time, it will collect more. The brain adapts, filling in the gaps automatically with best-guess information — but not a conscious mind’s best guess. No, it generates a picture that blurs seamlessly with its borders. This often fails to even resemble reality.
Note that this is an automatic process, and one that’s purely mechanical in nature. There’s no learning involved or even possible, because there’s no conscious control. We can see further evidence of the existence of this process in some optical illusions.
Now, while the vision centers of the brain have their own unique characteristics, the basic building blocks of human grey matter remain pretty much the same regardless of where in the brain they happen to be. The methods are similar, too, though to be sure they vary slightly from brain to brain. There’s a reason many people can’t visualize objects, that others dream in black and white, and most dream entirely without text. It’s an organic process. This results in errors, for which the meat machine has correction mechanisms.
Consider now errors that become visible in behavior: mental disorders. There exist some people for whom ordinary decisions are extremely difficult. When exposed to everyday life, they soon collapse from executive overload. Put simply, this is because a natural protection mechanism which everyone’s brain uses has failed for them. It takes care of the basic decisions automatically, reserving actual cogitation for those things it deems important.
Extrapolate that, combined with the methods employed by our vision centers, and you’ll soon see that the average person participates very little in their actual lives. They commute on automatic, work on automatic, relax on automatic, and so on.
After several years of this, actual thought becomes positively uncomfortable for them, and they resist it. Why? Because their brains have trained them to do that. They rely on reflex, not analysis.
Our news services, in order to be relevant, are infotainment factories which appeal not to our thinking but rather our feeling. They present the merely unusual as if it were significant — and we accept that because it’s what our brains do, and thus how we’re trained to behave by our very own meat machines. For similar reasons, we tend to believe those opinions that are the most comfortable for us. It saves us having to think.
Now: You’ve read this piece with all the “we” and “us” instances, but there’s a part of you that hasn’t considered that you are included in this. You’re human; you either have a normal brain structure or a severe mental disorder. There is no third natural option.
Except of course that there is, and you think you employ it. You don’t, not really, but you provide yourself with the illusion that you do, and that satisfies your brain.
Arrogant of me to assert this, I know. And yet, now that you read that paragraph again, you’re considering the idea… and it makes you uncomfortable.
You know the option. You’re aware of it, and you do it, and you believe that you’ve formed a habit of doing it.
It’s called “training”.
You can train your brain to actively consider certain types of things without opening yourself up to perpetual executive overload. Similarly, talented actors can train themselves to observe and mimic behavior, and creatives can train themselves to play with ideas rather than settle for the easiest most obvious answer.
But there’s a built-in caveat. You might have noticed it.
It’s the word “train”.
That’s the mechanism the brain uses on us to encourage lack of thought. We use the same method on ourselves in order to generate different results. And of course we trust it, because we know it works; we watch it, and our perceptions show us it’s working.
Except.
Those perceptions, like everything else we see, feel, hear, touch, smell, and taste, are filtered through our meat machine brains, which all automatically generate convincing illusions to comfortably fill in the gaps. Gaps which logically must always be there, even in ideas.
I can provide examples of those too, but that’s a bottomless rabbit hole. Stick just with this. It’s enough for now.
Re-read it. Consider it.
When you’re finished, move ahead.
You didn’t follow instructions, did you? You just jumped on ahead without fully processing what you’ve read. Well, that’s fair. Tough to get your head around it all, and there’s really no point, not for what you do with your life. You can do your job just fine without understanding any of this stuff. And that’s what’s important, right?
Heh.
Let’s go back to the math question. I’ll restate it so you don’t have to scroll up.
If you choose a random answer to this question, the probability that you’ll be correct is:
a) 25% b) 66% c) 50% d) 25%
Remember the logic: The first option looks good, but isn’t. Four answers, one in four, 25% — except there are two answers that have 25%, and random choice gives that even odds — 50%. So obviously the correct answer is c… except if it is, the odds are back to 25% again. We’ve now ruled out a, c, and d. Thus, logically, the proper answer must be b.
But it’s not.
The truth is, there is no correct answer. We see the problem and are provided with four choices, and our brains assume that one of them is the truth. In reality, they were carefully crafted in a way that was designed to derail your thought processes, to cause you intellectual discomfort, and if practicable to prod you into thinking. Which, as we’ve just discussed, is something you’re not in the habit of doing on a regular basis.
The question demonstrates just one way that propaganda works: By permitting the question to dictate the pattern in which you consider the answers, you’re surrendering your ability to craft original solutions.
From this, some have extracted the adage Think outside the box. It’s useful when properly employed. Use it on your tax returns, however, and the IRS will come for you. They got Al Capone; they’ll catch you. So use it only when it’s useful.
But when is it useful? You could spend all day every day asking yourself that question and never find the answer. Let’s face it: you don’t have the time. You’ve got other things to do, important things. Making a living. Raising a family. Getting enough sleep, like that ever happens.
That’s how They get you.
I’ll leave you with that comforting thought.
The Not Fake News 