Confirmation bias — as historian Lawrence Davidson explained it (regarding journalism) — I see as a major source of Western democracies' suicide

© 2018 Peter Free

 

23 August 2018

 

 

We "believe" what we want to . . .

 

. . . which presumably creates conditions in which Reality eventually obliterates most of us.

 

In this regard, historian Lawrence Davidson recently wrote a few words that arguably sum the human condition.

 

Addressing the Lamestream's lack of support for hounded (Wikileaks') Julian Assange — despite the fact that he too is a "journalist" — and a more vitally important one, than they are — Professor Davidson said:

 

 

One might ask just how seriously “the public” wants a media that tells them “the truth.”

 

It is more likely that Americans (and others) chose their news outlets on the basis of which one most often tells them what they want to hear—in other words, the search for “accurate” reporting is really driven by a desire for confirmation bias [see here].

 

This situation puts truth tellers like Assange, and in the case of Israel, Omar Nazzal [— see here —], in a bad position.

 

They will have their defenders but they will be outside the mainstream—because truth itself is also outside the mainstream.

 

© 2018 Lawrence Davidson, Julian Assange and the Fate of Journalism, CounterPunch (23 August 2018) (excerpts)

 

 

Consider the implications of — "truth itself is outside the mainstream"

 

What is the prognosis for a species of organisms that prances around, ignoring most aspects of its environment and perennially "making shit up"?

 

It would be challenging to come up with a more definitionally exact example of nuthouse behavior.

 

 

The moral? — Humanity may be an evolutionary experiment in consciousness — but certainly not in intelligence

 

Perhaps we are masters of unconsciously acquired, self-delusion. Can there a favorable prognosis for a conscious organism that behaves, as if Reality does not matter?

 

Probably not.

 

I grow fonder of the idea that life, as we perceive it, is a computer simulation initiated by smarter creatures. Ones who were, or are, curious enough to plumb our evolutionary side-branch's (entertainingly stupid) self-destruction.

 

Perhaps this is their equivalent of a high school science project.

 

That would be reassuring. At least perceptive intelligence, somewhere in the Cosmos, exists.