More democrats=more crime, more debt, urban blight. Originally Posted by Her PeasFrom a good book...
As well as our own biases, there are actors in politics, the media, and social media that have vested interests in pushing a particular worldview at us, through a distortion of the facts, or just outright lying. I examine a number of examples and their connection to our misperceptions in the book, from politicians across the spectrum, but just to pick out one here, from President Donald Trump’s address to the National Sheriffs’ Association at the White House in Feb. 2017:
The murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years… the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that.
But there was a good reason the press didn’t say that—because it wasn’t true. It is, however, effective in emotionally connecting to his target audience by playing on human biases—our focus on negative information and our tendency to think that things are getting worse.
Politicians, media, and social media achieve the reaction they desire by, for example, emphasising vivid, negative, stereotypical stories precisely because we tend to be influenced more by these than accurate but dry statistics