That’s what I am going to write about tonight. No plan, no fixed topic, no therapeutic intent, just,  ya know, whatev.

Been thinking a lot about the phenomenon of people rejecting new information based on whether it’s consistent with what they already know lately.

It’s a vitally necessary part of our cognitive processes, and as a rough intuition about whether or not something is true, it works fairly well. The odds are good that if new information flies in the face of what we already know, it is BS.

But only up to a point. PAst a certain level of complexity it stops working and you need to switch to a more active and rational way of looking at things in order to get things right. You have to be able to consciously examine a piece of information and check it for things like logical consistency and the nature of the source of the information.

And the thing is, not everyone can do that. They have to rely on the more primitive system. And the primitive system only works if the body of knowledge known as “what the person already knows” is all accurate.

If not, then said system will reject actual, verifiable facts for being inconsistent with the bullshit things the person already “knows”.

And this is not a yes or no response. The more of what an individual already believes the new factoid conflicts with, the stronger the rejection response.

Thus, any body of organized knowledge, however spurious, is more than capable of defending itself against the intrusion of contrary information, no made how true said information might be.

I think this phenomenon is extremely relevant today because of how all us liberal intellectual types are trying to grok the mystery that is the Trump supporter.

It explains how they can be so fact-proof. It seems like madness from the outside that, no matter how much proof and how solid it is, it is impossible to get these people to change their mind about him one bit.

And it’s not just Fox News loving Trump fans. The world is full of people with objectively wrong ideas, beliefs, and so forth, and the modern intellectual often struggles to understand how this can be true without the world decending into a morass of chaos due to everyone living in their own private fantasy land.

The answer, which some might find unpalatable, is that there are categories of knowledge and one might have all kind of absurd beliefs about, say, global economics and it will not impair one’s ability to function in modern society one whit.

People don’t like this idea because, at least to brainy intellectual types, knowledge is knowledge and the truth is the truth and you are either right or wrong about things and it is exremely important to be right about everything.

To that mindset, thinking Hilary Clinton killed Vince Foster and thinking the sky is green are equally bad.

But for the less intellectually gifted, these categories are a very big deal. It is perfectly safe to believe whatever makes you happy as long as these are not beliefs about things that actually matter to our daily lives. This is especially true if one stays in a community of thought which reinforces the happy-making beliefs and provides you with all the talking points you need to assuage that part of your mind that is trying to tell you something is bullshit and you keep rejecting that information because it threatens to put you into doubt. And you hate doubt.

Now none of this means that it is impossible to change the mind of a Trump voter. What it does mean is that direct intellectual assault is doomed to failure because the consistency factor will block objectionable material before it is even analyzed.

Any attempt at pursuation, therefore, must be based on what these people already know and believe. Ideally, all the arguments are entirely based on what they already believe about the world and the point of departure from said beliefs is minimized.

So say you are trying to turn people against Trump. Here are some things that his supporters already believe :

1. The federal government is evil. Well guess who’s running it.
2. Rich people control the world and conspire against the little guy. Plenty of evidence that Trump has done that, but evidence is not key here. So this argument can be tapped into but not strongly.
3. Thbe deficit must be controlled. He’s breaking records with his.
4. The bad guys are the “coastal elites”. He’s from NY.
5. There’s plenty of people trying to fool you and rip you off in this world. Well he has done exactly that to them.
6. He hasn’t delivered on anything he promised.

And so forth and so on. So an effective anti-Trump message would be something like :

Rich people are using the federal government to steal our money! These rich coastal elites think they are entitled to all of our money they can grab, and if our rights and freedoms get in the way of that, screw them. They are running up quite a tab with their cash grabs, and guess who’s going to have to foot the bill? That’s right, us law-abiding taxpayers! They think we are too stupid to know when we are being fleeced, but I say they are dead wrong and that it’s high time for working Americans to rise up against these supposed elites and show them that America is not for sale and that average, hardworking Americans are sick and tired of being ripped off, and they are perfectly willing and capable of using the right granted to the by the United States Constitution to make sure these SOBs pay for how they have treated this great oland of ours!

Note that there is no mention of political parties, specific issues, or individual politicians. That’s because those things are buzzwords and these people know to immediately shut down their minds when they hear them.

But if you use their language and get them riled up in ways they are used to and enjoy, the difference between directing that at liberals and directing it at the real people who are screwing them over will seem like a relatively minor point.

If we, the liberal guardians of civilization, want to save it from the barbarian thinking that threatens to destroy it, we have to be willing to think like barbarians and use barbarian reasoning to appeal to them.

Otherwise, we’ll all be protecting our purity of mind while Rome, and everywhere else, burns to the ground around us.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,