I left this comment on a recent post over at Jill’s blog:
I have a theory* that we’re not really designed to hold opinions on large-scale events and the players involved. It has nothing to do with level of intelligence, it’s really a curse of information technology (starting with the telegraph) combined with our natural epistemic limits. I disagree with Scott Adams on a lot of things, but he summarized political opinions as the result of us “picking a side and supporting it.” The rationalizations and “appeals to policy” are post facto. Assuming this state of affairs as true, mischaracterizations of the side we don’t support are our way of bonding socially with others on our side. Given the (mostly) consequence-free nature of online communications, that’s the primary way we can bond with others while not in person. It’s not a great way of creating social lasting bonds.
* For sure, others have come up with the same idea and expounded upon it, but I’m using my own verbal logic and don’t want to reference and mischaracterize (heh) other people’s opinions.
News, especially televised news or anything you might see on YouTube, is entertainment; politics, its highest form. The director and the screenwriters decide who is the villain and who is the protagonist. An attitude held by the protagonist would be labeled as “persistent,” while the same attitude held by the villain is labeled “stubborn.” It’s a fascinating deception; myth-making in near real-time, packaged as hard facts. This isn’t a jab at news creators (though there’s plenty of terrible things one could say about them) but a built-in limitation of our cognitive processes and epistemic powers. We grasp for information beyond our abilities’ reach and end up holding onto what we presume and believe already, but we mistakenly believe it’s what we were really aiming for.
The emotional and bonding centers of our brain are activated when we flashing images on a screen weren’t meant to properly process. Video-based news was a huge mistake. The only thing video technology is good for is entertainment and storytelling, since that’s where the most truth could be found.