Gell-Mann and the "stupidity" of voters

It is funny that extreme partisans of either party see each election as the "end" of the other party.

Notwithstanding the vote fraud the democong are indulging themselves in (while the repukes stand back with a who farted look on their face and a proven tendency to allow this criminality), it is a trend in American politics for voters to kick the majority party out of office every couple of years.

It is enough to make some people (me) go into fits of rage as I ask this question...

How can voters cite "health care" as a major cause for their vote, and reelect the same party that made the problem worse by an order of magnitude?

Health care costs and eligibility was bad before oblahblahcare; people lost their insurance, and prices rose after oblahblahcare...it's so bad that more than half of the ACA exchanges failed before Barky left office.

Even so, voters chose the same party that ramrodded this legal travesty down our throats

Let's look at some reasons why this may have happened. Remember, these are possible explanations that may be partly responsible in some combination. Human situations are extremely complex. Be wary of advocating for a single cause of an event, especially when that cause leads itself to the solution that you want to be selected.

  • Voters "throw the bums out" as part of American political tradition. We tend to want a gridlocked government (in appearance, anyway, as people don't seem to understand the constant trend towards statism in a supposedly gridlocked system). Americans don't want to be bothered by politics
  • Americans choose politicians that appeal to them and help them on a personal level...this is a common human trait btw. A person that doesn't pay attention to the ideology of a politician (or the results of that ideology) will vote for a politician that helps them out or is responsive to them in a personal situation...even if it is that politicians's policy that caused the issue in the first place
  • The repukes ran on revoking oblahblahcare, and then didn't do it. Do most people understand the existence of the GOPe (gop establishment, the bought-off globalist influence within the party)? No. It doesn't get reported, and neither do the battles within the party between that influence and the small government wing. Snort, the only thing reported these days about the repukes is that Republican = bad white man. Even so...would you vote for a political party that told you they were going to do something, and then didn't do it?
  • The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect...which is the focus of today's installment. A simple reminder that the the media pushed a false story that Republicans were going to take away care for prior conditions.

The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
— Michael Crichton (Why Speculate?, 2002)
Wiki

This Amnesia Effect is a cognitive bias, one of those areas we constantly point out in #informationwar analysis. It should be considered as a subset of Authority bias focused on the media as an authority.

Patheos makes this point about the bias:

In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.
The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect

Again, as we stress...in critical thinking, we need to always check the source of our data; for bias, for consistency, and for a previous record of being accurate, whether that a possible record of failure is indicated by bias or of incompetency, that source should not be trusted.

Most every every slightly contentious article has layers of manipulations and assumptions in interpreting and reporting the data. It’s often difficult to understand or trust anything besides the actual primary source… and those have their own biases.
Anchoring and Adjusting to Numbers

Come back...to Criticial Thinking we will take you...come back...

I am going to end with two quotes from this article on recognizing and combating the Gell-Mann, RETRO WATN: THE GELL-MANN AMNESIA EFFECT

People have always had to filter what they learn and read because everyone has an agenda and a bias, everyone is limited in their knowledge, and there's always been forces trying to censor or shape information to their advantage or their opponents' detriment.

The best protection we have is healthy skepticism armed with personal learning. And you have to back that up with an overarching understanding of the world which rejects the most common errors. If you honestly think people are basically decent then you're going to continuously be gulled and led astray. If you really think the world is run by a sinister cabal of secret billionaires in the Illuminati, you're going to misinterpret nearly everything you learn.

So, hopefully, this explains why people will listen to the press and return to office the same people that made things worse as a likely contributing factor

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During the 2000 election the Reps made a deal with the devil to get Bush into the WH. They agreed that they wouldn't push back in situations like this- that's why the Broward and Palm Bch Counties are behaving with impunity.

even back to 1982...I wrote a blog about a consent decree that the RNC and DNC agreed upon in 82. It's a coupla posts down

I had, at one point, a paper that showed that Brower had a higher rate of "ballot errors" in counting going back to 92.

The rates were 8% in 92, and 6% in 96, IIRC, compared to a national average of 2%

still regretting dumping that paper off my computer years ago

I know the feeling... I wish I had the paper I wrote on NAFTA in 93 that predicted the "caravans."

was it called "camp of the saints"? ;>

That would have been perfect. It had one of those scholarly titles NAFTA & the Commercial Reciprocity Treaty of 1898 (I think or 1889): A Comparative Analysis

Under the first treaty Porfirio Diaz sold the land out from under the Campesinos forcing them into slave conditions working for the Haciendados. He sold the land to American interests, mostly railroads. I predicted that under NAFTA the land would once again get seized from the farmers and sold to the agribusinesses (Monsanto, ADM, Cargill) and the farmers would first go to Mexico City looking for work, but half of the pop is already there SO in 10 years or sooner they would all migrate to El Norte! They all laughed at me at the APSA Conference (except Ralph Nader)

always makes sense in hindsight, and I doubt that anyone laughing back then would admit it today

I checked Google Scholar to see if there were any cites, and don't see it...you'd think there'd be a copy floating around the net somewhere

I may not have hit the title exactly I think I mentioned the Porfiriato or maybe Diaz himself by name... it's been 25 years and I'm old lol!

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