eagleye13 Loc: Fl

https://static.onepoliticalplaza.com/upload/2020/3/29/t1-329650-good_people.jpg

Johny Black Pot.
You racist!!!

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

Perhaps you should be a little more familiar with the members of OPP before you start assuming you are more informed than any one of them on any particular subject! You’ve been here for 14 days and assume you are more intelligent and more knowledgeable than this person that you have no idea what their background is!
Hint! Hint!

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

Good one Texacan.
I hope that straightened out the newbee, Wildlandfirefighter.

bdamage Loc: My Bunker

So where are your sources?
Since you probably didn't watch the video I posted to you, here's another....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=NjjybyJ59Lw

bdamage Loc: My Bunker

He has a learning disability.
When one thinks he knows everything, he stops learning.

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

" You can put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes, and sputter gibberish but after your fit of denial you are still wrong." Davis

Davis!!!!
Quit using the 3 Monkey approach, and pay attention!

Is Davis really that ignorant?
Something for her/him to chew on;

PanDemic or DemPanic?
http://republicbroadcasting.org/category/columnists/
By Je suis Spike
"The Democrat Party is most certainly in a panic. They’ve been unable to oust President Trump from his office or drive his popularity down among those who voted for him. They are staring into electoral abyss with reverse coattails with the Joe Biden campaign apparently winning the Democratic nomination for President. Do not be shocked if, though he wins the nomination, Joe Biden is not the actual candidate of the Democrat Party in November this year.
The Deep State and virtually the whole of the Democratic Party, being merely a subset of the Deep State, have tried very hard to harm President Trump’s ability to preside for these last three years and also to prevail in 2020. Every listener to RBN radio and reader of RepublicBroadcasting.Org is quite aware of this continuing smear campaign against the President by people who are in government to usurp the people instead of serve the people. It’s as though the elected say to the American people, “you serve, we rule.”
We’ve seen a ridiculous, baseless investigation into Donald Trump after a Democrat Opposition Research Dossier was fed to the FBI as though it was a legitimate allegation of wrongdoing on Trump’s part; in particular, he was accused of conspiring with Putin and/or Russia to help him win his election (against Hillary!) in 2016.
Then there was the ridiculous impeachment of President Trump, the charges so bogus as to be unworthy of being repeated here. Of course both of those two attempts have failed.
Knowing that the impeachment would fail in the attempt to remove the President by supermajority vote in the Senate, the Democrat Party was hoping to have some fodder for their campaign commercials. Of course, what they still have not figured out is that Donald Trump, while better than most Presidents of recent years, is mostly a response to Democrat fecklessness, corruption and the American people’s realization that the Democrats have only two constituencies among Americans, the super-rich with whom they practice back and forth largesse with taxpayer money and those whom they’ve made dependent. (Of course the Democrats have constituencies outside of America, too: See the logical progeny of Charlie Trie and John Huang and others who benefit by trade practices and one-sided trade agreements that harm working Americans which drove manufacturing and good-paying jobs out of America.) Working Americans pretty much vote for Trump while the Democrats kick them and call them hateful because they believe that there are only two genders, that Americans, for all of our faults, are rather fair, generous and respectful of others, though unwilling to be forced to ratify lifestyles which not too long ago kept quiet.
All the while, the Mockingbird Media (MM) has trumped up one false accusation after another or otherwise attempted to inflame Americans with breathless reporting about one thing or another that the President did or failed to do which the MM hoped would drive down the President’s approval numbers as we approach what until recently was the all-but-certain reelection he would win in 2020. (See reporting by one of the bravest human beings on the planet, Sharyl Atkisson, for a sample of the malfeasance of journalism that plagues the President and America.)
Then along came the corona virus– which I prefer by an inquisitive anagram: virus or a con?– to use to pound the American people into dust. And dust we are becoming, as Governor after Governor responds to the unhinged Fauci and his band of Deep State cohorts who are using the virus as an excuse to do everything possible to teach the American people to never vote for someone other than a Deep State toady again. They would literally destroy America and impoverish all Americans before allowing Trump to win again. You must understand who these people are and what they are. They are completely without empathy or sympathy for the people. You see, they’ve controlled a multi-trillion dollar corporation for years now, with franchises (military bases) around the world and they are not going to give it up. Their love of money has driven them to engage in commerce which has led them to extreme violence, (see Ezekiel28:16). Evil? Yes, they support unborn babies being shredded to death inside their mother’s wombs. Can you get more evil?
Many State Governors are using executive power, (not just power, meaning legitimate power, which is only by consent of the governed), to stop people from using beaches, parks and other outdoor venues to do the one thing they can do to help themselves battle a virus, get some fresh air and sunshine. Some Governors are even forbidding people gathering to worship God. Of course, the Constitution says that Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment* of religion. While said to be a right that we have- to worship- the Constitution didn’t say out of control, pants-wetting, wannabe tyrant Governors couldn’t curb your right to worship in a manner consistent with the dictates of your conscience. Also, many of these Governors have delayed elections for their pals and/or themselves, just like the Democrats have always said Trump would do because “Trump is literally Hitler.” Where is the condemnation in the press for that?
So we have a government that has shut down the livelihood of many Americans who are about to be impoverished, and has fomented fear such that many people’s hearts will fail them for fear. Who will be held responsible?
I don’t see this ending except in any of three ways: Americans, never to regain what we once were, and then completely under the thumb of tyrants; Americans, “set free” briefly at the behest of President Trump, only to suffer the release of a truly harmful agent, Trump being blamed for the resulting mayhem; America throwing off tyrants and re-establishing the appearance of a republic which we most recently have had, though not an actual republic."
Je suis Spike

MR Mister Loc: Washington DC

Well listen, chump, I don't give a flying Fuc* what you think. Suck it.

firefighter, my ass.

eagleye13 Loc: Fl

From the past!

Help Obama Kickstart World War III!
https://youtu.be/z-sdO6pwVHQ

Wildlandfirefighter

My, my, what a wonderful group of people we have here. You are the crazies that will destroy this country with your willful ignorance, radical Christianity and fake conspiracy theories. You should listen to yourselves, you have all gone off the deep end. I suggest you read the article attached below with link from the BBC, it might help shine some light on your current condition, and perhaps give you a route to try to escape from the con that is Donald J. Trump. Seriously, its still not too late to disconnect yourself from the most immoral president in the history of this great nation. Make America Great Again, wow that's a joke. How about we try to Make America Decent again. We are becoming the laughingstock of the world under his inept leadership.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200406-why-smart-people-believe-coronavirus-myths?utm_source=pocket-newtab



It is a sad truth that any health crisis will spawn its own pandemic of misinformation.

In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s we saw the spread of dangerous lies about Aids – from the belief that the HIV virus was created by a government laboratory to the idea that the HIV tests were unreliable, and even the spectacularly unfounded theory that it could be treated with goat’s milk. These claims increased risky behaviour and exacerbated the crisis.

Now, we are seeing a fresh inundation of fake news – this time around the coronavirus pandemic. From Facebook to WhatsApp, frequently shared misinformation include everything from what caused the outbreak to how you can prevent becoming ill.

We’ve debunked several claims here on BBC Future, including misinformation around how sunshine, warm weather and drinking water can affect the coronavirus. The BBC’s Reality Check team is also checking popular coronavirus claims, and the World Health Organization is keeping a myth-busting page regularly updated too.

You might also like:

What is Covid-19’s real death rate?
How fear of the coronavirus warps our minds
What Covid-19 means for the environment

At worst, the ideas themselves are harmful – a recent report from one province in Iran found that more people had died from drinking industrial-strength alcohol, based on a false claim that it could protect you from Covid-19, than from the virus itself. But even seemingly innocuous ideas could lure you and others into a false sense of security, discouraging you from adhering to government guidelines, and eroding trust in health officials and organisations.

There’s evidence these ideas are sticking. One poll by YouGov and the Economist in March 2020 found 13% of Americans believed the Covid-19 crisis was a hoax, for example, while a whopping 49% believed the epidemic might be man-made. And while you might hope that greater brainpower or education would help us to tell fact from fiction, it is easy to find examples of many educated people falling for this false information.

Just consider the writer Kelly Brogan, a prominent Covid-19 conspiracy theorist; she has a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied psychiatry at Cornell University. Yet she has shunned clear evidence of the virus’s danger in countries like China and Italy. She even went as far as to question the basic tenets of germ theory itself while endorsing pseudoscientific ideas.

Even some world leaders – who you would hope to have greater discernment when it comes to unfounded rumours – have been guilty of spreading inaccurate information about the risk of the outbreak and promoting unproven remedies that may do more harm than good, leading Twitter and Facebook to take the unprecedented step of removing their posts.

Fortunately, psychologists are already studying this phenomenon. And what they find might suggest new ways to protect ourselves from lies and help stem the spread of this misinformation and foolish behaviour.

Information overload

Part of the problem arises from the nature of the messages themselves.

We are bombarded with information all day, every day, and we therefore often rely on our intuition to decide whether something is accurate. As BBC Future has described in the past, purveyors of fake news can make their message feel “truthy” through a few simple tricks, which discourages us from applying our critical thinking skills – such as checking the veracity of its source. As the authors of one paper put it: “When thoughts flow smoothly, people nod along.”

Eryn Newman at Australian National University, for instance, has shown that the simple presence of an image alongside a statement increases our trust in its accuracy – even if it is only tangentially related to the claim. A generic image of a virus accompanying some claim about a new treatment, say, may offer no proof of the statement itself, but it helps us visualise the general scenario. We take that “processing fluency” as a sign that the claim is true.

For similar reasons, misinformation will include descriptive language or vivid personal stories. It will also feature just enough familiar facts or figures – such as mentioning the name of a recognised medical body – to make the lie within feel convincing, allowing it to tether itself to our previous knowledge.

The more often we see something in our news feed, the more likely we are to think that it’s true – even if we were originally sceptical

Even the simple repetition of a statement – whether the same text, or over multiple messages – can increase the “truthiness” by increasing feelings of familiarity, which we mistake for factual accuracy. So, the more often we see something in our news feed, the more likely we are to think that it’s true – even if we were originally sceptical.

Sharing before thinking

These tricks have long been known by propagandists and peddlers of misinformation, but today’s social media may exaggerate our gullible tendencies. Recent evidence shows that many people reflexively share content without even thinking about its accuracy.

In one study, only about 25% of participants said the fake news was true– but 35% said they would share the headline

Gordon Pennycook, a leading researcher into the psychology of misinformation at the University of Regina, Canada, asked participants to consider a mixture of true and false headlines about the coronavirus outbreak. When they were specifically asked to judge the accuracy of the statements, the participants said the fake news was true about 25% of time. When they were simply asked whether they would share the headline, however, around 35% said they would pass on the fake news – 10% more.

“It suggests people were sharing material that they could have known was false, if they had thought about it more directly,” Pennycook says. (Like much of the cutting-edge research on Covid-19, this research has not yet been peer-reviewed, but a pre-print has been uploaded to the Psyarxiv website.)

Perhaps their brains were engaged in wondering whether a statement would get likes and retweets rather than considering its accuracy. “Social media doesn’t incentivise truth,” Pennycook says. “What it incentivises is engagement.”

Or perhaps they thought they could shift responsibility on to others to judge: many people have been sharing false information with a sort of disclaimer at the top, saying something like “I don’t know if this is true, but…”. They may think that if there’s any truth to the information, it could be helpful to friends and followers, and if it isn’t true, it’s harmless – so the impetus is to share it, not realising that sharing causes harm too.

Whether it’s promises of a homemade remedy or claims about some kind of dark government cover-up, the promise of eliciting a strong response in their followers distracts people from the obvious question.

This question should be, of course: is it true?

Override reactions

Classic psychological research shows that some people are naturally better at overriding their reflexive responses than others. This finding may help us understand why some people are more susceptible to fake news than others.

Researchers like Pennycook use a tool called the “cognitive reflection test” or CRT to measure this tendency. To understand how it works, consider the following question:

Emily’s father has three daughters. The first two are named April and May. What is the third daughter’s name?

Did you answer June? That’s the intuitive answer that many people give – but the correct answer is, of course, Emily.

To come to that solution, you need to pause and override that initial gut response. For this reason, CRT questions are not so much a test of raw intelligence, as a test of someone’s tendency to employ their intelligence by thinking things through in a deliberative, analytical fashion, rather than going with your initial intuitions. The people who don’t do this are often called “cognitive misers” by psychologists, since they may be in possession of substantial mental reserves, but they don’t “spend” them.

Cognitive miserliness renders us susceptible to many cognitive biases, and it also seems to change the way we consume information (and misinformation).

When it came to the coronavirus statements, for instance, Pennycook found that people who scored badly on the CRT were less discerning in the statements that they believed and were willing to share.

Matthew Stanley, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has reported a similar pattern in people’s susceptibility to the coronavirus hoax theories. Remember that around 13% of US citizens believed this theory, which could potentially discourage hygiene and social distancing. “Thirteen percent seems like plenty to make this [virus] go around very quickly,” Stanley says.

Testing participants soon after the original YouGov/Economist poll was conducted, he found that people who scored worse on the CRT were significantly more susceptible to these flawed arguments.

These cognitive misers were also less likely to report having changed their behaviour to stop the disease from spreading – such as handwashing and social distancing.

Stop the spread

Knowing that many people – even the intelligent and educated – have these “miserly” tendencies to accept misinformation at face value might help us to stop the spread of misinformation.

Given the work on truthiness – the idea that we “nod along when thoughts flow smoothly” – organisations attempting to debunk a myth should avoid being overly complex.

Instead, they should present the facts as simply as possible – preferably with aids like images and graphs that make the ideas easier to visualise. As Stanley puts it: “We need more communications and strategy work to target those folks who are not as willing to be reflective and deliberative.” It’s simply not good enough to present a sound argument and hope that it sticks.

If they can, these campaigns should avoid repeating the myths themselves. The repetition makes the idea feel more familiar, which could increase perceptions of truthiness. That’s not always possible, of course. But campaigns can at least try to make the true facts more prominent and more memorable than the myths, so they are more likely to stick in people’s minds. (It is for this reason that I’ve given as little information as possible about the hoax theories in this article.)

When it comes to our own online behaviour, we might try to disengage from the emotion of the content and think a bit more about its factual basis before passing it on. Is it based on hearsay or hard scientific evidence? Can you trace it back to the original source? How does it compare to the existing data? And is the author relying on the common logical fallacies to make their case?

These are the questions that we should be asking – rather than whether or not the post is going to start amassing likes, or whether it “could” be helpful to others. And there is some evidence that we can all get better at this kind of thinking with practice.

Pennycook suggests that social media networks could nudge their users to be more discerning with relatively straightforward interventions. In his experiments, he found that asking participants to rate the factual accuracy of a single claim primed participants to start thinking more critically about other statements, so that they were more than twice as discerning about the information they shared.

In practice, it might be as simple as a social media platform providing the occasional automated reminder to think twice before sharing, though careful testing could help the companies to find the most reliable strategy, he says.

There is no panacea. Like our attempts to contain the virus itself, we are going to need a multi-pronged approach to fight the dissemination of dangerous and potentially life-threatening misinformation.

And as the crisis deepens, it will be everyone’s responsibility to stem that spread.

--

David Robson is the author of The Intelligence Trap, which examines why smart people act foolishly and the ways we can all make wiser decisions. He is @d_a_robson on Twitter.

As an award-winning science site, BBC Future is committed to bringing you evidence-based analysis and myth-busting stories around the new coronavirus. You can read more of our Covid-19 coverage here.

ddavis Loc: VA

Most folk are probably not content being member of the “herd”. The problem is they do not realize they have become the herd. Independent thought has fallen victim to the stampede.

Wildlandfirefighter

You are correct and it is a very sad thing. I wonder if they will ever figure it out?

ddavis Loc: VA

Nothing short of epiphany will do.

bdamage Loc: My Bunker

An independent thinker you're not.
Brainwashed TV watching zombie you seem to be.
It's not too late for you to wake up from your slumber and become conscious.
Everything "they" show you on TV is what "they" want you to see and want you to believe.
What "they" don't show you is what you should be looking at.

Wakey, wakey, fighter fakey....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MY8Nfzcn1qQ&feature=youtu.be

ddavis Loc: VA

I’ll keep that in mind should I see the need to purchase a television.

bdamage Loc: My Bunker

No worries.... You can get your BBC brainwashing just as easily on the web, that is if you choose to do so.