How Reliable is your Source?

Like any normal child I used to engage in magical thinking. We had this local newspaper called Dracula that came out once a week.

I can still remember the excitement I would get on Tuesday evenings knowing that the new edition of Dracula would be in my hands next day after-school.

As the title might suggest, the newspaper presented articles about paranormal phenomena - all things UFOs, ghosts, fortune-teller services, and the weekly vampire column.

Wouldn't it be odd that in a small country like Romania, there were at least a few weekly 'encounters' of vampires and dead people sending messages to their living relatives? It's like they were on a tight schedule...

It didn't matter. I was absorbed. Not only I, but also the many other credulous believers who would stand in line at the newspaper kiosk every Wednesday.

To my defense, I was a kid. I knew little. The rest of the 'group' consisted mostly of grown-ups. Why were they there?! What sort of twisted-logic was playing inside their heads?

I think it was in 6th or 7th grade when I gradually started adopting other interests; more social ones. My devotion to Dracula slowly, but surely, faded away. I'm not sure if this newspaper is still in print. I wouldn't be surprised if it is...

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My point?

I kept saying it in my blogs (here and my personal blog) and I'll keep saying it. Human nature is faulty by design. We are not inborn creatures of reason.

We are creatures of habit by default. Were it not for evolution and our habitual nature, we might not have been here.

But the rules of the game have changed since the early days of the human species. We are no longer living in a habitat with high risk of getting eaten by a predatory animal. Our primary instincts are no longer at high stake. Most of us do not benefit from the mental biases and heuristics that have gradually been assigned to us by evolution. We should strive to rise above this nature of ours. But it seems that most of us do not.

We come to life with these prepackaged biases. We have to self-educate in rational thinking.

Thinking, as ridiculously as it may sound, is not a given. We think we are good thinkers. But thinking is a skill. And like any skill, it is developed by deliberate practice.

I'm not sure of the purpose of Dracula newspaper. But it made its point - its cashflow point if I may. It successfully exploited my brain that was primed toward fearfulness and the most negative, paranormal and outstanding phenomena. It was catchy.

In our distant past, such traits (priming towards negativity and the outstanding) were life-saving.

Always being on the lookout for danger - that was a must. Nowadays, it is not. But we do not know that. We respond to these 'stimuli' by giving them our attention and what's inside our pockets - both being scarce resources.

Entities behind newspapers of such, the media at large (no exceptions), and even your friends might, at least once, try to exploit this vulnerability of yours. I really hope I made my point with my story.

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In your To-Do List

Whenever you find yourself in a situation like mine, whenever you are being presented evidence that might sound out of the ordinary, to guard yourself against deception ask these two questions:

• Is my friend telling me this just because he doesn't know better?
• Is my friend trying to deceive me on purposes?

Any answer that results from such questions does not necessarily imply immediate response. You do not have to engage in counter-arguments or trying to tell the person/entity they are wrong. Instead of being offensive, keep it to yourself. Gradually digest it, turn the claim on all of its sides, investigate it with various sources, and build your own argument.

This will add up to your repertoire of good thinking skills. And this is the first step in dealing with the baloney we are 24/7 being bombarded with.

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Credits for Image: thedailyenglishshow.com.

#psychology #practical #deception

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Cristi Vlad, Self-Experimenter and Author