I’m not really a paranoid person, but there are people out there who don’t have your best interests in mind.
As detailed in the documentary How to Sell a Massacre, the NRA is actively trying to deceive people in pursuit of gun rights.
To be fair, you could say they’re using what scientists have discovered about cognitive bias to affect public sentiment in their favor.
White nationalist groups are working to recruit young men through online comments and discussions that are designed to sound innocuous, but exploit our cognitive biases and fears.
The Russians are using the same techniques to sew discord in the U.S. and try to destabilize the country.
Even our own politicians use techniques designed to circumvent your reasoning. They routinely repeat inaccurate or plainly untrue information knowing that if you hear it enough — even people saying it’s false — you will begin to believe it.
We need to be critical thinkers now, perhaps more than we ever needed to be before.
