Thank you for this great article MW. This fits nicely with my summer Masonic Tribune article. I am on my way to eye surgery this morning but will visit later today. This is a “passionate” topic for me!
May 20, 2022·edited May 20, 2022Liked by Cameron M. Bailey
Well said Grand Master.
The study of cognitive psychology teaches us how we’re manipulated and recognizing that manipulation is the beginning of limiting its influence. Authors worth reading are Frank Luntz (Words that Work) on the political right and Drew Westen (The Political Brain) or George Lakoff (The Political Mind) on the left.
When we as humans experience persuasion that reinforces our preexisting beliefs, we get a small dose of dopamine. When those beliefs are challenged we often experience a mini fight or flight response. This brain chemistry rooted in human survival instincts from time immemorial feeds the phenomenon of confirmation bias and is used by persuaders to motivate us often by dividing us.
We each want to believe we are governed by logic but the truth is even our strong belief in logic is rooted in emotion, our ancient survival instincts, and our preexisting bias.
“When we as humans experience persuasion that reinforces our preexisting beliefs, we get a small dose of dopamine. When those beliefs are challenged we often experience a mini fight or flight response.” This is very similar to the effects we get when gambling. We get the dopamine when we win, but get the angry response when we lose. The anger causes us to think irrationally and “double down” on our bets to get our money back the next time we win a bet. These behaviors lead to addiction, which we all now know is very real in gambling, but also with the addiction to social media.
We wouldn't be here as a nation without political debate. More than once we as a people have taken up arms to fight for what we felt was right, even against our own countrymen.
But when our elected officials openly lie to their constituents, dance in the blood of tragedy to further their political aims, to "never let a crisis go to waste", it requires us, as Americans, to set the record straight.
Where the problem is not the discourse, but the spread of false information. Every day lies are propagated on both sides and no one bothers to do their own due diligence to research the facts before clicking "Post". Compounding the problem is that the "facts" you find may not be the truth. Words that used to mean one thing have suddenly been changed to reflect a new false reality. Words like racist and nazi are bandied about so much that they don't even mean anything anymore.
We must above all else continue to spread the truth and fight against the lies and distortions. But this means we must do our own fact checking, and determine what is right and wrong, before telling others.
One way I solve the problem with social media is by adding extensions to my browsers. On my laptops, I have Chrome on one and Firefox on most of the others, and I add an extension that shuts off the newsfeed when I bring up facebook in the browser. The Chrome extension replaces the newsfeed with an inspirational quote from a famous celebrity, political figure, or other prominent person on the world stage. The bad side of this is I have to make an effort to visit my friends’s pages individually to see what they’re posting, so I have to be mindful of who I search for. I have found that I tend to gravitate towards people who post more neutral posts, or personal family-related posts. If a friend posts too much inflammatory information (on any side,) I simply don’t visit that person anymore. It’s similar to “following” and “unfollowing” on the newsfeed, only I do it in my head.
Good news is eliminating the newsfeed frees me from the algorithms that play into my preferences and keeps the controversial stuff that would rile me up at bay. But just as importantly, it also has freed up hours of time that I would have otherwise lost scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. Valuable time wasted.
But it doesn’t stop me from having fun with friends and Masonic Brothers on facebook… 😉
Thank you for this great article MW. This fits nicely with my summer Masonic Tribune article. I am on my way to eye surgery this morning but will visit later today. This is a “passionate” topic for me!
Well said Grand Master.
The study of cognitive psychology teaches us how we’re manipulated and recognizing that manipulation is the beginning of limiting its influence. Authors worth reading are Frank Luntz (Words that Work) on the political right and Drew Westen (The Political Brain) or George Lakoff (The Political Mind) on the left.
When we as humans experience persuasion that reinforces our preexisting beliefs, we get a small dose of dopamine. When those beliefs are challenged we often experience a mini fight or flight response. This brain chemistry rooted in human survival instincts from time immemorial feeds the phenomenon of confirmation bias and is used by persuaders to motivate us often by dividing us.
We each want to believe we are governed by logic but the truth is even our strong belief in logic is rooted in emotion, our ancient survival instincts, and our preexisting bias.
“When we as humans experience persuasion that reinforces our preexisting beliefs, we get a small dose of dopamine. When those beliefs are challenged we often experience a mini fight or flight response.” This is very similar to the effects we get when gambling. We get the dopamine when we win, but get the angry response when we lose. The anger causes us to think irrationally and “double down” on our bets to get our money back the next time we win a bet. These behaviors lead to addiction, which we all now know is very real in gambling, but also with the addiction to social media.
We wouldn't be here as a nation without political debate. More than once we as a people have taken up arms to fight for what we felt was right, even against our own countrymen.
But when our elected officials openly lie to their constituents, dance in the blood of tragedy to further their political aims, to "never let a crisis go to waste", it requires us, as Americans, to set the record straight.
Where the problem is not the discourse, but the spread of false information. Every day lies are propagated on both sides and no one bothers to do their own due diligence to research the facts before clicking "Post". Compounding the problem is that the "facts" you find may not be the truth. Words that used to mean one thing have suddenly been changed to reflect a new false reality. Words like racist and nazi are bandied about so much that they don't even mean anything anymore.
We must above all else continue to spread the truth and fight against the lies and distortions. But this means we must do our own fact checking, and determine what is right and wrong, before telling others.
One way I solve the problem with social media is by adding extensions to my browsers. On my laptops, I have Chrome on one and Firefox on most of the others, and I add an extension that shuts off the newsfeed when I bring up facebook in the browser. The Chrome extension replaces the newsfeed with an inspirational quote from a famous celebrity, political figure, or other prominent person on the world stage. The bad side of this is I have to make an effort to visit my friends’s pages individually to see what they’re posting, so I have to be mindful of who I search for. I have found that I tend to gravitate towards people who post more neutral posts, or personal family-related posts. If a friend posts too much inflammatory information (on any side,) I simply don’t visit that person anymore. It’s similar to “following” and “unfollowing” on the newsfeed, only I do it in my head.
Good news is eliminating the newsfeed frees me from the algorithms that play into my preferences and keeps the controversial stuff that would rile me up at bay. But just as importantly, it also has freed up hours of time that I would have otherwise lost scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. Valuable time wasted.
But it doesn’t stop me from having fun with friends and Masonic Brothers on facebook… 😉