Outrage and curiosity
Outrage seems to rule the information waves. Might we be giving in too easily to that emotion? How might we turn it down a few notches?
Last Friday, a speech by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Florida, and a particular section of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games both led to a (social) media storm that raged for several days. Yet, in both cases, once the dust settled, the commotion seems to have been somewhat misguided, based on a somewhat selective interpretation of the events in question. How come?
Perception is (not quite) reality
What we perceive is not just what our senses tell us and nothing else. It is based on prior beliefs and assumptions and on our perspective on the context. It is tempting to believe that we can observe a neutral and objective reality, but in fact we cannot distinguish it from our perception — as the political scientist Lee Atwater famously said, “perception is reality”.
Optical illusions and stage magicians exploit this very effectively: dark grey is light grey, and people get sawn in half — or at least, that is what seems to be the case. But higher up in the cognitive chain, we can be subject to similar effects, not on sensory data, but on the meaning we give to them. Was what…
