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Category: Mental health

Begging the Question Fallacy: “This is not who we are” … again and again and again …  

Begging the Question Fallacy: “This is not who we are” … again and again and again …  

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When an organization suffers an embarrassing fiasco of their own making, they often respond with the silly “This is not who we are” claim, just after they’ve demonstrated that this is indeed who they are. This is known as the “Begging the question fallacy”.

Today, a PBS legal counsel was caught advocating for fire bombing the White House and sending children of Trump supporters to re-education camps. PBS has apparently fired the counsel, and made the usual “This is not who we are”, just after their own counsel demonstrated that this might be who they are… begging the question once again.

Covid-19: The media wants to keep you scared-but it looks like things may be improving

Covid-19: The media wants to keep you scared-but it looks like things may be improving

While too early to tell, it seems that the 3rd wave of Covid-19 may have peaked, nationally, in the past week. There will continue to be regional growth areas, however, as the entire nation does not peak simultaneously. There is much good news at this point – but as the linked fear porn news item illustrates, the media’s sole purpose is to keep you in a frightened state, scared to step outside. As the new cases curve subsides, the media’s attention will focus on hospitalizations and deaths – numbers which lag the new cases peak by 1-4 weeks, typically – while hiding the new cases curve. This is effectively media propaganda intended to keep you scared.

An odd social media meltdown, mental health collapse and the perils of trusting anything on social media

An odd social media meltdown, mental health collapse and the perils of trusting anything on social media

There have been a lot of social media activist accounts that convinced and persuaded many to adopt someone’s agenda. These accounts often became the source of media reports – because unverified social media is among the most reliable sources used by professional media outlets (hah hah). In this case, the entire social media persona was 100% fake, and the claims made were also fake. Yet this account persuaded many to support its “cause”.

“Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health”

“Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health”

In the midst of an ineptly managed pandemic and ineptly managed civil unrest and economic fiasco people try to make sense of it by reading everything they can. Scrolling through post and news story after news story is called “doomscrolling” and it destroys your mental health. Sadly, much of the bull shit is not from random social media posts but from actual experts who spew nonsense.

“The Market for Depressing Predictions Is Booming”

“The Market for Depressing Predictions Is Booming”

The media focuses on doom and gloom based frequently on rampant speculation. No one “reports” anymore. Instead, they prognosticate and speculate about the future with made up gloom and doom, most of which makes no logical sense. The reason for the gloom and doom is due to an odd bit of psychology. Negative information always takes precedence over positive information – it is a basic survival mechanism to pay attention to bad things. The media know this. And strangely enough, news consumers seek out more bad news to validate their feelings of anxiety.