Thumbsuckers: a collective distemper

 There's an excellent little book by Italian researcher Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini , "Inevitable Illusions." P.P contends that our usual cognitive mechanism suffers from certain mental "tunnels," especially when it comes to probability, causal inference, and what I would call the narrative urge -- the drive to create, out of events, stories that are consonant with the pattern of stories we like. P.P's section on Predictability in Hindsight seems particularly apposite as tv gives acres of camera time to warhawks ranting about Afghanistan. Since the case goes something like: how could the Taliban be so strong? The Taliban isn't that strong. Thus, evil Biden musta done something. Or - the Afghanistans have themselves to blame! which is an easy position for the liberal hawks to attack, you simply have to identify the bribetakers in Afghanistan - the gov and its friends - with those forced to give bribes - Afghan peasants, soldiers and stuff - and you have your story. Like most stories, it needs unified characters, and damn the divisions that might actually fragment them.

P.P reports an interesting experiment, comparing two cases. In one case, a real result, and real prior data leading up to the result, was given to the subjects of the experiment, who were then asked if they could have predicted the result from the prior data. In a second case, they gave the same data, but an opposite result (in other words, they lied). In both cases, the subjects were confident, from the data, that they could have predicted the result. As long as we think we have a certain result, we immediately create a plausible backstory; and in the creation of that backstory we become confident of our power to correctly appraise each piece of evidence.

This is an experiment that should be practiced on thumbsuckers before they ever get a seat opinionating on any media venue.

But it won't be.