Crowd wisdom, moral license and how far you can go to frame someone "wrong"
In the book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies...
In the book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, the opening anecdote relates Francis Galton's surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members).
Aside from the required elements highlighted by the author of the book, James Surowiecki, the object in question should have several certain qualities as well: non-binary, non-polarized, little or no background knowledge required. That is to ensure the randomness and neutrality so that crowd wisdom can be effective. Surely, guessing the weight of an ox meets all these criteria.
Yet, most of the things that involve public opinion rarely meet all those requirements, especially when regarding morality and politics. Those things are usually complex in nature, heavily polarized and limited in choices. Some of the most prominent examples are Brexit and the 2016 President election in the US. Surely you wouldn't need me to tell you how they turned out.
Recently in Vietnam, there was an incident involved Khoa "pug" - appeared to be some well-known Youtuber that I never heard of. I'm not particularly interested in the details, but apparently he recorded a clip showing some receptionist at a resort mistreated him - a customer. And as expected, people jump right on the bandwagon to bombard that resort on Facebook with 1-star reviews. The ridiculous thing is that most of them have never ever booked that place, yet they went with the flow anyway.
And so this is the case of people giving themselves the "moral license" that gives them the right to trash anything they deem morally or politically incorrect, regardless whether they truly understand the situation or not. Anonimosity gives them a powerful position to attack without getting exposed in return. A sense of moral superiority is a dangerous poison.
And almost every time, the damage exceeds what it should've cost and innocent peple get dragged into to pay for the loss that's not even their own. Nothing new at all.
But beyond that, I wonder what is the true intent of that Youtuber. Did he want publicity? Did he want to be a hero of justice? Or maybe both?
And it leads me to the question: how far can you go to frame someone "wrong"? (or let's put it in another way: is it bad intent to do whatever it takes to prove someone has bad intent?)
Logically speaking, rational people would stop after a certain point, as the possibility of such bad intent is so unrealistically slim. But humans are not rational creature, they are driven by instincts and thus they are biased. They will dig their hole as deep as they wish just to find something that satisfies their own cognitive dissonance.
The case of Khoa "pug" and the case in the Youtube video above aren't much different. While the severity and seriousness are not the same, both of them have the same intent directionally. Both want to expose the weakness, the wrongness of the party involved.
And to frame someone wrong is surprisingly easy. In the world of potitical correctness, almost everything can be taken out of context and set to be offensive or wrong. Look no further, even the most upvoted posts on Spiderum would always have something that sounds "wrong" when taken out of context.
Context is one thing, but you can also frame people just by leading them to answer a series of question. The heat around abortion and feminism is just another example. Those questions don't need to have factually correct answers, they just need to be persuasive, like how Scott Adams pointed out here:
How to Persuade the Other Party - Dilbert Blog
An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their …blog.dilbert.com
An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their …blog.dilbert.com
Or better, you can find countless videos on Youtube regarding pro-life, pro-choice, whatever. They are really persuasive, visual-wise. Factually correct? Not so.
And so, you can go as far as your skills allow to frame someone "wrong". Coupled with moral license, suddenly it becomes a lethal weapon that could end anyone's life or career in a matter of seconds.
If you're someone whose moral standards are closely matched with the social standards, you will find youself jumping on the bandwagon quite often, sometimes even with the most trivial things. You're gonna have a hard time understanding and accepting others, and you're mostl likely to live your whole life in your own bubble. A social justice warrior - but not really.
Moral of the story: don't ever take the moral license.
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