I mentioned last week a psychology experiment that shows the subject a video of two teams quickly passing a ball. In the course of the game, someone walks into the frame wearing a gorilla suit, and only a fraction of those watching the video notice the gorilla. My last column concerned the gorillas - the facts hiding in plain sight. But this column will concern the passing. The commotion that, because of how our brain is constructed, allows us to miss large, factual details.
This is going to be political, so in the interests of disinterest, this column is set in the United States. Hopefully we can look south of the 49th more objectively than we can look towards our own politics.
Here are a few stories from around the web Aug. 2. Many of the stories making the rounds right now concern specific issues - Romney's choice of a vice-presidential candidate, bills being passed or shot down and so on. And some are the sort of fluff that will always be reported. But most are something different.
From a right-wing site: "Probe faults 'pressure' to promote stimulus in $535M Solyndra loan approval," "Chick-fil-A confirms 'record-setting day' on 'Appreciation Day,'" "Obama escalates personal attacks on Romney."
Popular headlines on the left-wing web: "Romney Campaign Fails to Back Up To Big Promises," "GOP Senator Ends Hold After Air Force Sex Scandal," "Author: Romney misrepresented my views."
I chose these from the legitimate news stories, because they simply aren't stories. Media on either side of the ideological spectrum covered the Solyndra story to death last year, and as a story it was considered dead in October 2011. Even if the story contains some new revelation (which is unlikely), the Solyndra story never was especially noteworthy. The Chick-fil-A "controversy" exists because the son of the company's CEO came out in support of "traditional" marriage, causing right-wing politicians to shower them with praise. The third story from the website is hardly a story at all - every political race will always involve personal attacks, in part because personality does have its role to play and in part because the attacks are effective.
From the other end of the ideological spectrum, we have a vague, meaningless accusation (it's hard for a presidential candidate to deliver on a promise without having been elected), another headline that seems to concern a GOP senator's scandal (though, upon closer inspection, the opprobrium falls considerably further, on the air force), and the final headline concerns Romney's misquoting (or misunderstanding) of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.
None of these headlines is news. From the right wing site, the Chick-fil-A story might be more accurately described as cheerleading, while the other two stories seem more like attempts to vilify the other side (Democrats).
On the left-wing side, all the stories seem can be fairly easily filed into the vilification category. There were no front-page cheerleader stories, but I'll chalk that up to the day that I checked.
Had there been any major stories breaking that day, there is no doubt that they would have been subjected to the same analysis. And, significantly, there were still some sober, unbiased stories that didn't fall into the category of cheerleading or vilification.
What to make of these stories? The conclusion should be clear. But in the constant second-to-second world of the news, it can be hard to step back and look at the bigger picture, which is that politics is a team sport. Most of us aren't interested in hearing arguments or facts. We want to see our team win and the other team ignominiously defeated. The form the victory takes doesn't particularly matter. More often than not, it involves humiliation of the other side. It almost never involves facts.
The "gaffe" story is a perfect example of this. Despite the column inches and gigabytes of data devoted to stories about gaffes, every gaffe story can be rewritten as "X misspoke." Conspiracy theorists will find support for their theories, critics will find yet another reason to hate the speaker, supporters will dismiss it as "gotcha journalism." The reverse can also happen, with a legitimate story disguised as a gaffe to please the faithful.
But the gaffe is also illustrative of another important point. Most of us, including our politicians, have little understanding of the infinite complexities of politics. And most of us aren't interested in the ins and outs of fiscal policy, diplomacy, or even the intricate world of foreign affairs. In place of these subtleties come sacrosanctities. If you're on the right in the States, gun control is satanic. And the left has its absolutist beliefs as well.
A few years ago, a small biotech company developed a process that could potentially eliminate dengue fever all over the world. Essentially, it involved genetically modifying male mosquitoes so that after they mated with a female, the eggs laid would die in their larval stage.
The plan was safe - male mosquitoes don't bite, and a mosquito travels less than the distance of a football field in its entire life. In the rare event a female mosquito with the genes escaped, there were no risks for humans. And, perhaps most significantly, there is only one species of mosquito that can carry dengue in the western hemisphere, and it had been introduced with the slave trade. The species did not occupy a special place in the environment, and all entomologists agreed the species could be utterly obliterated in the western hemisphere without ill effects.
Early, limited trials in Brazil and Central America were phenomenally successful, drastically reducing incidents of a disease that has ravaged communities. The plan was cheaper and far more environmentally friendly than plans involving the blanket application of pesticides. And unlike these plans, it could potentially eliminate dengue altogether in the space of a few years.
But when the plan was proposed in Florida, it came under fire from activists denouncing the small company for "playing God" and for being a large corporation. Regardless of the potential benefit, regardless of who proposed the idea, regardless, really, of anything, the message delivered was that genetic modification was wrong. Period. The left-wing team had won a victory against what they thought was the "corporate" one.
The truth is that the gorilla-suit experiment isn't the best analogy, because it isn't as if we are being unwillingly distracted. We love the distraction. It's better than real news. It's better than dry numbers, analysis, just as it is easier to live in a cartoon world of villains and heroes than in the variegated world that actually exists. When the gorilla comes dancing in, thumping its chest, when a bare fact asserts itself, it is quickly ignored. As much as we should watch out for gorillas, we should also be vigilant for signs that we being fed the sort of stories we love to read.
So next time you read about a politician's "gaffe," or dismiss a story at the headline, or realize that a story conforms to your beliefs exactly, watch out. There might be a gorilla nearby.
