DRes82 said:
Omey said:
I share your complete loss of faith in human intelligence.
Yes, because the responders in this thread are completely representative of the entire human race. I used to post on a forum a long time ago where they always used to yell about blanket statements. That was like a thing....'blanket statements are bad'. I never understood why they got all worked up about it. Now I do.
The fact that few bothered to fact-check the article to get more details is actually indicative of a broader (and documented) human tendency to take things one believes would happen at face value and only being skeptical of things one doesn't like/that don't gel with one's current beliefs, as opposed to questioning everything that has even a tinge of nonsensical-ness to it.
There are dozens of examples you could find of this in real life: people taking what their party says at face value and them questioning the opponent's arguments, people believing that some representative from one party said something offensive (and also obviously against his/her ideology) just because it's "the norm" for a person of that persuasion to say offensive things, people assuming anthropomorphic climate change isn't happening due to sources they like, and due to the fact that they're skeptical of articles they don't like because they suggest things they don't like; etc. It also seems to be on the rise all across the world, as people become more polarized (in terms of internal politics, in terms of an "Us vs Them" mentality on immigration, etc).
So it's not just this thread; this thread is just a very recent example of it.
Also his/her use of the phrase was probably for the purpose of poking fun at a bunch of people talking about how a dumb guy in a fake story made them lose their faith in humanity (that was definitely my intention anyway), so chillax. Geez.
