We know how confirmation bias work for a long time, we also know that confirmation bias were exacerbated by the internet, and social media .
And now we have crises, who polarize those biased opinion (Covid-19 and the killing of George Floyd/Ahmaud Arbery, and much more) …. It’s all around us, reasonable people will take extreme position because of their bias.
People that will use graph, made from real statistic, in the wrong context, because it confort them in their opinion or “feeling” . Like this one :
So this graph was thrown to me recently on facebook, in the context of the George Floyd killing, demonstration, and riot, it represent the number of black people killed by white people, so first, it’s not even relevant, obviously, but those people seem to feel that it is …. When you point out that it’s not a case of “White killing black” but a case of “Cop killing black”, they go deeper into the rate of “Interaction” of black people, with police to explain that more black people are killed by cop, than white, still not really make sense to me, but for them it make sense, the more you interact with police, the more chance you are to be killed by a Policemen, it seems, in their mind.
Ok, i’m white and Canadian, and i had interaction with policemen (Not often), and i witnessed interaction of some of my Haitian friend, with policemen, and the racial tension is nowhere where it is in the US, here, but it was still not the same as my own interaction with policemen, so i can only imagine what it is, in the US, surely worst …
They also share this “Meme” , saying “where was the demonstrator/Media when this white girl “Got suicided” by the police?”, my first reaction to this affirmation was, “where were you ? “ , it’s clearly horrible, “What did you do? Did you contacted other people to make a demonstration ?”, the outrage need to be started by the people, if nobody locally protested, it will never go to the next step, the media, then never be taken on a national level ….
Of course in this case, it was not captured by a bystander , only the Policemen body cam would have been able to put some light on the situation, it was mysteriously knocked off the policemen, then the Police department Chesapeake Police, VA, still refused the publish the video, it obviously miss some ingredient to feed a national outrage, and being black is not one of those ingredient, the story seem unlikely, an handcuffed in the back, woman, contorts herself to take an unidentified weapon to kill themself accidently (Or not), is weird for sure ….
But still, the main reason to put that, out there now, is to dismiss the fact that the murder of George Floyd, was probably, at the very least in part racially motivated,they put out this “meme” to say : “Look, policemen kill white too”, it’s obvious, policemen kill white people too, but the circonstance are rarely the same, most white people killed by policemen are not killed because they allegedly tried to buy cigarette with a fake 20$ bill …
Covid-19
A good example is this Video by 2 doctor in California, sadly Youtube decided to remove those video, deeming their affirmation “Dangerous”, the thing is, that instead of removing those video, they should have promoted video debunking them, but it’s off topic ….
Now this video is still out, and about, and people who believed it at first, now think that “The Man” don’t want the truth to be known, agreed, in any case, some of those people, even with a great explanation would have trust those 2 doctor, but some could have been salvaged, now, forget it.
This video is about an hour long, is based in a false premise, a simple very false premise, let’s dive in it .
Their entire idea is that Cov-19 is already ubiquitous , how can they know that ? Data, number of detected infected people – Divided – By the total number of test, a simple equation, valid, when the sample is random, simply not valid, in this case, because the sample was mostly composed of people with symptom .
So in this case, i had some amazing confirmation bias thrown at me, first, some said that they were immunologist and epidemiologist, they are not, they own private “Urgent care” clinic ….