The Most Dangerous Virus

Here is the definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect:

“Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.”

I’ll translate this so that the people that this applies to can understand it: the dumber you are, the smarter you think you are.

Skepticism is generally a good thing. It’s not like our governments and politicians have never lied to us. In the run up to the Iraq war, many people doubted Bush’s claim that Iraq already had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and there was a lot of real evidence that supported these doubts. As we now know, it turned out that pretty much everything that Bush and his minions said about Iraq was pure and utter bullshit. It’s also clear that the war was a monumental blunder. So intelligent skepticism is healthy. Critical thinking and the questioning of authority are indispensable in a functioning democracy.

But that’s not what’s happening now. Covid denial and anti-vax militance is being fed by some of the dumbest junk you can imagine. This is a doozy that has been circulating around Facebook:

“Currently, more people are dying due (to) the EXPERIMENTAL vaccine, than the actual virus. It is predicted globally that 1.2 BILLION people will die due to this experiment, within the next 5 years.”

This particular post came from a guy who drove a delivery truck for a living. So where did he get the idea that he’s a medical expert? As the anti-vaxxers are fond of saying, he “did his own research.” What exactly does that mean? Does he have a lab in his basement where he conducted drug trials and other experiments with a bunch of his neighbors that he talked into being his guinea pigs? No? Then I guess he didn’t do his own research. Sharing memes on Facebook does not constitute research. But surely, he must have some serious medical knowledge? Maybe he watched a lot of The Good Doctor? Well, whatever he did, it didn’t help him because he recently died of Covid.

I got this example from the Reddit sub thread The Herman Cain Awards, which is filled with stories of literally thousands of people like this guy. They deny Covid, spread lies about the vaccine and then end up getting sick and dying. They die never admitting they were wrong. But there’s almost always a GoFundMe page begging for help with medical bills and for the family the idiot in question left behind. That’s right, the same people who scream about “my freedom” are very eager to have others pay for their mistakes.

Here’s a fact for this guy and for all those like him: Unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die of Covid than the vaccinated and 60 times as likely to be in ICU. This is all the “do your own research” you need. And yet, millions of these people can’t seem to grasp simple facts and basic math. Why?

Mental health is one explanation. Some of these people need help and are not getting it, mainly because our society still does a poor job in managing mental health issues. But that aside, slimy opportunists are the biggest explanation. It’s no coincidence that the anti-vaxxers are mainly on the Right, because the right-wing media ecosystem has been catering to the lowest common denominator for a long time. There is money to be made by preying on people’s ignorance and fears and taking advantage of people has never been as easy or as lucrative. Much of the political content on Twitter and Facebook is simply there to build a brand that can be monetized. You spew out insults and stir up outrage with hate and lies and you pick up followers. Once you have enough followers, you can pimp for products and donations and get paid. It’s that simple.

Social media has enabled the full commodification of political speech. When you share an opinion, follow a commentator or re-tweet a meme, you’re indirectly putting money in someone’s pocket. Think of how much of a change this represents. If you and I meet face to face and discuss an issue and disagree, we might never speak to each other again, we might punch each other in the face or we might amicably shake hands and agree to disagree. But no one will make a penny from our argument. On Facebook and Twitter, this interaction gets spun into gold.

If you’ve ever spent any time in the right-wing media world, you’ll immediately see that every one of these scumbags’ main job is actually selling some questionable product – vitamins, supplements, miracle cures, investment advice, gold coins and assorted other crap. If you go to Trump’s own website, you’ll see almost nothing but ads for MAGA-related junk -mostly made in China, of course. The right-wing media ‘personalities’ know their followers are dumb, gullible rubes and they are happy to take advantage of them - after all, these are the same people who believe sub-cretinous conspiracy fantasies that couldn’t fool a semi-smart ten-year-old. They are perfect marks. (If you don’t believe it’s all about the benjamins, check out this article detailing how Canada’s Rebel Media operates. These guys would swindle their own mothers for a few bucks.)

The biggest danger we face is this virus called stupidity. When outbreaks happen, what’s needed is for the elites – the smarter people – to come together and recognize the danger and agree that it needs to be contained. This is what happened during the McCarthy Red Scare, when a fame-seeking GOP senator convinced tens of millions of simpletons that communist agents were hiding under every bed. While the Republicans -notably Richard Nixon- were happy to take advantage of McCarthyism for a while to score some political points for themselves and to weaken the Democrats, they soon realized that the situation could quickly unravel. They withdrew their support and McCarthyism was discredited. Joe McCarthy became a sad and bitter man who drank himself to death. This is the ending all rank opportunists deserve.

It was hard to make money from McCarthyism, but it’s easy now that ignorant people can find each other on Facebook and Twitter. It’s been shown that heavy usage of these platforms can create a type of addiction, whereby people continually look for content that feeds their anger and outrage. The social media companies are all too happy to give people what they want; the more time people spend on the platform, the higher the “engagement metrics”, and that’s how the companies can sell more advertising at higher prices. So social media ends up taking the Dunning-Krueger effect and amplifying it tenfold. No matter how moronic and illogical your beliefs, you’ll find someone who will agree with you. The virus of stupidity spreads much faster than Covid does.

If you’re waiting for leadership from intelligent conservatives, like what happened during the McCarthy era, you’ll be disappointed. Most of them seem to be raw cowards who are too scared to say anything, or they are content to play along and keep their positions. Instead, it’s going to be up to us, the sensible majority ( yeah, I’m an optimist who thinks good sense usually prevails) to show the way. Facebook and Twitter must be forced to regulate their content much more stringently to get rid of blatant disinformation and they need to change their algorithms to stop feeding people ever more lies and outrage. The only way they will do this is if they suffer financially. Since users and their personal information are these companies' life blood, the solution is straightforward: if enough people log off, their revenues and their stock prices will take a big hit and this will force them to make changes.

Want to help 'stop the spread' of stupidity? Get off social media.