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Gullibility occurs because we have evolved to deal with information using two fundamentally different systems, according to Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
System 1 thinking is fast, automatic, intuitive, uncritical and promotes accepting anecdotal and personal information as true. This was a useful and adaptive processing strategy in our ancestral environment of small, face-to-face groups, where trust was based on life-long relationships. However, this kind of thinking can be dangerous in the anonymous online world.
System 2 thinking is a much more recent human achievement; it is slow, analytical, rational and effortful, and leads to the thorough evaluation of incoming information.
While all humans use both intuitive and analytic thinking, system 2 thinking is the method of science, and is the best available antidote to gullibility. So, education tends to reduce gullibility and those who receive scientific training in critical, sceptical thinking also tend to be less gullible and less easily manipulated.
Differences in trust can also influence gullibility. This may be related to early childhood experiences, with the idea that trust in infancy sets the stage for a lifelong expectation the world will be a good and pleasant place to live.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 01 2017, @08:50AM (5 children)
Well, the obvious explanation is that they are Republicans! The believed that Obama was born in Nigeria. They believed that Bush was President. The believed that Clinton offed the boy-friend of First Lady Laura Bush by backing over him, twice! They believed that we can balance the budget by cutting taxes on the rich, since even though we lose money on each tax-payer, we will make it up in volume! The believed that Ronald Reagan had served in the military in World War Two! And they believed that Donald Trump is a Republicans. So, there it is, some people are more gullible because they are Republican. Of course, on such a highly intellectual forum as this, we would not ever want to confuse correlation and causation. They are not gullible because they are Republican, they are Republican because they are gullible.
[John Stuart Mill put this best: "While it is not true that all Conservatives are stupid, it is true that all stupid people are Conservatives." Think about it, totally explains Brexit!!!]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 01 2017, @10:14AM (4 children)
Easy now comrade. Those on the right do not understand that we on the glorious left are more successful than they will ever be. What conservative government could ever achieve the financial success of Cuba or Venezuela? What right wing government could ever hope to achieve the successes of the USSR, China and Cambodia? All the time we associate the right with the nazi holocaust while we continue using the language of tolerance to prime people for mass extermination and collective oligarchy. Stupid conservatives will never even call us out!
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 01 2017, @10:21AM (2 children)
Gullible? Criminally stupid? Can you imagine what would have been the death toll in the Soviet Union, during the Great Depression, if the Czar had still been in power? Do you not realize the great lack of progress made by Franco's Spain (he's still dead, by the way.) Yes, you could try to say something about the left, using examples that more or less are under a war-time economy because of the nasty and vicious and stupid, and just plain mean, persecution by the right wing Capitalist class. But that would mean that you are gullible. If you are not, you are not being paid enough!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 01 2017, @10:54AM
Easy comrade. We will shortly rise and cull [wikipedia.org] the plain mean oppressors of the proletariat. [spectator.co.uk]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 01 2017, @02:37PM
Can you imagine what would have been the death toll in the Soviet Union, during the Great Depression, if the Czar had still been in power?
Without the Holodomor [wikipedia.org] killing at least a couple million Ukrainians? Lower death toll.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday April 01 2017, @01:53PM
Yep. We all know that you can drown in too much water. So no water for anyone ever again! That's the key to solving our drowning problem.