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Doubling Down
Nov. 18th, 2020 10:48 amSouth Dakota nurse says many patients deny the coronavirus exists — right up until death (WP, 17 November 2020)
I think I understand why.
Those of us living in the real world probably have a mental picture of what will happen when a COVID denier catches the virus (which we've probably wished on them). At last they'll admit they were wrong and we were right, they were stupid and irrational while we were intelligent and reasonable.
Which is weird, because we know beliefs like this aren't based on facts or logic, but other, more powerful, cognitive machines, like group membership and world view, supported by a fire hose of propaganda.
How long does it take to completely shift your world view? To not just admit you were wrong about one thing, but to discard most of what you believe, most of the ideas that have organised the way you think and act? Could you do it in the space of a few days, while sick and terrified?
No wonder these patients double down on their wrong beliefs. In a crisis, those beliefs are the tools you have for making sense of what's happening, for coping with it. Alongside that, there's the simple denial that any seriously ill person might feel -- the brain's lag in integrating new and enormous information.
Well, the patients stop abusing the nurses once they've been intubated. They get their comeuppance in the end, in death, or permanent injury. We have our moral victory. I think as human beings it's very hard for us to fight against an abstract thing, like a virus we can't see, like propaganda that sets the stock market above human lives: it's a hoax, get back to work. We need individuals -- flesh and blood human beings that we can deplore.
I think I understand why.
Those of us living in the real world probably have a mental picture of what will happen when a COVID denier catches the virus (which we've probably wished on them). At last they'll admit they were wrong and we were right, they were stupid and irrational while we were intelligent and reasonable.
Which is weird, because we know beliefs like this aren't based on facts or logic, but other, more powerful, cognitive machines, like group membership and world view, supported by a fire hose of propaganda.
How long does it take to completely shift your world view? To not just admit you were wrong about one thing, but to discard most of what you believe, most of the ideas that have organised the way you think and act? Could you do it in the space of a few days, while sick and terrified?
No wonder these patients double down on their wrong beliefs. In a crisis, those beliefs are the tools you have for making sense of what's happening, for coping with it. Alongside that, there's the simple denial that any seriously ill person might feel -- the brain's lag in integrating new and enormous information.
Well, the patients stop abusing the nurses once they've been intubated. They get their comeuppance in the end, in death, or permanent injury. We have our moral victory. I think as human beings it's very hard for us to fight against an abstract thing, like a virus we can't see, like propaganda that sets the stock market above human lives: it's a hoax, get back to work. We need individuals -- flesh and blood human beings that we can deplore.
