An Example Of Cognitive Bias/Critical Thinking In Gematria

Taking a break from the original planned order of events to give an example from recent events.  There are a lot of elements to point out here.

The original video in question is supposedly about the Triple Crown winner, Justify.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8bVtxO-60nA&t=581s

First of all I have to torment anyone that may have followed me here from the TED Talks experiment and mention that at the Whittington Downs race last year Justify only placed.  The horse that showed was The Means, the winner was The Ends and the post race board showed:
THE ENDS
JUSTIFY
THE MEANS

I said “supposedly” since this is a Dan video.  And although a purpose of gematria is ostensibly to show magical connections between events, there is a lot of disparate information thrown in merely because they have the same numbers.  The Pope, British Royalty, basketball, kneeling during the National Anthem, blah, blah, blah.  The matches are supposedly evidence that gematria works.  In other words, the end results justify the means with which the results are derived.  I’m not changing my style.

Point #1:
Timely humor can spice up an otherwise dry read.  My posts that are more humorous have traditionally gotten more views than babbling about censorship or what not.

Point#2:
YouTube can really suck at times.  This was recommended viewing for me, probably since I searched for the Dannel (Dan’s Channel) in recent history.  I would have gotten around to it eventually, thank you very much.  But we also have a newbie that found it.  Through the magic of Google’s Photo Assistant I’m using a collage to save space.

Taking things at face value we have roomforthefixiiins indicating that somehow he found gematria and this video.

Maybe he was watching a lot of horse racing videos.  More likely gematria videos based on the wording.  I can’t really tell based on the limited information available.  He had to find out about gematria somehow and it looks like he/she is leaning towards it working and has a valid question.  The proper answer to his question is that sports aren’t rigged and their crazy explanations of Manchurian Candidate athletes or finding a way to put magnets into horse racing somehow to justify what happened with Justify are nonsense.  If nobody points that out to him his limited point of reference is the links in the description of this video.  All pro gematria.  The video as they always do shows screens from Dan’s blog post on this.  Everything is going to be some form of gematria being the greatest thing since the use of Lasix to improve horse racing performance.  YouTube has helped him on the way towards establishing a cognitive bias.


Point#3
I’m convinced that trolling to try and point him in the right direction as I long ago established my own cognitive biases on dealing with these gematria mooks.  If they’re too lazy to use Google to search “Gematria Debunked” or some form of why it wouldn’t work instead of asking the question at a pro gematria source then they have a good chance of a preestablished confirmation bias.  A core value of this blog is to present the other side and let people do the research on their own and then make up their mind.  You know, researching like a scientist would.  A reply of “You’re an idiot if you think gematria works.” won’t have the same impact as if he/she finds out on their own  that Dan insists 52 equals NIGGER when REDNECK also equals 52.  Because I do indeed present a lot of specifics here on what doesn’t work in gematria and there’s also the Skepdic website, the Duck Of Truth video that is a top hit on “gematria debunked” and other sites.

Point#4
Not willing to take things at face value and using critical thinking I investigated the origins of this roomforthefiiixins character.  Based on my limited point of reference I have mixed results.  The same way an oncologist can’t tell if someone has leukemia without doing a blood test I can’t make a snap judgment on my information.

All cognitive biases are not bad.  Some are necessary.  Feces is supposed to be gross.  We’ve evolved to learn that “eat shit and die” has actual meaning.  Shit=Bad.  Don’t Eat.  But a little healthy skepticism instead of taking things at face value can be a good thing.  Don’t engage in the jumping on the bandwagon bias without getting as much information as you need for an informed decision.  Roomforthefiixins is not actually the screen name.  My powers of observation noticed that the first character after the second f is not actually an i.  It’s a vertical line that I can’t easily duplicate on my phone.  A lower case i without the tittle.  This in itself means little and with my limited tittle point of reference can’t make a decision on the motivations for this.  I am certainly allowed to tittle point out that it’s odd.  It’s unlikely that the name with two consecutive i’s was already taken.  Can I know that for sure??  Heck no.  It could be a way to bypass a search for the names.  These things I don’t care to spend the time worrying over.

Also, Roomie has 27 subscribers with no channel content.  To me this screams out sock puppet, but I can’t prove anything and can’t make a snap judgment.  I also have to be honest with myself and tittlepoint out that often these maybe fake accounts are created on the fly instead of having existed since 2014 like their “About” channel page shows.  I have a point of reference slightly beyond the limited information here.  And the word tittle makes me giggle, while my phone plan limit of the number of f-bombs I can use in a month is dangerously depleted.  So I get to use it another time. But now I’ve established to my readers a reference...point that they might not have had before.  Further suspicious content from Roomie might have this point towards it being a Trojan Horse designed to draw out critic sock puppet accounts or whatever.  There may be an ulterior motive other than just asking how you make a Manchurian Horse Candidate.

To wrap it up, yes I could have produced a much tamer example than the feces and should have. Like bitter tasting food.  (And to a lesser extent the tittle business).   But it fits with the additional frame of reference presented yesterday.  Context.  My own cognitive bias makes me judge that people in general don’t use critical thinking as much as they should.  I’m well beyond giving the users of gematria any benefit of the doubt in regards to that as my frame of reference has overwhelming shown critical thinking to be completely lacking.  Keep that in mind when you judge the content of this blog in its entirety.