Maybe instead of continuing to complain about how not very bright and extremely gullible some people are, somebody out there needs an explanation based on actual scientific results and data. Something geared towards the person with an interest in a statistical analysis about the highly polarized lunacy that pervades our political discourse, how we are psychologically driven towards extreme partisanship. The above linked paper is for you. I will share a couple of graphs and some of the basics here. But I encourage you to sift through as much of the paper as your actual level of science and comprehension of statistics allows you.
I dare say that someone who is captivated by gematria will not bother to actually try to understand this. They are either fully aware of the psychological tricks and are being actively manipulative, or they are in the thrall of someone who is. Someone who has been training them to double down and remain closed minded. While what the research seeks to do is show that as soon as Liberal Democrats vs. Conservative Republican is thrown into the discourse bias takes over. Our brains shut down and cease to function in a rational manner.
For purposes of a non political issue to focus on a fictional experiment was outlined. Creams to treat rashes must be tested as you don’t want to end up using something that might actually make the rash worse. Even a neutral “didn’t do anything good or bad” resultant particularly desirable. The product should actually work and show in a statistically large enough sample size that it had a benefit.
Focusing on the top two charts for now, study subjects were asked to identify from the data the effect of the skin cream. Did use of the skin cream make the condition better or worse? Please read the paper for detail of the fallacies knowingly involved in making an assessment based on the simplified data. And instead focus on the politically supercharged gun control variation below. It’s essentially the same scenario as the skin cream, but with guns. Also note that randomly “better vs. worse” column headings and “increase in crime vs. decrease in crime “ headings were assigned.
What the hell is numeracy? It’s the ability of someone to get meaningful information from numbers. When the data was summarized, as predicted people higher in numeracy were more often able to correctly assess the data for the skin cream scenario. However, as soon as politics was thrown into the mix, not only did political polarization increase false assessments, it was worse for higher numeracy. The bottom right chart, the high numeracy conservatives think gun bans increase crime, the high numeracy liberals think guns reduce crime.
Your confirmation bias based on political belief is an off switch to even remotely trying to analyze a set of data points. As soon as more or less GUNS are mentioned, the brain goes on vacation. I’m sooooo smart. This is soooo easy.
If you are unlucky enough to get cornered in a fake debate with a gematria user, let them know about this study. Challenge them to read through it and get back to you when they can rationally and calmly explain that they understand it in a manner that demonstrates they actually do. Don’t let them waffle around with Whataboutism? as it has nothing to do with this. Kobe Bryant = 113 doesn’t have anything to do with skin cream or gun bans in this context. They will not have the slightest clue what this means. Science literacy has been attacked deliberately for decades so the masses do not understand these things.
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