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Dealing with Cognitive Dissonance
American Thinker.com ^ | January 27, 2022 | Jack Gleason

Posted on 01/27/2022 3:26:29 AM PST by Kaslin

In an old episode of Star Trek, a powerful android threatened Captain Kirk and was defeated when asked an impossible question. Kirk actually employed “induced computer destruction” at least four times during the series.

The human brain is like a computer in some ways and holding conflicting views can be very uncomfortable. The term “cognitive dissonance” comes up regularly in political discussions, probably because these issues are rarely cut and dried, but are considered very important. It is defined as “the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes feelings of unease or discomfort.”

If you feel strongly that a candidate you support for high office should be honest and you catch him lying, you may experience cognitive dissonance.

So how would someone resolve this conflict? Stephanie A. Sarkis Ph.D. explains in a Psychology Today article:

1. Choose to ignore the new conflicting information; 2. Commit even further to our beliefs; 3. Avoid exposure to contradictory information…

Take the case of a pro-abortion advocate whose main argument is “it’s my body and I have the right to make my own medical decisions,” who also believes in mandatory vaccines, even against someone’s personal will. How can this be resolved?

Looking at the coping behaviors listed above, someone might feel very uncomfortable learning that the vaccines are not as effective as promised, or the side effects are more dangerous than the disease. When we first heard of COVID we were told it was 5-10% fatal, since that was the death rate in the Washington nursing home.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 01/27/2022 3:26:29 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

(1. Choose to ignore the new conflicting information; 2. Commit even further to our beliefs; 3. Avoid exposure to contradictory information…)

Or just keep watching CNN and MSNBC 😜


2 posted on 01/27/2022 3:34:40 AM PST by SaveFerris (The Lord, The Christ and The Messiah: Jesus Christ of Nazareth - http://www.BiblicalJesusChrist.Com/)
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To: Kaslin

Bella Pelosi- I am running for re-election in order to save Democracy!
Says a woman determined to destroy democracy.
Typical dem would rather talk about Trump’s evil nature!


3 posted on 01/27/2022 3:36:42 AM PST by ArtDodger
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To: Kaslin

The problem is that as soon as some people sense disagreement, they resort to name calling and personal attacks. You see it whenever Ben Shapiro appears on a college campus. People who are secure in their beliefs aren’t afraid to expose them to question, but I think that those who just grab on to whatever passes by avoid subjecting them to logical analysis. They need to drown out reasonable discussion with chants and hysteria. They can’t be reasoned with.


4 posted on 01/27/2022 3:47:35 AM PST by Spok (Who is Ray Epps?)
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To: Spok
The real problem is that nearly every occupation in modern society — including those that require extensive knowledge and training — is filled with people who don’t think clearly and rationally. What is perhaps most disturbing about this is that they can be successful in their fields of work even WITHOUT thinking clearly.

We are witnesses the Tower of Babel version 2.0.

5 posted on 01/27/2022 3:53:31 AM PST by Alberta's Child ("Mr. Potato Head ... Mr. Potato Head! Back doors are not secrets.")
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To: Kaslin

6 posted on 01/27/2022 3:56:33 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: Kaslin
In an old episode of Star Trek, a powerful android threatened Captain Kirk and was defeated when asked an impossible question. Kirk actually employed “induced computer destruction” at least four times during the series.

1. "The Return of the Archons" (Season 1, Episode 22): Kirk argues with the A.I. "Landru" and ultimately convinces it to destroy itself.

2. "The Changeling" (Season 2, Episode 8): Kirk convinces the hybrid Earth/alien space probe known as "Nomad" that, according to its own programming, it must destroy itself.

3. "I, Mudd" (Season 2, Episode 12): Kirk (and his crew) cause a society of androids to "crash" by exhibiting illogical behavior and posing paradoxical questions. (This is the episode explicitly referenced in the above passage.)

4. "The Ultimate Computer" (Season 2, Episode 24): Kirk talks the murderous M-5 into killing itself.

Regards,

7 posted on 01/27/2022 4:05:10 AM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: Kaslin
3. Avoid exposure to contradictory information…

Avoid it? It's being straight up censored!

8 posted on 01/27/2022 4:08:07 AM PST by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: SaveFerris

Spoke to a dear friend yesterday. Last week they had a cold, this week the test shows COVID. He’s a senior, and double vaccinated. He’s better today.

The doc told him he should get a ‘booster’. “Why? you’ve got it already. Why would you want more of what’s not working now?” I didn’t want to push things, but it’s a good example of cognitive dissonance. He’s a great conservative friend, but also very trusting of his doctors. His wife, a nurse and never injected, has not been sick although in close contact.

Why are they lying to us? How can doctors, in the face of these facts, still pretend these injections are the cure?


9 posted on 01/27/2022 5:07:44 AM PST by Not_Who_U_Think
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To: Not_Who_U_Think
How can doctors, in the face of these facts, still pretend these injections are the cure?

Almost all of them get paid with government money now.
10 posted on 01/27/2022 5:16:39 AM PST by bankwalker (Repeal the 19th ...)
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To: Not_Who_U_Think

“How can doctors, in the face of these facts, still pretend these injections are the cure?”

I have never trusted any experts, and the reasons why:

1. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (Upton Sinclair)

2. Most human beings are dependent on others in their peer group for social status. If they speak of ideas that are outside the mainstream of their peer group they risk becoming outcasts in that group.

In the case of the medical profession they talk about “peer reviewed” studies. Historically these have been easily influenced by big corporations “planting” their articles in medical journals.

Pre-Covid the most blatant cases were toxic chemicals. The big chemical companies would get studies published proving the chemicals were safe even though they knew they were dangerous.

Then the “respectable” doctors would tell their patients that their ailments were not the result of exposure to the toxic chemicals.


11 posted on 01/27/2022 5:18:49 AM PST by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: Not_Who_U_Think; Kaslin; SaveFerris; ArtDodger; Spok; Alberta's Child; MtnClimber; ...

Not_Who_U_Think, the dynamic involved with your friend is something that I really detest the Left for exploiting in their grab for power: the trust people have placed in institutions.

Like it or not, very few of us eschew our faith in every single societal and governmental entity. We all have something that we have held onto, a cultural anchor if you will. Not everyone is like our fellow Freeper cgbg who has never trusted any “experts” (well, perhaps he did if he flew in an airplane designed by them...:) because almost everyone has something, some kind of “sacred cow”, a cultural touchstone.

For me, it was the military structure and culture. And I never questioned the FDA or CDC. I should absolutely throw the FBI in there too, though I have never had any of their activity bear directly on me as the military and associated health departments have. In the other cases, I had far closer experience of interaction with both in my military career and health care career.

Sure, I had lots of issues with those entities, but none cast those entities as irredeemably untrustworthy. I thought they could be worked around.

The Left has not only made those problems worse, through both intentional action and incompetence, but far, far worse in my mind, is the fact that they have openly and malignantly exploited those problems in their efforts to amass power and control.

They have turned many citizens against them with the woke military policies in the case of the military, and the vaccine policies in the case of the health related organizations.

And now, they have co-opted medicine, and turned healthcare providers against their patients, which has accomplished two things: First, it has institutionalized not only bad, but malignant healthcare, and Second, it has turned patients against their healthcare providers.

They have destroyed what remained of the doctor-patient relationship in their quest for power and control.

Some years back, the head of the SEIU (a particularly evil, odious, and repellent man named Andy Stern) made a statement while they were in the process of forcing a major non-union hospital to unionize, promised to destroy the relationship between the patients and their doctors to make this happen.

I was horrified at the time, but since then, have seen that this is the way Leftists function. In their Alinskyite modes of operation, all that counts is the goal. The ends totally justifies any means, no matter how cruel and immoral.

This is puzzling to many people, how healthcare providers could refuse to administer safe and effective early treatment drugs like Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine, and therefore, result in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

It puzzles me, even though I understand it.

I heard a physician in California state that they were informed that any physician using these safe drugs to treat COVID-19 faced revocation of their license to practice medicine. He pointed out that it isn’t like losing your job. If you get fired from a job, you can always go work somewhere else. If you are a physician and you lose your license, something that can take up to twelve years to attain, you cannot go anywhere else and make a living.

This is what they do. The Left has deliberately corrupted, co-opted, and weaponized these cultural anchors such as the military, police, FBI, CDC, etc. in order to destroy institutions and alienate people so that they can exploit that and build their own malformed structures on the ashes.

And they do this, manipulating, depressing, alienating, damaging, and even murdering good, decent, trusting people, who are, in the end, just so many eggs to be broken in the making of their tyrannical omelet.

And that realization fills me with furious anger.


12 posted on 01/27/2022 5:47:47 AM PST by rlmorel (Nothing can foster principles of freedom more effectively than the imposition of tyranny.)
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To: rlmorel

The only reason I ever trusted airplanes is I carefully looked at their accident rate.

It was amazingly low over many years.

I was never taking any “experts” word for it without verifying the numbers for myself.


13 posted on 01/27/2022 7:17:08 AM PST by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: cgbg

The airlines, as much as they screw up things, have really been the model of a “High Reliability Organization”. The US Navy tries to emulate that, but complicated high performance military aircraft maintained by 18 year old sailors makes that a bit harder to do.

If the metric of mishaps per launch as an indicator, the airlines do damned will, and the US Navy does pretty good too, though as the recent loss of an F-35 shows us, it won’t be perfect, especially with all the focus on sensitivity rather than maintaining aircraft.

If someone who does Neurosurgery (an expert) wants to talk about removing a glioblastoma, treatments, and possible life expectancy, I will absolutely listen, but not in a vacuum, not without an assessment of the surgeon, patient population, and such.

You can’t do it for everything, but where you can, you should.

It infuriates me that, even though you do need to take control of your own healthcare, there are a lot of people for whom it isn’t really constructively possible to that level...and these Leftists have done all they could to destroy any trust those people might have had.


14 posted on 01/27/2022 9:46:19 AM PST by rlmorel (Nothing can foster principles of freedom more effectively than the imposition of tyranny.)
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To: rlmorel

I know Big Tech has been working 24/7 to censor, hide and bury independent web sites on health care—but the information is out there for those who are willing to take the time to look for it.

I would never trust my health to anyone who cared less about it than I do!


15 posted on 01/27/2022 9:49:34 AM PST by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: cgbg

I know. But the truth is, a lot of people aren’t capable. They need to trust someone.

And it is a crime that the Left has worked to turn healthcare against their patients.

Because inevitably, the reverse will occur as a result.

They turn everything they touch into sh*t.

Everything.


16 posted on 01/27/2022 9:52:49 AM PST by rlmorel (Nothing can foster principles of freedom more effectively than the imposition of tyranny.)
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To: rlmorel

I see opportunity here.

Americans and people around the world are gonna have to get tougher, more self-reliant and more self-sufficient.

“Trusting the experts” is suicide these days—and eventually folks will figure it out—or face the consequences.

This is a law of nature—the fit and smart will survive and prosper, and the stupid will be crushed.


17 posted on 01/27/2022 9:55:40 AM PST by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: cgbg

I understand, but having worked in patient care for the better part of 40 years, there are a lot of people (and not just the elderly and infirm) who need a trusting relationship with their healthcare team.

They have to.

I think you and I might see it differently as we may come at it from different angles. I fully feel that people SHOULD be actively involved in their own healthcare, but I also think it is unrealistic for everyone, having seen the wide variety of people in all emotional states and all intellectual capabilities.

In my opinion, we need to find a way to give those people someone they can trust. That should be their doctor.

But as you and I know, 50% of the doctors graduate in the lower half of their class, and the ones that didn’t, now you have to hope they aren’t involved in a clinical trial that might conflict their wallet with your well being, because what have found out repels and disgusts me. That anecdote about the state of California Medical Board threatening to remove the license to practice medicine of anyone who prescribes things like Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine.

I found that wholly disgusting and repellent.

I must tell you, these last two years have been extraordinarily disillusioning for me. But, life goes on, as must we.


18 posted on 01/27/2022 12:35:33 PM PST by rlmorel (Nothing can foster principles of freedom more effectively than the imposition of tyranny.)
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Comment #19 Removed by Moderator

To: Not_Who_U_Think

It’s the “in” thing

Never thinking the “cure” could be weakening the affected.

It seems to be a roll of the dice.


20 posted on 01/27/2022 12:45:31 PM PST by SaveFerris (The Lord, The Christ and The Messiah: Jesus Christ of Nazareth - http://www.BiblicalJesusChrist.Com/)
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