Now, this is mostly a rant, and I’ll be speculating a lot, so don’t take anything here too seriously!

Since the election had been called on November 9th, 2016, there have been a number of videos and protests with actors from Hollywood both in the news, and on Youtube. They range from scripted rants intended to manipulate people into thinking that it’s the end of the world now that Trump is elected, to just plain bullying rants by individuals that want to punch or kill Trump. Here is a video of De Niro saying how he’d “like to punch him in the face”. I find it interesting in that all De Niro is doing is name calling, much like a second grader who doesn’t have the ability to reason yet. There is no discussion about things he has done to deserve these names, just juvenile name calling. What makes this even more interesting is what De Niro had to say back in April according to the LA Times:

“Don’t go out there and say things unless you can back them up. How dare you? It’s awful. Just go out there and speak and say these terrible things? … It’s crazy.” - Di Nero

But it seems to be OK when he does just that.

So, I see two questions here. First, what causes people like this to do what they previously said was “crazy”? And, why don’t people, when watching stuff like this, see through the fact that there is no evidence presented to back up their claims?

Lets start with people doing things that they previously called “crazy”. From the many years of research I’ve done into how the brain works, there seem to be a lot of things that play a part in this. A lot of it boils down to how someone was raised, and if things were good or not. I won’t be going into much detail, but will leave links to some sources, because the information available would probably fill an encyclopedia. If we start with what a person believes, we can categorize those beliefs into two main categories.

First it is beliefs that are based on reason and evidence. Things like dogs have 4 legs. Now someone may say they had a dog with 3 legs, and that may in fact be true, but based on the many dogs you’ve seen in your life, you know that the average dog has 4 legs. And for you to change your mind, you would need to start seeing a lot more three legged dogs, and if you did at some point realize that a majority of dogs had three legs, you may change your mind based on what you’ve seen.

The second type of belief is those based on emotion. For instance, kids are told Santa Clause is real and brings presents at Christmas. As a child, most people in our culture have heard this enough that they truly believe it. They will even sometimes have fights with friends who try to tell them the truth that Santa doesn’t exist! Some kids are so invested in the idea of Santa, that when someone tells them something different, they will even believe it stronger, at least for a while. Here is an interesting video that shows how reasoning works. It is called “The Death of Reason”. That is a video in a bigger series called “The Bomb in the Brain” which gets into more detail. The fascinating thing is that when someone has strongly held beliefs based on emotion, and they are challenged with reason and evidence, they tend to believe those things even stronger.

There is a lot more that could be said about beliefs based on emotion, and if you are interested, you can start by looking at r/K Selection Theory, and that could keep you busy for quite some time. This is research based on how certain genes are activated or deactivated based on events in a child’s life. At a high level r selection can be thought of as the way rabbits are raised. It’s purely a numbers game. Have as many rabbits as possible, get them out on there own fast, and make more. It’s about using resources and not helping others too much. If you can run faster than your brother when the fox is approaching, you win and end up reproducing, so that strategy is to just not end up dead. The K is more along the lines of a Lion, where the mother will spend years teaching the kittens how to hunt, and fend for themselves. They have few offspring and spend time to teach them what is needed to survive. While these are two different species, there can be vast differences even in a single species. For instance, in Humans, when a father isn’t present in the house of a growing girl, she has an increased chance of reaching puberty months if not years before other girls that have a father in the house. In the past it was a sign of difficult times when the father wasn’t present. Things like war would kill fathers, and because those were tough times, reproduction had to happen faster, so those that reproduced earlier, survived. But in good times, when there was a father in the house, people did better when more time was taken teaching kids how to successfully live.

Now lets look at why people don’t even ask for evidence when they see something on TV or Youtube that is basically just name calling. I believe it all boils down to Critical Thinking. Now, I’ve talked to many people who claim they are Critical Thinkers, but they aren’t. To be Honest, I even catch myself at times not thinking as critically as I should. These people had some class in school that is said to have taught them, and they may do better than the average person, but they still don’t truly think critically. If they did, I’d hear them asking a lot more questions.

So, why don’t people in our society think critically? Because it’s ingrained from childhood not to do so. What do I mean by this? Let’s look at the average child. How many times have you heard a child ask a parent or teacher “Why do I have to do whatever?” And the parent or teacher replies with “Because I said so!” There is no reason given, so what a child actually learns is that they need to just blindly obey authority. There is a famous experiment done to test this called the “Milgram Experiment”. There was even a movie made called Experimenter. And if you want to read about it in Stanley Milgram’s own words, you can buy his book called Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. What this basically does is prove that people will blindly listen to an authority figure. This includes doing what they believe may even kill someone. So, people listen because they are taught to believe an authority, which in todays society includes doctors, police, politicians, tv news, school teachers, celebrities, and many others. Many people just don’t ask questions because they were never taught to do that.

Another thing that I have to wonder about with these actors is if they even know who they are. Since it is their job to pretend to be someone else, do they in some cases spend so much time being someone else that they forget who they are? Or do they spend so much time being someone else that they never figured out who they are? I don’t know, but it is something I do ponder when they say or do stupid things.

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