Cognitive Bias: Part 1

It has now been a year of lockdowns and a year of lockdown propaganda. Despite the hell on earth created by shutting down society, hundreds of millions of people around the world still believe that lockdowns benefit them. Undoubtedly, the biggest culprit for this misplaced faith is the lack of access to credible information on the issue. People get their information about lockdowns from the news media and their government, both of which are completely corrupt.

The media downplays the harms of COVID restrictions while lying about the benefits they provide. Social media is strictly censored. Any social media posts providing accurate, objective information on COVID-19 restrictions are removed under the pretext that they are “misinformation.” 

However, the existence of propaganda and censorship does not fully explain why the public has readily accepted, and vigorously defended, severe violations of their freedoms. It does not explain why people still adhere to the totalitarian narrative even after learning about the harms of lockdowns and the abundant data showing that they don’t even put a damper on coronavirus contagion. The striking lack of rational thinking amongst the population warrants investigation.

This article explores the array of cognitive biases that have contributed to widespread irrational acceptance of profane crimes against humanity for the purpose of ‘public health.’ A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that results in illogical conclusions and consequently, irrational behavior. Everyone is subject to cognitive biases, but the strength of each bias varies substantially from person to person. 

Why is the whole world petrified of being exposed to a virus with a 99.7% survival rate? The flu has approximately the same survival rate but no one has ever worn a mask or stayed away from others to avoid getting the flu. Most people don’t even get annual flu shots. The only reason for the fear is social learning. People see others displaying severe fear of SARS-CoV-2 which makes them mimic the same level of fear. This is ‘hysteria’ — the spread of irrational fear, primarily through social learning. Fake emotional signalling in the media is a major source of socially learning to be terrified of this mild cold virus. 

Social learning theory, alternatively called social proof, has also had a powerful effect on how people view the appropriate response to the supposed coronavirus threat. Opinions are as contagious as feelings. Seeing others vehemently support lockdowns as the best course of action influences one to think the same. Social learning is an even stronger predictor of opinion formation than personal reasoning. There is nothing that sane, intelligent people cannot be convinced of with the right amount of social signalling.

Much of the motivation to follow self-destructive and ever-changing pandemic ordinances has to do with the relationship that people have with rules. People often surmise that rules should be followed simply because they are rules. That is not logical. Many rules fail to achieve their stated goals or create problems to a greater degree than they resolve them. 

Logically, people should voluntarily follow rules only if they think that the rules achieve their intended goals without causing unacceptably high negative consequences. That is not what has happened in the pandemic. Many people know that the masks and the social distancing are destructive for society and nevertheless adhere to them religiously, offering as their only justification: “These are the rules. You have to follow the rules.”

Like all cognitive biases, the bias of blindly adhering to rules has some merit. Modern society has too many laws, regulations, and social norms to question every one (at least, according to the common perspective). Therefore, it is more practical to just obey rules rather than even bothering to assess if the rules should exist in the first place. This is the mindset that many people have carried into the pandemic. 

While this passive attitude towards rules has some credibility — minor rules that have little impact on quality of life may not even be worth thinking about — it certainly does not make sense to adhere to rules that are clearly destructive. Limiting social interaction to the legally mandated maximum number of acquaintances or wearing a mask for a considerable period of time everyday have major ramifications for quality of life and personal dignity. Therefore, these and other pandemic rules should be vigorously assessed and discarded if they don’t provide a clear positive net impact. 

Young children are in the process of developing their cognitive abilities and understanding of the world, so they first learn to follow rules in order to stay out of trouble. As they mature into older children, they learn the reasons behind the rules and start being able to judge for themselves which rules are worth following and which are okay to break. 

It boggles the mind how billions of adults still have not developed this mental ability. To willingly practice social distancing is to be complicit with crimes against humanity — crimes that have made life so intolerable that one in ten people want to kill themselves. My advice to anyone who is unsure which rules to follow: start with the constitution. Follow rules that uphold constitutionally-protected rights and disobey rules that violate them.

Sacrificing to help others is the foundation of an ethical life. Who could argue that it is worth giving up some of one’s excess time or money to contribute to something promising to help the less fortunate? Staying away from other people and wearing a mask has been presented to the public as an honorable endeavor, a patriotic sacrifice akin to enlisting in the military in World War II. 

Following the COVID recommendations entails destroying your own life. It doesn’t help anyone. Something is a sacrifice if it helps others. Suffering with no positive benefit to yourself or anyone else is therefore not a sacrifice. It is masochism. 

Many people feel that they are making an honorable sacrifice by isolating themselves. Self-isolation and mask-wearing has no effect on coronavirus contagion and has a huge negative effect on health in other ways. Isolators are not making a sacrifice. They are hurting others through neglect. They are making their friends and family horribly lonely and causing people to lose their jobs. It is irrational to think that punishing yourself necessarily helps others.

The belief that the cream of society possess vast wisdom inaccessible to the rest of us is quite common. Many people believe that great knowledge and intelligence exists among the leaders of society, such as politicians, public intellectuals, scientists, and journalists. Because of this wealth of wisdom of the elite, they have rightful dominion over society, including impunity for human rights violations.

Faith in the wisdom of elites has a number of causes. People may assume that because of the difficulty involved in attaining a high position, only the astutely intelligent succeed. They may alternatively assume that being in a high position affords access to deep knowledge inaccessible to nearly everyone else. There is also a mystique among people with a doctoral education. It is commonly thought that doctorate-holders have such a command of their field that their views are beyond criticism. 

By definition, people in positions of power have the ability to affect people’s lives. Therefore, the faith that people have in power holders could stem from an innate psychological mechanism for survival. Obeying and befriending those with power furthers one’s chances of securing shelter and others means of survival. As with all convictions, the personal bias that elites have keen wisdom can be based solely on social proof. People observe that others have great respect for the views of elites, so they adopt this respect themselves.

The COVID pandemic has brought to light the absence of wisdom and integrity of people in high places. Politicians, famous scientists, and others with power and prestige don’t have an elite source of wisdom from which they draw. The only knowledge that elites possess which is uncommon among the 99% is that of the malleability of the masses. Elites know how to covertly manipulate the thoughts and behaviors of members of society. That alone is the source of their power. Thus, there is no substitute for thinking for yourself and making your own decisions.

This cognitive bias has had catastrophic consequences. As a result of our misplaced faith in the elites of society, we have allowed them to enslave us and commit the worst crimes against humanity in history. People are still in denial that the lockdown perpetrators have had evil motives because, despite all the evidence to the contrary, they still believe in this absurd idea that elites know best simply because they are elites.

The policy of shutting down society doesn’t sound like one that could be carried out for very long. The longer social distancing continues, the greater the impact on mental health, the more relationships will be torn apart, and the more companies go out of business. Government debt also becomes increasingly unmanageable, putting the next generation at risk for poverty. 

A less sustainable public policy couldn’t exist. At the beginning of the lockdown, it was reasonable to expect it to be brief. Lockdowns are nothing short of societal suicide. However, as the months have passed and social distancing laws remained in effect, it became increasingly clear that politicians have no problem completely ruining society for the long-term and keep society closed for as long as they can get away with it. 

The general attitude towards lockdowns and other restrictions has been “If we comply, they will let us return to normal life again.” Oh how that strategy of ours has backfired! The more we comply, the worse things get as our rulers become increasingly bold. As freedom activists like to say, you can’t comply your way out of tyranny.

From at least late 2020, many pro-lockdown voices such as Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci have been saying that restrictions will continue to 2022 no matter how many people are vaccinated. There has been talk of social distancing measures being permanent since the pandemic started, in fact. If you still believe that politicians will do the responsible thing and end distancing rules soon to prevent long-term economic damage, you could be projecting your own respect for sustainability onto your politicians.

This is a very important bias. If more people suspected from the outset that pandemic restrictions could be long-term, there would have been a major opposition immediately. After a year of lockdowns, a common reason given for not opposing them is still that they have got to end soon because they are unsustainable. What a stubborn bias this is.

It is a difficult task to convince someone that she has cognitive biases that interfere with her rational judgment, as facing one’s shortcomings is an inherently painful activity. Ironically, it is an even harder task to convince her that others are subject to the same cognitive biases.

When people read in the paper that a group of doctors in their state have banded together to promote lockdowns, they tend to take this as evidence of the legitimacy of lockdowns. Doctors should know what is best for public health, right? Not at all. Doctors, teachers, judges, scientists, politicians, and other revered groups are faulted human beings no different from you and I. They too watch CNN and become brainwashed by Fauci’s propaganda. They too have developed an extreme irrational fear of coronavirus from watching too much news and overreact based upon those emotions. They too are using this situation to show everyone how virtuous they are by pandering to majority sentiment.

“Expert opinion” is an oxymoron in a time of hysteria. The experts you see on TV praising lockdowns may not be speaking out of their expertise at all. They could have a worse case of hysteria than anyone you know and have totally stopped thinking rationally. They could be exhibiting any number of cognitive biases and have bought into the misinformation themselves. What’s more, many of them are corrupt and get paid by vaccine manufacturers or the government of China. Not only are scientists as intellectually faulted as the rest of us, they are just as morally faulted.

Judges, traditionally the last line in the defense for civil rights, are also subject to cognitive bias and lockdown propaganda. In March 2021, a judge in Windsor, Canada banned a man from seeing his own children on the grounds that the man could not be fit to be a parent since he doesn’t think the COVID restrictions are a good idea. Clearly, this judge has himself been indoctrinated by the mainstream media and hasn’t a clue himself.

This cognitive bias also inhibits people from recognizing that the people around them are biased. For instance, listening to your coworkers praise lockdowns is not evidence that lockdowns have merit. Like you, your coworkers are bombarded with pro-lockdown propaganda and have every cognitive bias influencing them to believe in lockdowns as you do. They may only believe in lockdowns because they, in turn, have heard others speak positively of them. The people your coworkers heard speak well of lockdowns probably wouldn’t believe in them either were it not for *them* noticing that most people were pro-lockdown… and so on…

The cult of Covidism has reached every walk of society and every corner of the globe. Israel was founded after the Second World War as a safe home for the Jewish people in which they could live free of persecution. In 2021, it became the world capital of discrimination against people unwilling to take an unsafe experimental DNA-changing pseudo-vaccine. Covidism now has Jews persecuting other Jews.

‘Better to err on the side of caution, just to be safe.’ Seems inarguable, doesn’t it? Better safe than sorry, after all! With a (somewhat) novel virus in circulation, it seems like a good idea to be extra careful because who knows how many people it will kill. This was the original theory justifying lockdowns. 

Erring on the side of safety is a great idea. Applying it to COVID-19 would entail respecting civil rights because their violation was certain to cause hundreds of times more wellbeing-adjusted life years lost than if every single person caught SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, freedom is a good in itself, even more important than health. Much scientific literature exists to show us that isolation causes severe depression and takes many years off of life. Unemployment and personal financial problems also decrease quality of life and life expectancy considerably. SARS-CoV-2 is a cold. It is not even a close decision.

It is because of the hysteria surrounding coronavirus that people think it is ‘safest’ to take extreme mitigation measures. Playing it safe is sensible if it is done rationally. The logical error is the assumption that SARS-CoV-2 is more dangerous than the mitigation measures. It stems from media propaganda and a lack of understanding of the role of mental wellbeing and adequate income in life expectancy.

Most of us have a tendency to think that the most popular opinion on an issue must be the correct one. This bias may arise from a deep-seated lack of personal confidence. If you don’t value your own judgment, you will look to others for answers. There is also an evolutionary element at play. Conforming to the majority in one’s tribe will make it easier to be cohesive in case of attack from another tribe.

Automatically adopting majority opinion is irrational for a number of reasons. Firstly, no one knows what anyone else thinks about anything. We only know what people say they believe. This is key. People go along with what they think is the majority opinion on an issue to fit in, but often don’t believe their own expressed opinions. For controversial issues in which people with a dissenting opinion are punished, it is extremely common for people to pretend to agree with the mainstream view. They know that speaking their mind can get them abandoned by their friends or fired from their jobs.

The media also distorts majority opinion. For instance, the news media only report the pro-lockdown perspective, making it seem like that is the only commonly-held perspective. The reality is that they intentionally select interviewees who hold this view. 

Everyone has been inundated with pro-lockdown propaganda and no one is free from cognitive biases. Thus, it is not reasonable to assume that the majority of people who believe in social distancing have thought logically about the issue. 

Most people know very little about the pandemic situation. They don’t know that PCR tests are fraudulent. They don’t know that many non-COVID deaths are officially labelled as COVID-19 deaths. They don’t know that the pandemic response is projected to take many years off the lives of most people due to their effects on the psychological and socio-economic determinants of health. Unbeknownst to the vast majority, much of the information disseminated by the mainstream media is patently false.

If we are to consider the opinions of others in forming our opinions, in the very least we should verify that we only consider the judgments of those who have a basic understanding of the issue. With the lockdown issue, that is a very small percentage of the population, so it doesn’t make sense to give any credence to the majority opinion.

Finally, majority opinion on an issue may not reflect your personal values. Perhaps you value quality of life over duration of life. That wouldn’t appear to be a mainstream value and it is not reflected in public policy. In the UK, for instance, the NHS spends more money on healthcare for the final year of a person’s life than they spend cumulatively for their entire life prior to that. To some people, that is justified — extending an ultra-low quality of life by three months, for instance, is worth the large expenditure. To others, it is a waste of money — the government might as well spend that money in such a way as to improve quality of life for Britons of all ages. 

It comes down to values. Coronavirus mitigation measures have been empirically discredited by examining the data to even lower COVID deaths, but what if they did lower COVID and overall deaths? Does that mean they are good policy? That all depends on how much you value protecting quality of life versus enabling eighty-somethings to live slightly longer and how much you value saving lives today versus reducing life expectancy in the long term. Don’t assume that most people share your values.

Most people want to live into their golden years. That is human nature. Fear of death becomes a bias, however, when people convince themselves that they can forever cheat death. 

Everyone dies by the time they are 120. Relatively few people live to see their 90s. Physical health, mental health, and quality of life, unfortunately, decline significantly for most people after their mid-70s. Seniors have the highest risk of getting a severe case of COVID including fatal cases. However, the risk is still low, and ever decreasing with growing awareness about vitamin D, ivermectin, and other effective preventions and treatments.

Everyone should decide for him/herself how much to socially distance to avoid SARS-CoV-2, but most people are vastly erring on the side of distancing out of a wildly overblown fear of dying. Approximately half of people have no symptoms when infected and for the other half, it is no different from a flu. Because of the media’s hysteria-mongering, people are so afraid of dying from this benign virus, that they have stopped living their lives to avoid it. There is a point at which measures to avoid death lower quality of life to the point where there is no “life” left to protect.

Logically, all actions should be in proportion. Washing hands more frequently and avoiding people who appear sick are rational responses to a virus of this severity. Anything more than that is counterproductive for low-risk people, and often for high risk people as well. It is understandable that a frail eighty-something would want to protect herself from coronavirus, but if the mitigation measures affect quality of life, they should be avoided. Everyone is going to die. What matters is enjoying life and living free from fear. We’re here for a good time, not a long time.