Tribalism

Alluded to in one of Laurie Taylor’s podcasts (Ignorance, 15/7/20) where a Michael Klinsmann talks about the Apollonian (more or less rational, individual) way of thinking & deciding vs the Dionysian (group belief or tribalism). V interesting. I disagreed completely with the American Woman Lindsay though, who says a problem (more with corporations than politicians though) is deliberate affectation of ignorance e.g. over drug side effects. The problem is more as the GBS quotation at the end, with politicians affecting knowledge and certainty because of their learned self-confidence. This interestingly can be based on a strong but irrelevant education (public school e.g. Johnson) or just stupidity (Trump). The Joe Strummer quotation is relevant here. Also in Guardian book review the phenomenon is called Motivated Reasoning: How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford, published by Little, Brown on 17 September

Update to this from December 2023: blimey, I can be prescient some times!   Just listen to the Today Podcast, particularly episode 13 (“Guided by the science”).  This reveals how the humanities-educated, over-confident but scientific illiterates were more like Dunning-Kruger sufferers.  Johnson not being able to understand exponential growth or a graph, Hancock sacking the deputy medical adviser because she told the truth about the virus’ potential infectiousness without going through the government PR (=paid lying) system.  If I’m not careful I’ll end up sounding like that Dom…