That's not an unreasonable answer, WS, but my question pertains to the manners in which we are unconsciously unreasonable. I would never think for a moment that you would try to be intentionally unreasonable (i.e. to troll). The thing is, data sifting is very hard, and of the ideas we form and concepts we develop, much of it comes with help. That help can be the people we use as sounding boards, and largely also comes from our perception of public awareness. There's a good reason why the sheep follow the herd: not because they're mindless, but because some data is hard to come by and if some sheep in the herd detects it (for instance the smell of a predator) and reacts it behooves the herd to follow instinctively. They actually must do this or they will die. They cannot also rely on their own instincts and perceptions alone; there is just too much data out there and too much lossage of data for that matter. So we hear things, and feel the currents (such as in the media, or among friends) and this informs not only our raw information but also the processing of it. Again, this is unavoidable and to an extent necessary. We cannot help but think based on the thinking of others.
The trouble comes when certain others are putting out biased or misleading information, and not only adding to the mix but shifting the general current. It confuses our sensors so much when this happens that it can become impossible to tell where an idea in our head came from: was it my thought, or someone else's thought that triggered my mental reflex? This trouble is so serious that IMO when there is a prevailing current going in one direction the safest bet in avoiding serious error is to default to believing the opposite just on principle. If everyone is saying Trump is bad - or at least in certain circles - my reflex would be to say "whoa, hold it, why are they trying to make me feel he's bad?" And of course the reverse would hold in the other circles: "why are these people all trying to make me think he's awesome?" I think at minimum moderate resistance to these currents in necessary, while of course also acknowledging that it's not in our power to eradicate their effect on us. The resistance would at best bring the equilibrium to something near parity; you are being pressured, but pushing back, so some seeps in, but you don't open the floodgates. The most dangerous case is when the currents are pushing something you already believe in: that is a recipe for a mob mentality, and should be resisted the most. I would hope, at any rate, that if a mob started saying all the stuff I wanted to hear I'd run for the hills to avoid getting caught up in it.
So in arguing about "TDS", I think Crunch may be right insofar as we are all getting tossed around a lot these days informationally, and I think the extent to which we form ideas is much less rational than we would like to pretend. If I were to associate a 'sickness' with this it would be the increasingly prevailing attitude among people that not only are they being rational but that only they are being rational. It is that thought that is the sickness, not the currents themselves, which will always exist. They just exist more powerfully now than they used to since finding echo chambers is easier than ever (even designed).
Does that make sense? So when I ask you whether Trump stuff goes through a special filter for you, it's not just as simple as asking whether you have a reasoned bias; it's almost more about asking whether you'll acknowledge that you have an unreasoned bias, which I will suggest we all have but are not all aware of. This is not an ad hominem, but rather an appeal: if we can admit that we have this desire to hear what we like, we can perhaps find common ground in rejecting the echo chamber, or at least pushing back against these currents that push us around. It's damn hard to tell which opinions about Trump are yours, and which have been put into you, when those feel the same. That's not a gaslight, I think it's a reality. My question is how we counteract this.
PS - Obviously there can be good reasons for a bias. No doubt you'd have had good reason to doubt the protestations of innocence by an Al Capone, regardless of how many legal loopholes he used to get acquittals. As you say, a lack of proof is not innocence. But I would also argue it should take a huge portfolio for a person to lose your faith to the point where you just 'know' they're a criminal up to no good. I guess maybe Trump has that? I don't think so, but if I did think he was an arch-criminal, and the media told me "right on!" then my first step would be to doubt myself big-time. Anyone with a money interest in me believing something is automatically against me.
