aggle-rithm
Ardent Formulist
I have been reading Damasio's book Descartes' Error, and am finding his discussions on anosognosia to be very interesting. Anosognosia is a condition in which the sufferer loses his/her sense of body image, usually due to a traumatic physical insult such as a stroke. Without a current body image, they fall back to the default: Their most recent memory of body image, which in most cases was before they became disabled. Thus, even though they are in a wheelchair and can't move their left side (for instance), they insist that they are perfectly healthy and can do anything they were ever able to do.
If you were to point out to an anosognosia sufferer that his left arm is paralyzed, he will be unable to deny this fact, but will quickly rationalize it to bring it into agreement with his false body image. Sure, he can't move his arm RIGHT NOW, but that's just because he slept on it wrong, and it's asleep. Usually, he can play ping-pong or tie his shoes without a problem.
Turn his attention to another problem, and he will rationalize that, too. Can't walk? Well, he's just really tired today. Can't feed himself? Well, why should he, when the nurses around here do it for him?
What he will not do, ever, is to take all this evidence that he is, in fact, severely disabled, and put it all together into a coherent self-image. Due to the nature of his brain damage, he can't. Instead he will only look at one detail at a time, and only when his attention is called to it, and will find a reason to believe that this particular detail is unimportant.
When I read about this, I realized that this phenomena seemed very familiar to me.
You guessed it: It's the truthers!
Take, for instance, the notion that the Twin Towers must have been destroyed by controlled demolition because it can't be proved that fire alone could cause these massive buildings to collapse. Point out to a truther that the buildings also suffered major structural damage, and he will begin to focus on how they were designed to take such punishment, and therefore shouldn't have fallen. Remind them about the contribution of the fires they were talking about just a moment before, and they will reiterate that fire alone cannot bring down a high-rise building, forgetting completely about the structural damage. And so on.
Or, take the silly idea that World Trade Center building 7 was secretly destroyed as part of a US government plot to kill thousands of its own people. You can get a truther to focus on the question of why anyone would secretly demolish a heavily damaged building when there was legitimate reason to demolish it openly, or to focus on what anyone had to gain by doing this, or to focus on how the charges could have been placed without anyone noticing it, or how explosives could have been used without making a sound, or how the FDNY had to be complicit if their theory was right, or any one of a host of other issues that reveal this theory to be complete bullocks. However, you can never get them to see that all these issues form an impenetrable web of reality that their cherished beliefs can not possibly overcome. How could they see it, when they can only focus on one issue at a time?
This explains why they find little disjointed factoids to be so convincing. They are unable to form the Big Picture in their minds; at least not a current Big Picture. The Big Picture they always see, their internal Map of the World, is shaped by their distrust of authority and their need for all events to have meaning and purpose. That is their default position, and they are unable to update their internal beliefs to keep up with changes in the outside world.
So, are truthers brain-damaged, like anosognosia sufferes? I doubt it. Perhaps they are missing some structure in the brain that impedes self-awareness, or prevents their self-image from integrating with the wider world. Maybe they were born that way, or maybe they simply didn't develop the appropriate mechanisms as they matured.
Or, maybe they are right and we are wrong. However, it seems unlikely. Those of us who CAN see the larger picture of reality don't have any problem spotting the gaping holes in the Truther Narrative (which doesn't actually exist, any more than an anosognosia sufferer's body image exists). The truthers see only the trees, and at that, the trees they WANT to see, without having a glimmer of awareness that they are part of a forest.
If you were to point out to an anosognosia sufferer that his left arm is paralyzed, he will be unable to deny this fact, but will quickly rationalize it to bring it into agreement with his false body image. Sure, he can't move his arm RIGHT NOW, but that's just because he slept on it wrong, and it's asleep. Usually, he can play ping-pong or tie his shoes without a problem.
Turn his attention to another problem, and he will rationalize that, too. Can't walk? Well, he's just really tired today. Can't feed himself? Well, why should he, when the nurses around here do it for him?
What he will not do, ever, is to take all this evidence that he is, in fact, severely disabled, and put it all together into a coherent self-image. Due to the nature of his brain damage, he can't. Instead he will only look at one detail at a time, and only when his attention is called to it, and will find a reason to believe that this particular detail is unimportant.
When I read about this, I realized that this phenomena seemed very familiar to me.
You guessed it: It's the truthers!
Take, for instance, the notion that the Twin Towers must have been destroyed by controlled demolition because it can't be proved that fire alone could cause these massive buildings to collapse. Point out to a truther that the buildings also suffered major structural damage, and he will begin to focus on how they were designed to take such punishment, and therefore shouldn't have fallen. Remind them about the contribution of the fires they were talking about just a moment before, and they will reiterate that fire alone cannot bring down a high-rise building, forgetting completely about the structural damage. And so on.
Or, take the silly idea that World Trade Center building 7 was secretly destroyed as part of a US government plot to kill thousands of its own people. You can get a truther to focus on the question of why anyone would secretly demolish a heavily damaged building when there was legitimate reason to demolish it openly, or to focus on what anyone had to gain by doing this, or to focus on how the charges could have been placed without anyone noticing it, or how explosives could have been used without making a sound, or how the FDNY had to be complicit if their theory was right, or any one of a host of other issues that reveal this theory to be complete bullocks. However, you can never get them to see that all these issues form an impenetrable web of reality that their cherished beliefs can not possibly overcome. How could they see it, when they can only focus on one issue at a time?
This explains why they find little disjointed factoids to be so convincing. They are unable to form the Big Picture in their minds; at least not a current Big Picture. The Big Picture they always see, their internal Map of the World, is shaped by their distrust of authority and their need for all events to have meaning and purpose. That is their default position, and they are unable to update their internal beliefs to keep up with changes in the outside world.
So, are truthers brain-damaged, like anosognosia sufferes? I doubt it. Perhaps they are missing some structure in the brain that impedes self-awareness, or prevents their self-image from integrating with the wider world. Maybe they were born that way, or maybe they simply didn't develop the appropriate mechanisms as they matured.
Or, maybe they are right and we are wrong. However, it seems unlikely. Those of us who CAN see the larger picture of reality don't have any problem spotting the gaping holes in the Truther Narrative (which doesn't actually exist, any more than an anosognosia sufferer's body image exists). The truthers see only the trees, and at that, the trees they WANT to see, without having a glimmer of awareness that they are part of a forest.
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