CityPages Kuwait June 2016 Issue June 2016 | Page 86

WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE

WEIRD STUFF

John MacArthur
John MacArthur was born in
England, but has Celtic ancestry,
so loves to sing. Abandoning his
choral training, he sings songs
of love and loss, owning several
antique acoustic guitars. He has
degrees in physics, chemistry and
mathematics, has studied theology
and business management, so,
in fine nomadic tradition, he can
call several universities home.
After seven years in Kuwait, he
'retired' and laughs at himself every
morning, commuting between his
Paris island home and country
house in rural France where he lives
with his wife, a food writer and
stylist, and, perhaps soon, a dog,
should he be allowed one. Much to
her dismay, he is thinking of taking
up the mandolin. He has written
for various publications worldwide
on whatever happens to catch his
imagination.

Some people believe all kinds of
weird stuff.
Let’s just say that some people
believe weird stuff and leave it
at that. It turns out that just one
of the fascinating reasons that
people accept odd ideas is that
they keep getting repeated, even if
only to debunk them.
So, where does all this misinformation come from?
Why do people believe it and how can right-thinking
people counter it? I wonder where misinformation
comes from. Here’s an obvious starting point: rumour
and fiction. People love sensational stories. They like
to pass on tales that make the listener happy, disgusted
or afraid: anything that provokes a strong emotional
response.
Neutral stories, which are probably more likely to
be true, but much more boring, therefore get short
shrift. More bizarrely, people have been shown to
believe things they’ve read in novels that have clearly

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been totally made up. This is true even when they are
obviously works of fiction, also, indeed, when they
are told the fiction contains misinformation. Finally,
they believe the fairy tale even when the real facts are
relatively well-known.
Secondly, anyone who has been following the election
sideshow in the United States cannot help but be
aware that politicians will say anything to get elected.
But can we tell the difference between the truth and
the lies they’ve told? Social science studies have found,
apparently, that people find it very difficult to tell the
difference. It seems knowing that politicians lie is no
barrier to people believing those lies.
The ‘Media’ – the bête noir of the truth - is a drip-feed.
Its default setting is over simplification on the one
hand and the need for balance on the other. The need
for balance is interesting, not least because the issues
themselves aren’t always ‘balanced’. For example,
over 95% of climate scientists agree that the Earth is
warming due to greenhouse-gas emissions, but you
wouldn’t know that from many media debates on the
issue, which are hobbled by the perceived need to