Sometime ago I stumbled across the blog of the creator of the Dilbert comics Scott Adams, and reading through his
series on Trump has been very interesting and more importantly useful. The idea of taking specific view points of realty as filters to explain why events happen is very similar to the axiomatic method of constructing maths, you take a few given things as truth and build the rest of the picture on top of those truths. The
Master Persuader filter for instance has to make me rethink my support for Trump, on the one hand I've been trying to pin down my beliefs for over a year now and Trump just happens to align with them, but on the other hand I've gone from thinking he was a bad joke to being caught up in the excitement of his campaign.
And what's more interesting is coming up with your own filters:
With the "Humans don't have that much of an impact" filter, suddenly fracking, global warming, and ocean pollution become non-issues.
With the "Humans DO have that much of an impact" filter, they become problems.
With the "all people are equal filter" I can quickly recreate liberal, multicultural, and feminist talking points with ease despite being fundamentally opposed to them.
With the "Hitler dindu nuffin wrong" filter, everything becomes in some way touched by God's chosen people.
With the "I can create my own sense of morality from logic and reason" filter, I become an atheist.
With the "I'm getting pretty arrogant there" filter, I become a Christian.
I feel like this is an important mental tool that I've been working towards but wouldn't have gotten to otherwise, does this concept sound like common sense to any of you?
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Now speaking as a trump supporter, if the Master Persuader filter really is the correct one, and moreover if Trump really does become the president, then I would take that as definitive proof of how much of a joke democracy is; The entire democratic process becomes a reality tv show.