Willful Ignorance

I spend entirely too much time looking up information reported in Memes on my Facebook feed. I’ve managed to ignore most, but occasionally, I find something I just can’t buy the way it’s expressed. And, I find that the majority of the errors are errors of omission. People have latched onto some bit of information (possibly true and possibly false) that upholds their belief and ignore any other information that might contradict that. It is an act of a well-known psychological problem called willful ignorance. According to Psychology Today:

Willful ignorance occurs when individuals realize at some level of consciousness that their beliefs are probably false, or when they refuse to attend to information that would establish their falsity.

The difference between willful ignorance and true self-deception is subtle, but important. Willful ignorance tends to be more adaptive than self-deception. Willful ignorance is a cognitive strategy that people adopt to promote their emotional well-being, whereas self-deception is less controllable and more likely to be detrimental. Although willful ignorance and self-deception sometimes help individuals to avoid unpleasant facts, in the long run, it is usually better to confront reality than to avoid or deny it. Because the self-deceived person fully believes things that are untrue, she has fewer resources for correcting her course when her erroneous beliefs lead her astray.

The distinction between willful ignorance and self-deception has interesting implications for moral judgment. In general, we probably blame willfully ignorant people more for their actions and attitudes than those we suspect of self-delusion. Suppose that you are annoyed by a friend’s enthusiastic support of a political candidate who you believe is racist, sexist, and lacks any sense of human decency. If you believe that your friend is self-deceived—that he actually believes that the candidate is well-intentioned, has a master plan for the country, and harbors no racial or gender bias—then you may be willing to tell yourself a story such as that your friend is generally a good person who has fallen under some bad influences. But if you believe that your friend actually does know better—that he willfully ignores the candidate’s flaws because he tacitly approves of what you view as the candidate’s bigotry and unsavory character—then you are less likely to excuse your friend’s advocacy.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/why-we-blame/201709/willful-ignorance-and-self-deception

I really try not to engage in the online scuffles brought about by this phenomenon, and I find it in every direction. So, to satisfy my desire to “set the record straight,” I’m including a few Memes and posts here that I’ve taken the time to research.

This is not a picture of Henriquez. Before we explain, we should note the police encounter that resulted in Floyd’s death in May 2020 began with a report about a counterfeit $20 bill passed at a store, not with an arrest warrant or an investigation into Floyd’s alleged criminal history. So far, examination of the alleged counterfeit bill has not been released. Now, from Snopes.com:

Furthermore, the claims made in this meme are either exaggerated or outright fabricated. While Floyd was indeed arrested for his involvement in a home robbery in 2007 (we conducted a detailed analysis of Floyd’s criminal record, including the robbery from 2007, in this article), no evidence suggests that Henriquez was pregnant, or that Floyd threatened to kill her baby. Henriquez was injured during the incident, though the police report says the injuries were inflicted by another man, not Floyd. But the above-displayed image does not illustrate the extent of her injuries because the picture isn’t of her.

This is actually a photograph of Andrea Sicignano, a student who was reportedly assaulted and raped in Madrid in 2018. Sicignano posted these images of herself to her Facebook page, along with a message detailing her attack.

https://www.snopes.com/.../is-this-really-aracely-henriquez/

My comment: For Pete's sake! How many times do you people need to be told "white privilege" doesn't mean you don't have to work. It means you weren't likely to be turned down for a job because you are white. It means people didn't cross the street to avoid passing you because you are white. It means you weren't barred from a restaurant because you are white. It means you weren't denied health services or a mortgage because you are white. It means police didn't stop your car because you are white. Get it through your heads. You're just showing how privileged you are by not having to think about those things.

A reply to my comment: I’ll buy you a one way plane ticket to any other country of your choice, if you promise never to return.

Willful Ignorance: Preferring to believe what you want to believe rather than accept other information.

This is based on a deliberate misinterpretation of what is happening today, and some of that has been the radicalization of both sides of this issue. On one side are those who minimalize the Black Lives Matter movement and the complaint of discrimination. On the other are those who want to paint hundreds of years of slavery going back to the first slaves brought to America. Both are wrong.

No one here needs to apologize for what happened before the Civil War. You weren’t alive then. What is at issue is the continuing discrimination and oppression of people who may not even have been descended from slaves but because of the color of their skin, face a higher percentage of police brutality attacks, are more likely to be stopped “on suspicion” for anything than a white person, object to the glorification of those who did practice slavery, and are kept in lower paying jobs, lower quality housing, lower quality schools, and lower quality lifestyle. It is not what happened before that an apology is needed. In fact, an apology isn’t going to help any of the real problems. What is needed is a full stop to discriminatory behavior. Full. Stop.

After you do that, you might feel the need to apologize to someone.

And BTW, Japan acknowledged its actions and apologized several times over.

This doesn’t all go one way, lest you think I’m just mad at right wing idiocy. This post is in keeping with my opinion that COVID-19 is a dangerous contagion and we should do what’s necessary to contain it. But it erred in the other direction.

This post being widely circulated goes for the most sensational data that can be extrapolated. At the heart of its misleading data is the assumption that 100% of the US population will become infected with COVID-19. It’s difficult to get any real projections of how many will become infected in the US and the less that is done to prevent it, the higher the numbers go. Most that I’ve been able to locate believe between 10% and 40% of the population will contract the disease. It’s still terrible! We didn’t need to see the numbers based on 100% infection to realize the virus is dangerous, particularly since those who are most likely to spread it are those who believe they will never be infected themselves. Let’s look at the numbers again.

10-40% Infected:  32,820,000 to 131,280,000

Number dead: 328,200 to 1,312,800 (current number is 137,200)

6,235,800-24,943,200 hospitalized

5,907,600-23,630,400 with permanent heart damage

3,282,000-13,128,000 with permanent lung damage

984,699-3,938,400 have strokes

656,400-2,625,600 with neurological muscle weakness

656,400-2,625,600 with loss of cognitive function

These more conservative numbers based on doing what is necessary to stop the spread are frightening enough. The real problem is that there will be more than 164,100,000 people in the United States who simply don’t care. (My made-up number based on half the population.)

No. That is not quite factual. While pneumonia and flu are counted with COVID deaths because they have the same general test results, it did not drop the numbers by 43,000. The discrepancy in the numbers on the CDC website are based on two counting methods. The first is based on death certificates filed through courthouses, etc. and typically lags two weeks behind the current trend. The second extrapolates from other data reports for an up-to-the minute estimate of deaths. The difference in numbers between the two is accounted for by the time lag between the estimates and the actual reported deaths.

And I'll include here that "He was going to die anyway" doesn't change the cause of death. If I'm dying of cancer and you put a gun to my head and pull the trigger, I died of a gunshot wound, not of cancer. Even if a patient is terminally ill and COVID-19 drives the last nail into his coffin, he died of COVID-19, not of the disease that was killing him.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-cdc-confesses-to-lying-about-covid-19-death-numbers

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fact-check-cdcs-estimates-covid-19-death-rate-around-026percent-doesnt-confirm-it/ar-BB1565nz

Claims on social media have been spreading the falsehood that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention significantly lowered the COVID-19 death toll. There has been no such reduction. These claims confuse two different measures of the number of deaths.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/cdc-hasnt-reduced-covid-19-death-toll/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cdc-death-figures/

Finally, I found one that seemed completely factual and was born out in my own personal experience (which, of course, is the final measure of any opinion’s validity).

Please. Before you hit “Share” or “Like,” check to see if you are sharing the whole story or just the facts you want to believe. It makes a difference.