Further Thoughts on the Debate

How much can you trust "your own eyes?" Psychology has some thoughts on that.

One thing that strikes me about all the folks, pundits and commenters on Substack, who think this debate proved incompetence somehow--is how these opinions have been affected by a rather insidious propaganda technique. It is actually a general psychological phenomenon, and falls under the heading "framing."

In framing, people's actual perceptions--what they actually "see"--are influenced by the way the question is presented or by the way they have been "primed" by prior observations to see something in a particular way.

We have been deluged by the media, in particular the NYT, about how "old" Biden is and how this is a problem. Just being 81 years old has been ASSUMED to be indicative of incompetence or the presumption of incompetence. Then we had the Hur report and the gratuitous comment that Biden seemed 'distracted' and thus not on top of things. This was THE DAY AFTER THE HAMAS attack. Of course he was distracted.

And of course we have those cheapfakes of Biden “wandering off” that the Right has been foisting on us. Try googling “Biden Memory Issues” and the first umpty cites—a whole page—are about those cut-off videos. (Well, now the search would probably focus on stories about him needing to step down. I looked before that particular foisting started).

This has been in the air for months. People have been primed to think of Biden as somehow senile because of his age. This is in the minds of everyone whether or not they accepted the Hur report or the proclamations of MSM. Thus, when they "see with their own eyes" Biden faltering, the tendency to "see" this as evidence of "senior incompetence" arises from this framing unless one actually resists that and looks beyond the appearance.

When Biden first started talking, I myself could feels something wrong. But the fact that he had a cold was ALSO framing my view as soon as it came up (within minutes) and I told myself I had to RESIST the "senior incompetence" narrative and concentrate on whether, however faltering his presentation was, he was making sense.

This became hard to concentrate on once the deluge of lies began--I kept focusing on the lies, not what Biden was saying. But I was able to resist the idea that the falter was senility--and when I was able to look at the transcript I could see that my initial instinct was right. He WAS making sense. And continued to do so with only a few missteps that anyone might make--for example, that insulin now cost "$15 per shot" rather than $30/month. Even what people are calling his "confusion" about Roe is not really confused--his basic analysis of how Roe worked in the trimester format was really how it DID work--the state under Roe could intervene with laws after the First Trimester (later modified to "viability" in other cases.)

So those out there who are going on and on about what they "saw with their own eyes" really need to question WHAT they saw with their own eyes. Did they see someone unable to form a complete thought (no, they didn't, whatever their "eyes" told them.) Or were they INTERPRETING what they saw in the context of the months of framing about what "old" must mean?

It seems to me that such interpretation of behavior is EXACTLY what Hur did. Hey guys--are you Hurs or objective observers?

This whole controversy also shows a thought error that I have always claimed affects the left as well as the right—the improper use of overgeneralization from insufficient facts. The Right does this pretty much habitually—but none of us are immune.

This is the basis of prejudice in general: one member of a group has a quality that is attributed to the whole group: overgeneralization from only a few instances of actual observed behavior.

And it is also true not just of groups. Taking one or a few observations about a PERSON and making a generalization about what that person must think or be. Someone you don’t know well loses his temper over something and you ASSUME he has a too short a temper without considering the circumstances.

Or someone walks into the kitchen and can’t remember why. Is this evidence that they should head to Memory Care right away? Why isn’t everyone over 40 in Memory Care?

Same goes here. The “halting” affect of his stuttering has never been a signal of memory problems. It’s been going on his whole life. EVERYONE has some memory issues about facts—that’s why I’m careful to google basic facts if I’m not sure I’m remembering correctly, something you can’t do in a speech. Have you NEVER in conversation (much less a stressful confrontation) stated a fact that you realize is wrong when someone points it out? If you never have, I trust you keep your angelic wings in top shape.

So why is ONE instance of poor delivery evidence of anything but poor delivery? And why does one assume that one instance of poor delivery means a person can’t also make good deliveries? I give you SOTU (and before you go off on teleprompters, remember how he tricked the GOP into AGREEING with his points in both recent SOTUs after they growled at the point—the teleprompter told him what the GOP would do during the speech?)

So in addition to being aware of framing and priming, be aware of the dangers of overgeneralization from one or a few “facts.” The GOP does it all the time on purpose. Do you want to be like the GOP?