“I have the best words!”
The Trump Bias
One Man’s Impact On Your Perception Of Others
I love learning. I keep a fairly large rotation of informational and science-based podcasts in queue to listen to whenever I’m not doing a cerebral task.
I was listening to Lex Fridman’s Artificial Intelligence podcast when his guest let loose a string of words that I have often heard come from, and thus associated with, Donald J. Trump.
Not that this should matter all that much, but what he said was something like, “… a big, really big thing. So big, you wouldn’t believe it.” — or something to that effect.
The moment that string of words hit my eardrum and lit up my temporal lobe; I was immediately, and involuntarily, perceiving Fridman’s interviewee as somebody with a fairly low intelligence. His use of a simple sentence, said in a very certain way, completely altered the way my subconscious mind was allowing me to perceive him.
The moment it happened, I became vividly aware of this bizarre filter my subconscious mind had erected. It was a strange enough experience as it was; but what really made an impression on me was that it lingered. Fridman’s interviewee is a brilliant man and I completely enjoyed the conversation; however even after I became fully aware of this little shift in perception, it took several minutes of mental work to remove the majority of this filter. Yet even after that, this bizarre shade of “duuuuh!” that had colored my experience of the interview never fully went away.
It turns out that there’s a bit of a thought-provoking lesson here. This was an extremely lucid experience for me; but had I not been fully paying attention, and this whole perceptual shift happened in the background, I would have thought Lex Fridman’s interviewee was an intolerant idiot and I would never have known why. In fact, being a fan of human psychology, it probably wouldn’t be too far from the mark if I fabricated an excuse for why I thought he was a foolish person.
So, the big question here is: how often do such occurrences happen? Situations where the causal elements in perceptual shifts are little shadow-ninjas that leave us completely oblivious to the fact that they are the root-cause of the eventual fallout?
Honestly, the most frustrating part of the experience was dealing with the internal cognitive fight to re-establish my respect for this person. You would think it should be easy, right? It turns out that when your subconscious mind makes a connection, convincing it otherwise is a fucking chore.
