What happens in the US does not stay in the US. As the big daddy of the democratic free world, events there cast pebbles that ripple across the surface of the entire planet. One such event was the death of George Floyd and resultant cascade of reactions and narratives that have left many people directing vitriol toward police for being racist specifically in their killing of unarmed black people.

While we are of course willing to change our minds, there has been thus far no evidence that we have seen that justifies the claim that. (Note: see episode 6 of our show for a detailed breakdown of our reasoning. Sam Harris did a great job too since we published ours in an episode entitled “Can we Pull Back from the Brink?”)

The emotions people are feeling, however, are very real. As such, we attempt to put a finger on where this emotion may have come from. In doing so we discuss what we see to be key factors at play. These were including but not limited to the following topics:

• If the Black Lives Matter organization cared about black lives, where may their attention be more logically focussed?
• Availability Heuristic, Social Desirability Bias, Confirmation Bias, Negativity Bias, and Normative Conformity.
• “Fiery, but mostly peaceful, protests” and the legacy media such as CNN or the newspaper formerly known as the “New York Times” hijacking our emotive responses due to ideological and financial reasons.
• System I versus System II thinking in determining views on Black Lives Matter.
• Defunding the police in a militarized population.
• Human error playing a role in law enforcement even in best-case scenarios involving the best vetted and most highly trained individuals.
• Falsification versus Verification as ways of aligning with reality to the best of our ability.
• What makes Science so different from what James Lindsay has called “Critical Social Justice”?
• The strength of our emotions do not reflect the accuracy of our opinions.

“Love everyone and tell the truth.”

Show Notes:
What is Availability Bias?
whatis.techtarget.com/definitio…

Karl Popper’s Theory of Falsifiability
www.simplypsychology.org/Karl-Popp…

Ciaran O’ Regan:
Website - www.quarrelsomelife.com
Instagram - @CTQuarrelsome
Twitter - @CTQuarrelsome

James Valaitis:
Website - infinityjames.com
Twitter - @infinityjames