Rewire your Brain to be Skeptical
When I'm told that something is rewiring our brains, I'm skeptical. The bad version of the story usually pertains to things that accidentally rewire your brain like smartphones, pornography, social media, or wifi. The good version usually pertains to things we can do to deliberately rewire our own brains, like brain training or meditation or cognitive behavioral therapy.
The Price of Tactical Exaggeration
"Hitler ate babies" is a statement that deserves to be trivialized. Hitler didn't eat babies. Yet, to say so trivializes how terrible Hitler was.
Some people defend this kind of exaggeration by claiming it's tactical. If we're honest in our representations, people don't care enough. So we have to exaggerate the problem to motivate a more urgent response. It's kind of like archery where you have to aim above the target because if you aim at the target you're going to fall short.
I am confident that on the margin some people are encouraged by exaggeration into more appropriate responses. This is the benefit of tactical exaggeration. I'm not going to say that this benefit doesn't exist (although doing so is an amusing contradiction). Rather, in my further defense of trivialization, I want to point out the price of tactical exaggeration.
When to Believe all Women
Should you believe a woman who says she's been raped? Yes, but I have an important qualifier.
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