Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Who will be the Victim of Propaganda: The Conformist or the Critical Thinker?

I have been accused of relying on a website that allegedly peddles "propaganda". 

First, what is propaganda? Based on Dictionary.com’s definition, propaganda has been about “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.” 

In short, propaganda essentially is deliberate disinformation or bluntly a lie. So I am, in effect, a believer of lies.

Yet the consensus thinking has revolved around the following themes:

-Debts are free lunches or have no limits or consequences to an individual or to a business entity, to the markets or to the government or to the political economy. 

-Stocks markets are a one way street

The money question is: are these about reality?

Isn’t economics about the law of scarcity?

So which is propaganda? Information that defies economic logic and reality or information designed to sell to the public what they want to hear—confirmation bias?

Let me further spell the difference between a conformist and an independent thinker

A conformist relies on information that conforms with one’s biases. Such person thinks along with the crowd. They are likely to reject information that goes to the contrary regardless of the validity of the reasoning. Crowd information or wisdom is like gospel truth for them.

On the other hand, a critical thinker attempts to distinguish between reality and quackery. Such person, who thinks out-of-the-box, is likely interested with the validity of reasoning or theories rather than finding comfort with the crowd.

So who will likely be a victim of propaganda, the critical thinker or the conformist?

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