Opus 2025-119: Reading Immune System

Sometimes I wonder why I finished reading certain books.  I wonder why I read some of the Clickbait that I get tricked into.  I wonder why I have a long conversations with people who won’t listen and who are rigid and seem to be unable to put facts together.  It occurred to me perhaps it is a case of building up my immunity to various mental and intellectual deficiencies.

Just as our immune system gathers strength as it is exposed to different attacks from viruses and bacteria, I think our intellectual ability also can be strengthened by the controversy that comes from dealing with irrational thinking.  I have a list of things that I call “timeless illustrations.”  You may hear me use them time and time again and that’s because they’re so effective.  One of them has to do with how bank tellers can tell counterfeit bills without a lot of complex chemical or visual examination.  The reason they can tell what counterfeit is like is because they know what the real thing feels like.  They touch a bill and they know there’s something wrong with it.

In the same way our contact with faulty logic, false facts and fake news is a catalyst because we know how to think and we know what truth is.  Think of the clickbait you see on a regular basis.  It doesn’t take much experience to realize touching the link is a waste of time.  I’ve learned that any time the title talks about how Charlie Kirk destroys a liberal student it’s a bit of an exaggeration.  Yes, he does correct their fallacies but he doesn’t come close to destroying them.  For one thing he is too polite for that to happen.  If you’re looking for something dramatic, keep looking.  Same thing with extremist types of words such as “hilarious”, “New discovery”, “you will be shocked” and “Best”.

I remember when I first started blogging I got excited because I had so many comments left on a post.  It didn’t take very long to realize that the vast majority were just bots laying some nonsense on me.  When I wrote about a Supreme Court decision and the comment has to do with Viagra, I can catch on pretty quick.  That’s what made me start to moderate my comments.  The current level of programming the bots, sometimes labeled AI, is getting more clever, and actually puts some sentences together that make sense.  The thing is, if you read what is there you find that it only touches briefly on what post says, and the rest is just nonsense.

So sometimes I will finish a book or an article, because it might give me a little bit of edge to recognize nonsense more effectively in the future.  It is also a good way to drift into a nap.

homo unius libri