The Trump-defending Libertarian blogger Willis V. Hart LOVES to bash Liberals. And he LOVES it even more if he can bash Liberals for criticizing Donald Trump.
Willis Hart: On the Fact that Some of Donald Trump's Critics Are so Moronic that They Actually Believe that the Dude's Sons Killed a Woolly Mammoth, a Saber Toothed Tiger, and a Triceratops [see video below]. Yes sir, that's a special kind of stupid. (3/26/2017 at 4:30pm). |
The video in question, titled "Trump's Sons Kill a Triceratops on Hunting Safari - Liberals Believe, And They're Very Upset" (5:48).
I don't think that this is a case of people being stupid, it's a case of people not paying attention. Thinking of what they're going to say instead of listening. Or not expecting that the object of the interviewer is to make them look stupid. I mean, I've seen similar pranks on the Tonight Show. Word replacements that people, if they were paying attention, would catch.
My guess at to what is going on? Predictive perceptual signaling, which is a phenomenon in which the brain attempts to predict future perceptual input.From the Science Brainwaves article "Hearing what you expect to hear"...
Most of us have had the experience of finding a glaring error in some written work that we had previously checked several times. For example when blogging I often find at least one simple error on a post once it has actually been published, despite proofreading it thoroughly before submission. In such circumstances it seems impossible that one can have overlooked such an obvious error. The reason that such mistakes get missed is that we tend to perceive what we expect to perceive. When proof reading something we ourselves have written we know what we were planning to write. We therefore tend to perceive the words we think we put on the page, rather than those that are actually there. (11/9/2014 article by Rob Hoskin PhD, the Neuroscience Department of Sheffield University). |
The portion of the article I quoted has to do with seeing words what we expect to see, and not the words that are actually there. But the same applies to spoken words. Clearly the people being interviewed did not expect to hear the words "Woolly Mammoth", "Saber Toothed Tiger" or "Triceratops" because they are expecting "Lion", "Tiger" or "Elephant". And therefore they did not hear the names of extinct animals.
A more likely an explanation than people actually being so stupid as to they think the Trump sons killed extinct animals, no? And that, IMO, is ALL this video proves. That people hear what they expect to hear and not what is actually said. And that people aren't expecting that when an interviewer asks a question, the REAL intent is to prank them.
If the interviewer had said, "wait a minute, did you hear what I said - pay attention", I predict that zero of the people being interviewed would agree that the Trump sons could have killed a Woolly Mammoth, a Saber Toothed Tiger or a Triceratops.
BTW, the brain uses predictive perceptual signaling because "in the vast majority of cases expectation improves perception". According to the article "there is ample evidence from behavioural science that being able to predict the content of an upcoming stimulus improves our ability to successfully perceive it".
For more information read the article. Bottom line is, the human brain often deceives us. Also note that nobody in the video repeats what the interviewer said. Nobody says "yes, I agree that Eric and Donald Jr. killing that Woolly Mammoth was bad".
But the Hartster wants SO MUCH to believe that Liberals are this stupid. So he sees this prank and thinks, yeah, these people heard EXACTLY what the interviewer said and agreed that the Trump sons hunted and killed extinct animals. It is a "fact". Which points to Willis being the one that is "so moronic", IMO.