- Because it’s much easier to tell lies than to identify and correct them, sometimes the more lies you tell, the more you get away with, despite your declining credibility. Analyzing statements to explain what is true and what is false can be painstaking, and—Streisand effect—explaining a lie often draws attention to it. If you have complete disregard for the truth and a captive audience, just increasing the quantity of lies can be a strategy.
- People are tribal. That white men, or at least white men who didn’t go to college, support Trump at these levels shows how powerful tribalism (and racism and xenophobia) are. Even in the face of incredible evidence of failed leadership, people will flock to someone who says he will protect people who look like them from people who don’t look like them, especially if you make them feel vulnerable.
- Lies are much easier if you only need *some* people to believe them. Children, for example, due in part to their lack of personal experience, can be very gullible—very few people believe in Santa but a large percentage of children do. Combining #1, #2, and #3, it’s relatively easy to spread lies about minority groups.
- Experts will flock to justify and rationalize those in power. Those in power—however illegitimate or wrong they may be—have access to prestige and resources that will draw otherwise legitimate experts and professionals to support them. These scientists, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, etc. may be drawn by personal ambition and greed, or perhaps they think that the access to power will help further what they view to be legitimate goals. Regardless, there will always be some individuals with otherwise trustworthy backgrounds who will make tortured technical arguments or spin outright lies on behalf of those in power.
- Lies about complex things are easier than lies about simple things. If you say that Mexican immigrants generally are murderers and rapists, a lot of people will realize that that’s likely false, based on their personal experience with Mexicans. If you lie about things like the case fatality rate or the herd immunity threshold, you’re much more likely to get away with it. Sadly, this and #4 mean that scientific information is especially vulnerable to lies.
- Conspiracy theories are often good at drawing people in, in part because of #1, #3 and #5. Conspiracy theories especially thrive in a lie-rich environment (e.g., one in which experts become less credible (#4)), because they also rely on a sense of skepticism about the prevailing accepted truth. Conspiracy theories about minority groups, buttressed by those in power, are particularly dangerous.
- The midpoint between the complete truth and a falsehood is a falsehood. Compromise is often necessary when it comes to collective action, but as far as actual informational accuracy is concerned, settling somewhere between the whole truth and a lie is to settle for a lie, or at least to sow doubt in the truth, thereby strengthening the lie.
- Journalists are susceptible to #4 as other experts are, and #1 and #7 mean that they often play a large and pernicious role in spreading lies, even when they are well-intentioned.
