Trump supporters, the power of fallacy

IN HIS book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, discusses how our minds work. One of his findings was that Fallacies are powerful because they are fast, easy, exciting, and emotionally satisfying.

- DR MAHMOUD YOUSSEF BAKER

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump delivers remarks to the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York City. Trump controls his supporters by talking to their fear, hope, and anger, and deliberately avoids talking to their logic and engaging with them in compelling arguments, says the writer.

(AFP)

In many circumstances, they can be more powerful in our minds than facts. However, facts are ultimately supposed to be more powerful. As an example from my side, if I say: yesterday, I saw a dog biting a man. Since this is a daily fact, most of us will not be excited, and we may respond: so what? But if I say, yesterday, I saw a man biting a dog, this is obviously a big lie, but people will get excited and pay attention to me, and the lie will stay in their minds for a long time. This is exactly what Trump is doing, lots of lies almost every day to get his fans excited and listening to him.

Fallacies also might make us feel like we have a solution, and we are strong. So, we can see how Trump abuses this methodology of communication to control his supporters. He is only talking to their fear, hope, and anger, and deliberately avoids talking to their logic and engaging with them in compelling arguments.