I certainly agree with the Toxoplasma thesis, or I should say it sounds very plausible to me. I don’t think it’s unique to journalism at all—I remember in my MA reading about Israel and Palestine, a book called Through Different Eyes I think, and it fitted a very similar mechanism. Each side would highlight the other side’s “atrocities” as justification for their own retaliation, which would then become “atrocities” which the other side would use as justification for their retaliation, etc. Same thing here: some, I dunno, gender-critical feminist tweets something angry in response to some trans-rights activist; that tweet is then held up to show how awful the gender-critical types are and excuses a bunch of horrible comments; round and round we go.
Re 1), I think that’s rarer than you think. But as rationalist-adjacent types you’ll know that it doesn’t have to be deliberate. We’re extremely good at only noticing the data that is convenient, and fooling ourselves in the service of fooling others. I’m sure there are some cynics and grifters, but they’re nowhere near as common as people honestly saying what they believe. Debate is war, arguments are soldiers, etc, and you have to kill the other soldiers, but it’s not usually a conscious thing to think “I know that is true but I have to pretend it’s not,” it’s more “That is an enemy soldier, therefore it is bad, therefore I must destroy it.”
I certainly agree with the Toxoplasma thesis, or I should say it sounds very plausible to me. I don’t think it’s unique to journalism at all—I remember in my MA reading about Israel and Palestine, a book called Through Different Eyes I think, and it fitted a very similar mechanism. Each side would highlight the other side’s “atrocities” as justification for their own retaliation, which would then become “atrocities” which the other side would use as justification for their retaliation, etc. Same thing here: some, I dunno, gender-critical feminist tweets something angry in response to some trans-rights activist; that tweet is then held up to show how awful the gender-critical types are and excuses a bunch of horrible comments; round and round we go.
Re 1), I think that’s rarer than you think. But as rationalist-adjacent types you’ll know that it doesn’t have to be deliberate. We’re extremely good at only noticing the data that is convenient, and fooling ourselves in the service of fooling others. I’m sure there are some cynics and grifters, but they’re nowhere near as common as people honestly saying what they believe. Debate is war, arguments are soldiers, etc, and you have to kill the other soldiers, but it’s not usually a conscious thing to think “I know that is true but I have to pretend it’s not,” it’s more “That is an enemy soldier, therefore it is bad, therefore I must destroy it.”