Entry 6

I Know the Truth, So Don’t Bother Me With Facts

     Nowadays, not only media but people itself can use its power to make foolish to others as always. In the passage “I Know the Truth, So Don’t Bother Me with Facts” from Jeffrey Kluger,  humans have been easily surrounded by rumors and gossip since long time ago. All that need is a bit of exclamation like the rumor about building a mosque at Ground Zero in Downtown Manhattan.  Kluger mentions a recent research at Ohio State University to determine how easy people believe in a rumor. The new study done it by R. Kelly Garret and Erik Nisbet  on 750 people, showed that they were aware of the rumor about Ground Zero and then they were set in order to determine if they would change their minds, once they were aware of the truth. However,  less than the third of people showed  a probability to change their minds. Garrett said that the result s of a lot data shows that people are so attached to their beliefs that bring them in contradiction with their prejudices. People seem to be confused and scare when either their religious beliefs are involved or they surrender by their fantasies.

      In one of the studies done it by Garret, from the University of Ohio, that Kluger mentions, and which shows that people are so attached to their beliefs that even the truth is presented to them, they continue stock on their prejudices. For instance, a few months ago a huge campaign about the end of the world was everywhere in the United States, saying that the end of the world would be May 21, of 2011. Even though the people knew that it was a lie, they were scared and everyone was wondering, “what if” and all that because one of main religious in the world which is Christianity believes in that to occur or sort of. Moreover a lot of people who really believed in that event got foolish since they invested all their savings on such a campaign that was nothing than a exclamatory lie.

      Kluger also states that people is not only surrender by their biases or religious beliefs but also by enigmas or fantasies. For example, everyone knows that the United States is one of the richest countries and well armed. However, we don’t know this because we’ve been informed, but thanks to the media and in this case more precisely call Hollywood, we think that we know about it. It might be true, or it might not, but everyone thinks that if there is any difficulty in this country or with this country an organization like the CIA or FBI would find a solution. Moreover, we think that a super hero would come to save us, and it can be a coincidence but in cartoons the USA is the country that has more superheroes and the most powerful.

     In brief, people can be real foolish by rumors and fantasies but it gets worse when liers and themedia get involved too.