1. Is selective reading a factor in the formation of false extreme beliefs?
Greene’s put out the Jewish space laser idea in a long Facebook post that is presented here.
The post ends with:
“But what do I know. I just read a lot.”
And, actually, there is a lot of true information in the post indicating that she did do a good bit of reading. (I did not find any explicitly false information, but I did not fact-check everything.)
The idea of space lasers to beam energy to the Earth are being explored as a technology. PG&E is investing in the effort and one person on the board of directors is a vice chairman of a Rothchild investment bank. (Not clear if Rothchild actually invests in the space laser exploration, but could be.)
But she missed reading the facts that make the the idea that space lasers caused the CA fire preposterous: (1) Space lasers that beam energy to Earth are far in the future if they ever happen, (2) even if they happen the energy density of the beam is planned to be much lower than what would be required to start a fire on the Earth.
I did not have to read a lot to discover this. I just read Wikipedia.
My algorithm for finding what to read that was important. I started out with the claim that she claimed that she heard that Jewish space lasers started the fires.
First, I searched for the actual source. Her actual words. I assumed there was no need to rely on any other source for this. The claim about space lasers was more complicated. I searched for a secondary source that I (mostly) trusted. (I guess that I could have been more skeptical of these 2 sources. I sometimes look for more if the sources don’t seem to be credible.)
It seems that selective reading is a factor in this. And notice that Facebook and other social media algorithms tend to contribute to selective reading.
2. The Dems and Republicans seemed to be talking past each other on the matter of removing Greene from committees. Nancy Pelosi made it clear that the key unprecedented fact was that Greene had supported death threats against her political opponents in the wake of actual and attempted murders on January 6. Greene had supported putting a bullet in Nancy Pelosi’s head and hanging Obama and Hillary. But neither Kevin McCarthy or Green even mentioned the death threats, no apology, no disavowal, no walking them back, no nothing. This was is a very odd omission. I guess they are just dumb or maybe they wanted to lose, not sure.
