Jimmy Kimmel regularly sends his crew out to interview people on the street so he can put together segments which demonstrate how gullible and idiotic some people are. I don’t know if he’s ever said how many people they had to interview before they could find five or six of them to put into a segment. I assume most of them see through the question and say “this has gotta be a joke, right?” I certainly hope so.
Generally the people who express the most ridiculous moronic beliefs are hard-core Trump supporters though some aren’t.
The beard ban editions is choice. His crew duped unsuspecting passersby into believing the president had banned all foreign travelers with beards from entering the U.S. on last night’s episode.
Here’s another edition of Lie Witness News. The interviewer asks people about their opinions about events in the news which never happened, which in fact are so outlandish the question should prompt another response along the lines of “do you think I am a friggen moron?” Of course the producers are trying to find friggen morons.
I have mixed feelings about these segments. They mock people who we can probably assume have less than average IQ’s and this is through no fault of their own. Reasonably intelligent people are often gullible and superstitious.
When we find these videos amusing we can easily fall into the trap of believing that by dint of our intelligence we are superior or even more highly evolved beings.
Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera” show didn’t really make fun of non-too-bright people, it more tried to trick them. The show involved concealed cameras filming ordinary people being confronted with unusual situations, sometimes involving trick props, such as a desk with drawers that pop open when one is closed or a car with a hidden extra gas tank. When the joke was revealed, victims were told the show's catchphrase "Smile, you're on Candid Camera." Wikipedia
“Restroom sign on closet door” is a classic from the 1950s and was considered so daring at the time that networks refused to run it.
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If Donald Trump was actually very intelligent we could condemn him for taking advantage of people who whose intelligence was way below average. Instead we have a president who I believe has a testable IQ would would be average (100) and the lowest of any president. U.S. Grant was the previous lowest with an estimate IQ of 120. (From The Smartest and Least Brainy Presidents).
Donald Trump learns and changes his mind in the most primitive way: operant conditioning.
For example, if a line or insult works at a rally and elicits cheers he uses it again and again. If a line falls flat he stops using it. He is like the rat in the experimental psychology lab.
The salient question is what it would take to enlighten people like those in the Jimmy Kimmel segments. They hold beliefs not only about politics but no doubt about other things that are false. These aren't conditioned beliefs. They are beliefs held because of a variety of reasons from how people were taught as children to confirmation bias, a concept that has been written about frequently by those trying to explain why Trump has so many followers who believe his lies.
This “occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views or prejudices one would like to be true.
Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it. The bias suggests that we don’t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions. Reference
Going back to Kimmel’s segment on the beard ban. Consider the people who gave these responses think about what it would take to consider whether Trump’s travel bans actually kept the country safe. First they would have to accept that they were tricked into believing something totally absurd even before they could consider how prejudicial it was.
What I am afraid it boils down to is that the tautology old saw “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is really incorrect. You can teach an old smart dog new tricks. However, it is very difficult to teach a stupid dog any tricks at any age.
(I know, I know, dogs are more complex than people in many ways, and I would never insult any breed by comparing it to Trump supporters. My Westies are willful, almost impossible to train, and very smart. Recently one of them had to go on special canned dog food and his liter mate refuse to eat his dry kibble until he was fed the same expensive prescription diet. See list of “dumbest dog breeds.)