Amygdapalooza

Here’s a threat to democracy you haven’t heard of yet: Amygdapalooza.

The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes threats. It deals with emotion and fear. It’s not very good at parsing complex information. Your frontal cortex does that.

Using your frontal cortex is demanding. You may have heard you should avoid temptations (like walking into a bakery) after thinking long and hard, because the frontal cortex, which is also the center of responsible decision making, is left exhausted after extended thought.

The amygdala is good at responding to bona fide threats. For a soldier in combat, a healthy amygdala is essential. The amygdala is not good at making sense of complex information, like the content of a news article or blog or podcast that covers current events and politics.

The United States is suffering from a state of permanent Amygdapalooza. A lot of Americans — a whole lot of Americans — process current events content with their amygdalae, not with their frontal cortices. As a result, Amygdapaloozers don’t think critically about what they read, hear, and see, and are persuaded to believe things that are misleading, factually incorrect, or preposterous.

Consider two excerpts from recent online news articles. First, an excerpt from a news article posted on 3/29/21, referencing the trial of police office Derek Chauvin, accused of murdering George Floyd:

It’s not about George Floyd, obviously; it never was. No one on CNN cared about George Floyd while he was alive. He was unemployed and on drugs. Like a lot of people in this country, they paid him no attention. For that matter, no one on CNN actually cares about George Floyd now. What they care about is you and your role in the systemic racism that supposedly killed George Floyd.

The second excerpt, posted 3/24/21, described an incentive Krispy Kreme is offering for people receiving Covid vaccinations:

As a token of its appreciation to members of the public doing their part to fight Covid-19, leading doughnut purveyor Krispy Kreme announced Wednesday it would begin offering vaccinated customers a free ride on its glaze conveyor belt. “We know a lot of our customers stayed home this past year and missed visiting their local Krispy Kreme, so the least we can do is offer them a complimentary glazing once they get inoculated,” said CEO Michael J. Tattersfield, explaining that anyone who displays a qualifying Centers for Disease Control Vaccination Record Card would get to hop on the conveyor and receive a full-body coating of sugar, milk, and light corn syrup.

How many readers would believe the second excerpt? A free ride on a doughnut conveyor belt? Wild guess: a number asymptotically approaching zero. (That excerpt is from The Onion, a satirical news site.) It doesn’t take a lot of work by your frontal cortex to figure this out. There isn’t any temptation for the amygdala to get involved.

But what about the first excerpt? How many people who read that excerpt would believe it, in the sense of swallowing it whole? Wild guess: it’s not a number asymptotically approaching zero. Let’s say, oh, 20 million people. Why 20 million? There are about 200 million Americans aged 18 and older. Per 538.com, Donald Trump’s approval rating, when he left office, was around 40%. Let’s call that “the Trump base”. The excerpt is written by Tucker Carlson, who targets what he writes to the Trump base. Let’s say only half of those people believe what Carlson wrote. That’s 40 million people. OK let’s halve it again, just to be safe. 20 million people.

So why would 20 million people believe Carlson? Because they are in a persistent state of Amygdapalooza. They don’t critically question what they read, which is hard work. They see articles like Carlson’s as a threatening stimulus, which takes no work.

Look at the excerpt from Carlson’s article again. What kind of questions might someone who was doing the hard work of thinking critically ask?

“It’s not about George Floyd, obviously”.

“Obviously”? Why? In this context, “obviously” has an odor to it. In software, a “code smell” is a suspicious practice that indicates a deeper problem; for instance, duplicated code is widely considered a code smell. Similarly, the use of the adverb “obviously” in what is ostensibly a news article is typically a prose smell. When you say something is obvious, you imply that people who disagree must be stupid, naive, or oblivious. It’s a way of making a point without having to do the heavy lifting of explaining your reasoning. It’s lazy prose construction, and it’s targeted at your amygdala.

“No one on CNN cared about George Floyd while he was alive.”

Carlson states that no one “on” CNN cared about George Floyd. So does that refer only to CNN broadcasters vs., say, news editors behind the scenes? Why the distinction? CNN does not consist solely of on-air broadcasters. It’s a complex organization with 4,000 employees. OK, so perhaps none of those 4,000 people even knew Floyd. That might be a sentence that merits the adverb “obviously”. If you have never heard of someone, how, exactly, would you care about them? That’s like saying “No one at CNN cared about George Washington when he was alive.” That’s a non-sequitur.

“He was unemployed …”

Yes, George Floyd was unemployed on May 25th, 2020, when he died in police custody. When 2020 began, Floyd was doubly employed. Eventually, due to the pandemic, he lost both jobs: one as a truck driver, and the other as a bouncer. By May 25th, Floyd was unemployed. Carlson doesn’t bother to explain that. It’s the sort of context that blunts the amygdala appeal. Most people reading Carlson’s article will assume Floyd was chronically unemployed. He wasn’t. Why does it matter? Because for better or worse, unemployment in this country carries a stigma. Meat for your amygdala.

“… and on drugs.”

What does “on drugs” mean, exactly? Always on drugs? Sometimes on drugs? On drugs only when he died in police custody? For the last thirty years? For the last thirty days? What kind of drugs? Prescription drugs? Street drugs? Drugged to the point of dysfunction? Regarding Floyd’s drug use Wikipedia says, “Floyd continued to battle drug addiction and went through periods of use and sobriety.” How do you feel about someone who is “on drugs”? How do you feel about someone who “continued to battle drug addiction and went through periods of use and sobriety”? Amygdala vs. frontal cortex.

“Like a lot of people in this country, they paid him no attention.”

OK, but Carlson already wrote “No one on CNN cared about George Floyd while he was alive”. Repetition in a news article? Prose smell. Amygdala.

“For that matter, no one on CNN actually cares about George Floyd now.”

Whoa. Full stop. The people “on” CNN are not CNN: a lot of people contribute to what CNN produces (see above). As mentioned, there are 4,000 people at CNN. According to the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), CNN lacks “black representation among its leadership”. NABJ doesn’t object to the absence of black employees. Blacks work at CNN, though maybe not in leadership positions. So isn’t it natural to assume that black CNN employees, many of whom produce CNN content, including the Chauvin trial, care about George Floyd now? Carlson is saying they do not. That’s preposterous. Skin color aside, of the 4,000 people at CNN, white or black or otherwise, exactly zero care about George Floyd? Zero people. Somehow, Carlson knows the intimate thoughts of 4,000 people, the vast majority of whom he has never met.

“What they care about is you and your role in the systemic racism that supposedly killed George Floyd.”

Since Carlson in fact does not know what 4,000 individuals care about (as if they were all slaves to a single concept, like drones in a hive), what is his point? Carlson wants to provoke your amygdala: CNN (he is saying) is accusing you (the reader, and especially the reader’s amygdala) of a) being a racist and b) killing George Floyd. In fact, CNN is doing nothing of the sort: it is simply covering Chauvin’s trial. Did systemic racism kill George Floyd? It’s worth a debate. But it has nothing to do with CNN’s coverage. If you’re white, and you don’t consider yourself a racist, and you are already highly sensitive to the culture wars now underway in this country, and you are part of the Trump Base, how do you feel about CNN focusing on “you and your role in the systemic racism that supposedly killed George Floyd”? What’s happening in your amygdala? Bonus: Carlson tosses in another prose smell with “supposedly”, often used in prose to imply skepticism, i.e., “not really, but people claim it.” “Supposedly”, as used here, is just more Amygdala bait.

That’s just one excerpt. The rest of Carlson’s article suffers from the same casual indifference to fact.

The article appears on foxwilmington.com, which is a news site. Nothing on the web page suggests that Carlson’s article is anything other than news, vs. opinion. Or biased propaganda. Just news.

If you Google Tucker Carlson, you will see that he is repeatedly described as a “journalist.” Google describes a journalist as: “a person who writes for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or prepares news to be broadcast.” Most news articles have some degree of bias, skewing left or right, but credible news organizations make some effort to identify content that is deliberately opinionated.

Supposition: if you asked people reading Carlson’s article what they were doing, how many would say “reading the news” vs. “reading Tucker Carlson’s personal view on CNN’s coverage of the Chauvin trial”?

Carlson’s article isn’t news, any more than the Onion article about Krispy Kreme giving away rides on doughnut conveyor belts is news. People who chronically swallow articles like Carlson’s as news, processing what they see, read, and hear primarily with their amygdalae see the world very differently than people who turn first to their frontal cortex when reading about current events.

A few final questions to think about:

• How do you eliminate Amygdapalooza?
• How many Americans were taught in high school how to read news critically?
• What is the cost to our country and our future of not teaching every American high school student how to read news critically?
• What is unchecked Amygdapalooza doing to this country?