Public Cognitive Dissonance

Derek Morris
Aug 9, 2017 · 1 min read

From the Atlantic “It’s the sort of fiction that is obvious to all involved, but on which diplomacy is built: All parties agree to believe in the fiction for the sake of getting along.”

Realpolitik is public cognitive dissonance. With two actors and at least two conflicting cognitions that allow a third desired condition to exist. It fails when one party stretches the magnitude of dissonance to become unbearable through two factors.

1. The importance of cognitions: The more the elements are personally valued, the greater the magnitude of the dissonant relationship.

2. Ratio of cognitions: The proportion of dissonant to consonant elements

One party can use factor one to stretch the dissonance until they load too many dissonant elements into the equation.

For example:

Answer a phone call = deplorable
Sell them $2 billion of weapons = ok

🤔

The one China policy may be overall good. It creates stupid situations like the phone call but that is vastly preferable to stupid situations like war.

The world you see isn’t always real, but sometimes that’s ok as long as you know why and how.

    Derek Morris

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    3D Organ Printing (United Therapeutics $UTHR), Bio/Bitcoin/AI (@HVFLabs) Death is a disease. Cure it.