From: Slate
The Science of Truthiness
Slate:
A bumper sticker was popular in the city where I went to college. It was yellow, with large black print that read: “Mopeds are dangerous.” Beneath the text was the blocky silhouette of a moped and nothing else. The sticker didn’t illustrate the claim that mopeds were dangerous—it didn’t show a moped crumpled against a tree or running someone over—but it was eye-catching, the yellow contrasting sharply with the black, and on message. I believed that bumper sticker, and still do, for all that I’ve rarely encountered a moped or read about a moped accident or even really grasped the difference between a moped and a Segway.
Truthiness is the word Stephen Colbert coined to describe the intuitive, not always rational feeling we get that something is just right. Are mopeds dangerous? Sure, if by dangerous you mean significantly riskier than cars but slightly less direful than motorcycles. They are not dangerous compared to smoking a lot of cigarettes or owning a gun. The point is that, while nothing about the bumper sticker backed up its ominous claim, I automatically accepted it.
Truthiness is “truth that comes from the gut, not books,” Colbert said in 2005. The word became a lexical prize jewel for Frank Rich, who alluded to it in multiple columns, including one in which he accused John McCain’s 2008 campaign of trying to “envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness.” Scientists who study the phenomenon now also use the term. It humorously captures how, as cognitive psychologist Eryn Newman put it, “smart, sophisticated people” can go awry on questions of fact.
Read the whole story: Slate
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