That's a very dangerous attitude. The availability heuristic is very real when determining attitudes and beliefs, especially at scale. When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Of course not. Who has time for that?
If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that?
Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it - such as manipulation attempts, as this could be - is bad mental hygiene.
> When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives?
Well maybe some people don't have such a naive view of the world where they assume nobody is corrupt until it's slapped in their face (And even then). Some people can look at stories at this and not think "Hey fuck the PS4 for using forced labor, Ima buy a Xbox One instead".
> If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that?
So you would argue in that case it would be better to see party A's actions covered up so that there would be a fairer playing field between the two?
> Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it
But he isn't closing his eyes, he's got them wide open. He's just saying that he doesn't care who bringing him his info as long as it's factual.
