[–] nine4dnine 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I know a guy who verbatim tends to repeat things that he has heard other people say as though they are his original thoughts. It is the most annoying thing on the planet!
[–] TalkingAnimal 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
We use heuristics to determine whether or not something is valid. One of those things is polished appearance. One teenager I knew who I thought was intelligent was convinced Obama wanted to brand HIV+ people because a link was shared with her on Facebook. It looked polished. It looked like a news site similar to CNN or FoxNews. I asked her to click on their home page, and it became clear these were prank news articles (celebrity deaths for living celebrities, and so on).
The other is the transitive property of trustworthiness. I trust my cousin. If my cousin tells me something, I generally believe it to be true. If someone he trusts told him something untrue, and he relayed it to me as true, I would likely believe it if it did not set off any warning bells. This is the basic mechanism by which people take things they read as "gospel".
[–] Confusion 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
All our lives, we are assaulted by information, far more than we can totally comprehend. If we were to truly critically analysis every piece of knowledge we read, learn and see, we would be driven insane. There are limitations on the human brain, and parroting the opinions of others is a "shortcut" we all learn to get by through daily life. Rather than calculate every thought, we just copy the pre-calculated thoughts of others, and store them away for later.
This isn't to be shamed, it is a fundamental flaw of our biology that can't be helped. What is, is people who VOICE these parroted thoughts. We can't help absorb bias knowledge from the media, especially on subject we know nothing about, so we sort it for later, but sadly people are lazy, so when they bring up this knowledge from storage they don't use critical thought, they just repeat it. They should be asking where they learned it, how and why, and if they can't be bothered to do this, just be quiet, but sadly people just want to speak their opinion, even on things they know nothing about. Could be many factors for this, but I believe people aren't properly taught to do this. Schools teach to parrot knowledge, critical thought is taught in college, and really only in STEM. Most people never get the training.
[–] CommonSense ago (edited ago)
Because that is how they are raised. Government takes children from parents at age 4-5, and starts cramming propaganda in them for 40 hours a week. And, then, they reward them for being able to regurgitate that information onto paper. They don't teach them how to think critically, and they are very systematic about which information they allow them to have.
You literally spend your whole life doing exactly what you're asking about.
[–] Salsashark717 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I know a lot of people like this. I think a lot of it is just Cognitive Dissonance. A lot of it is just being too lazy to research it themselves. My mom is uber Conservative, and she's real bad about it. Causes a lot of arguments. I'm not even on a team, but I read when things catch my eye and I ask questions. She was so mad the day I explained to her that Obama-phones started under Regan and expanded to cell phones under Bush.
[–] newoldwave ago
It's the "go along with the crowd" mentality.
[–] Konran [S] ago
Yep, that's certainly part of it. A dangerous trait that allows for the rise of despots, dictatorships and other wide-ranging group control mechanisms.