The Elon Musk Fallacy — Part 1
An Enraged Equal Number on Both Sides
“Have you ever had One of those conversations where half the people in the room have a very strongly held opinion and the other half felt just as strongly, but in the opposite direction.” Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam
No. No no no. I was just listening to an intellectual podcaster that I enjoy, and he started off by saying that there’s an equal number of people on both sides who are passionate about an issue. “No. No no no,” I called out, stopping the podcast right at the start. I can NOT keep hearing the “Balanced” argument garbage, as it is repeated endlessly in the mainstream media, the internet media, the social media. “Let’s start an argument off: there are two sides.” Now it even comes from a mild-mannered highly-intelligent scholar-host of my Hidden Brain, my last refuge.
I call it the Elon Musk Fallacy and it’s the most common thing that Media does to screw with our heads.
Elon Musk just tweeted out a tweet when talking about buying controlling shares of Twitter that said his job for Twitter would be to piss off 10% of extremists on each side. If both sides get 10% pissed off, then free speech is affective. That’s pretty stupid. Free speech being used by one side is to lie, smear, create discord, and make bigoted dog-whistles, and call the “other side” pedophiles. Those false claims, alt facts wares, and outrageous behaviors are equal to exactly nothing on the “other” side.
There is approximately 0% of Democrats doing what they are doing. There is no equivalent for Marjorie Taylor Greene because the Democrats are not filthy liars and name callers (like I am here, if I’m still Democrat, but I am doing it burdened by evidence which Trumpers are not). I certainly don’t agree with all Democrats, but even the “extreme” 10% of congressional or senatorial or judicial or executive branch Democrats are not anywhere near calling Republicans a group of pedophiles.
There’s not one of them that does that. There is no extreme. There is no equivalent to her or Matt Gaetz. There is no and has never been an equivalent to Donald Trump in America.
Balance Bias is a fallacy and common tool of mainstream dialectic media that splits the world into the false balance of two sides of opposing extremists that do not exist.
Of course, this Elon Musk Fallacy really is common in the media as I’ve said. Ratings sweep upward when two sides are set up and then “duke it out.” It goes beyond the simple dialectal reasoning of argumentation in that it attributes extremism to two “far” sides. It’s a dialectical argument of extremists used as a media convention — unconsciously or consciously deliberately (if you wish to take sides, but I’ll just go with ‘semi-consciously’).
It’s posited by media commentators and PR firms and political strategists who might want to appeal to the masses so they can sound instantly intelligent because they’re able to break a complex issue up in two, with a silent middle in between they can safely be a part of, escaping the 10% extremists on both sides. Congratulations on that.
Let the arguments start and the new flame wars on the Musk Twitter world begin. That is the modern version of the dialectic that is the Elon Musk Fallacy of arguments: we are caught between two extremist sides of 10% on each wing, trapped between them.
Hope that makes you feel safe. Me, I feel a bit trapped.
See Part 2:
https://brenkelly1970.medium.com/the-elon-musk-fallacy-part-2-dde2bed1c4a0
