“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” commonly attributed to Mark Twain, though that tie is unconfirmed. Fits well with the AI hype, with big tech, and with all consumerism. Also Trump.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
This fits well but I’m missing the specific aspect where all the information that would have avoided being fooled is readily available, even being disseminated widely. A deliberate closing of ears. Well, maybe there’s a separate proverb about that.
To go back to Trumpism, a good example is this cartoon (from 2016 for crying out loud). And while the cartoon itself isn’t factual information, it reflects that people already knew all this back then. Soon after, Mary Trump and Tony Schwartz basically went on tour talking about it/him (and separately predicted Jan 6 btw: “He won’t go willingly”). And he proved all of them 100% right during his first presidency.
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” commonly attributed to Mark Twain, though that tie is unconfirmed. Fits well with the AI hype, with big tech, and with all consumerism. Also Trump.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
This fits well but I’m missing the specific aspect where all the information that would have avoided being fooled is readily available, even being disseminated widely. A deliberate closing of ears. Well, maybe there’s a separate proverb about that.
To go back to Trumpism, a good example is this cartoon (from 2016 for crying out loud). And while the cartoon itself isn’t factual information, it reflects that people already knew all this back then. Soon after, Mary Trump and Tony Schwartz basically went on tour talking about it/him (and separately predicted Jan 6 btw: “He won’t go willingly”). And he proved all of them 100% right during his first presidency.