FAILS: Advanced cognition isn't us!

THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2024

Could this be the latest fail? Long ago and far away, Al Pacino made a famous statement. 

"This whole trial is out of order," the gentleman famously said.

He was denouncing a fictional trial, one part of a fictional movie. The film's official title was somewhat odd:

...And Justice For All

Those three little dots are often forgotten. And according to the leading authority, Al Pacino's famous speech is often flatly misquoted. 

According to the leading authority, Al Pacino didn't say, "This whole courtroom is out of order," as people often claim. He only denounced that one trial.

Question: How could a famous speech end up being misquoted? Given the way our imperfect cognition works, it happens all the time!

In fact, our national discourse is driven by widespread "cognition fails."  Consider the incident Nicholas Kristof cites at the start of this morning's column.

In his new column for the New York Times, Kristof calls for President Biden to step aside as a candidate. For ourselves, we don't have a firm, finished view on that particular matter. 

We do have a hard-and-fast view concerning a type of incident Kristof describes near the end of his column.

Late in the column, Kristof takes us back to one part of the 1976 White House campaign. As he does, he describes a fairly serious fail—a serious cognition shortfall:

President Biden, Voters Want Change

[...]

Perhaps Biden might recover his political footing, but I suspect it’s more likely that he’ll face a steady drip-drip of troubles. That’s partly because of biases that lead us to highlight information that buttresses pre-existing narratives.

Gerald Ford, for example, was one of the most athletic and graceful of presidents, but he took one tumble and the story took hold (quite unfairly!) that he was a klutz. From then on, every time he slipped, tripped or fell—even while skiing—a clip of it made television news and confirmed the narrative. And because cameras are always on the president, slips on camera are inevitable.

Likewise, fair or not, Biden is under a microscope: Every time he misspeaks or has a senior moment, voters will see clips of it, amplifying the discussion of whether he is infirm. And that’s without another disastrous episode like the presidential debate last month; if something like that happens again, God help the Democrats.

In that passage, Kristof describes a tendency to submit to "biases that lead us to highlight information that buttresses pre-existing narratives." (We'd call that a jumble of words!)

In the specific incident Kristof cites, he mainly seems to refer to the tendency of the mainstream press corps to submit to such "biases." In fact, a second branch of American discourse was also strongly involved in that particular incident.

At any rate, it's true! As a college student, President Ford was a football star at the University of Michigan. 

The young Gerald Ford was a football star, but let's not overstate it! According to his presidential library, he "did not earn All-America honors as popularly believed." 

He actually wasn't an All-American! That was another one of those bogus stories which somehow got all around.

That said, President Ford was a highly accomplished college athlete. As a senior, he played in several post-season all-star games. He turned down contract offers from the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions in the NFL of that time, opting for Yale Law School instead.

Ford wasn't a world-class athlete, but he was surely one of the most accomplished athletes in the history of the White House. Having said that, so what? 

On one utterly meaningless occasion, in June 1975, he slipped while descending the stairs from Air Force One. For whatever reason, a certain type of "bias" pretty much took over from there. 

In the passage we've quoted, Kristof refers to the conduct of "television news," but the spreading of this particular "narrative" was also accomplished by an endless series of performances by pratfall expert Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live.

In this report from CNN in 2008, Chase acknowledges that he behaved in the way he did because he wanted Jimmy Carter to get elected. So it goes when the giants of the journalism and comedy worlds submit to their penchants for "bias."

Down through the years, our mainstream press corps has routinely submitted to this penchant for "bias." In the case of our presidential elections, they've cast various candidates in certain stereotypical roles.  They've then begun disappearing and inventing "facts" to support the silly, novelized stories they've apparently wanted to tell.

So it will go with a Candidate Biden, Nicholas Kristof now says. Almost surely, what he says is correct. This is a type of cognitive "fail" which has routinely occurred within our elite mainstream press. 

This very evening, at 6:30, President Biden is now scheduled to engage in a freeform press conference. For those who would like to see President Biden remain a candidate, it could be much as Nestor says in the wake of one of Agamemnon's meltdowns:

This is the night that rips our ranks to shreds or pulls us through.

It could be like that tonight. Or then again, maybe not!

Will President Biden remain a candidate? We have no idea.

Should be remain a candidate? To a large extent, that depends on what you think about his performance  at the June 27 debate.

Was that a single, inexplicable, weird event—in modern parlance, a "one-off?" Or was that terrible performance the result of some ongoing condition—one in a series of such events, with more of the same to come?

Based on lots of videotape from the past, we'll guess that it wasn't a "one-off." Also, and for whatever it's worth, George Clooney, in today's New York Times, has now offered this:

George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.

[...]

Last month I co-hosted the single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election. I say all of this only to express how much I believe in this process and how profound I think this moment is.

I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.

But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.

That was the event where it seemed, to some people, that Barack Obama had to step in to help President Biden find his way off the stage. 

You can see what Clooney has said about that particular night. He seems to be saying that President Biden was "lost in space" that evening too, just like at the later debate.

On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski seemed to say, without providing any evidence, that President Obama wrote that essay and Clooney merely signed it. That's the way these things tend to go when people start picking up teams.

On that same Morning Joe, a fascinating moment occurred when Senator Coons (D-Del.) was asked if he has ever seen President Biden behave the way he did at that debate.

This afternoon, we'll tell you what Coons said. For now, we'll offer this:

President Biden seemed to have a substantial cognitive fail at that ersatz debate. Having said that, we'll also add this:

Candidate Trump's basic cognition seemed to be AWOL too. 

Candidate Trump made many inaccurate claims that night. Some were crazily so. 

A wide array of other claims barely qualified as "claims" at all. All in all, this takes in the slightly deeper end of the conceptual pool, where our nation's sunbathing journalists may not be inclined to go.

Full disclosure! All in all, our upper-end, mainstream press corps just isn't highly skilled. Indeed, the distinctions we're talking about take us well beyond this group's normal level of functioning. At any rate, they've been involved in quite a few fails of the type Kristof describes.

Four days before that fateful debate, E. J. Dionne issued a prescient warning. He said the two candidates might not be judged by the same standards in the aftermath of the debate.

Dionne had predicted that Candidate Biden would exceed expectations that night. This Monday, in another column, Dionne has described that prediction as an "epic fail."

That said, the columnist pretty much called his shot when he spoke about double standards.

Cognition fails are not unknown among our upper-end press corps. In the matter of Candidate Trump, our journalists been engaged in a type of fail for some time.

Tomorrow, we'll start to discuss that fail. It might even rate as an epic fail. 

It starts with a simple word:

LIE.

Tomorrow: What's in a word?

This afternoon: Senator Coons, on the phone