OnlySubs: This is Fine

We’ve all seen the meme. “This is fine,” with flames all around. The dog sipping its coffee with a dumb smile on its face like its house isn’t on fire. Did you know there’s a name for the phenomenon captured by that meme? It’s called “normalcy bias,” which is a false belief that things are going as they normally do even when they aren’t. And here, then, as we do on James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, we come upon a point about our favorite Very Smart People: they suffer extreme normalcy bias and thus make every excuse for the Woke Marxist abuses in our world while seemingly unable to understand them. This is how normalcy bias works. Just like in the meme, people will end up in casual conversations in a burning building instead of taking action to escape to safety, or otherwise, as they process their cognitive dissonance that arises from the fact that the world is not, as it turns out, carrying on as normal. Join me for a little discussion about this challenging phenomenon.