At loose ends one night during the pandemic, Tyler Gibgot picked up a deck of cards. The energetic teenager quickly taught himself a basic trick. His first audience consisted of his surprised parents. “They had to kind of pretend like they were amazed,” he laughs.
But it was more than a simple illusion for Gibgot, who has a rare eye condition called aniridia, meaning he was born without irises. He sees the world through a constant haze of light, “like living in an impressionist painting.” Flipping through the deck, he realized that “for the first time ever, I can see things that other people can’t see,” he says.
Enthralled, he sought out old magic books and haunted online forums, trying out his new skills on strangers via his webcam. Often, his audience never realized he couldn’t see the cards.
"Americans’ beliefs were changed by reading something fake, even when they knew it was made up.'" This is a fascinating article, and I am hoping someone will explore a missing piece of the puzzle: why it seems easier for 'fake news' to influence people toward the right more than toward the left. Maybe that's simply because of our national zeitgeist, but I have to wonder if there is something more at work here. As a psychologist with an interest in human development, it has often seemed to me that many views on the left are difficult for humans to embrace because they mean leaving 'tribal' or 'institutional' thinking behind. If we humans tend to be tribal by nature, it may be too much of a cognitive leap for most of us to embrace an idea like 'we are all connected' or 'what is done to some of us affects all of us'. Or even to realize that damage to the natural world affects all of us as well.
Yeah, I'm a Berniecrat through and through.