Why you should listen to hysterical people.

Why you should not judge a book by its emotional cover.

Photo by Joe Caione on Unsplash

I’m listening to an interview with Robert Kennedy, Jr., where he describes a group of women as seeming rational to him because they were “not excitable.” And because they were not excitable, he took seriously their claims about vaccine harms.

Setting aside the issue of vaccines specifically, it’s important to know:

• One can think rationally while communicating emotionally or excitably;

• One can communicate with no emotion and be irrational.

Irrationality refers to the use of bias and mental shortcuts (heuristics) in making decisions. It’s a product of our fast-moving brains that strive for efficiency and, because of this, jump to conclusions that aren’t accurate. You can calmly, stoically, unemotionally draw inaccurate conclusions rooted in bias and heuristics. People do it every single day.

To judge someone as rational because they don’t show emotion is a bias in judgment. Don’t do it.

That is all.