The case of the three breasted woman.
or
How to spot a bullsh*t news story
I am providing this service only because I live in a democracy and cannot afford to have all of you people wandering through life believing the first thing you are told and accepting it as fact. It is my contention that, that is how the human brain behaves when on auto pilot. It is wired to take in information, that is it’s involuntary setting, much like the lungs just involuntarily suck in whatever is floating in front of your face unless you voluntarily/consciously hold your breath …it is the discerning and scrutinizing of the information that need voluntary/conscious activity.
That is the activity you all need to do constantly. YOU have to do this, because the “news” is lazy and incompetent, or slanted, or in to much of a rush to break a story to check facts, or just doesn’t care as long as they get viewers.
This little tale of Bullsh*T took the internet by storm yesterday and the second I saw it I was suspicious ( because I do not leave my brain on autopilot) …and 15 seconds into the story I declared it bogus…AND did so publicly on Facebook and Twitter…inviting anyone who actually believed it to post their names so they could be mocked.
http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=103138
Despite this story showing up on many local news stations and even THE NEW YORK POST…It has of course turned out to be bullsh*t.
In the event you see some wild story…always listen to Doug.
In the event I am unavailable or you would like to train your own brain to not betray you…Here is how you do it.
Start asking questions. Who , What , where, when, why?
We live in a world where pictures and even video can be fake yet convincing and the credible sources are always changing. What does NOT change though, and has not in all of human civilization, is human behavior. So, all I had to focus on was the “who”, to realize this was absurd.
Good writers realize that we are all pretty much the same. There are a handful of personality types that make up 99.99999999 percent of the population. Once you get past grade school you have more or less met every type of person on the planet. The other thing good writers realize is that personalities are consistent and change like giant steamboats make u-turns, very very very slowly, if at all, and only some very dramatic life event can produce quicker change. In other words, people are who they are. So, people acting out of character, or acting unlike anyone you have ever met, are clues that the story is bogus. A person who is confronted by a bear in the park…will either freeze up, run away, perhaps once in a blue moon attempt to defend himself/herself from the bear, but if the story says the person ran up and licked the bears ear…you know it is bogus, because no one would do that. “but what about if someone is crazy?” that’s where my steamboat analogy comes into play-No one who is sane enough to have lived that long would just up and lick a bears ear.
Let’s apply this now to the bogus three boobed story. We shall focus on the “who”. This is some 21 year old girl, who claims to have gone to 50-60 doctors and saved 20,000 to eventually fund this surgery. You need not know anything about surgery, or doctors, or fake photos, or medical laws in this country or any other, or even human physiology. All you have to know is the girl is 21 and wants the world to know about her, wants her pics on the internet, wants the world to see her rack, and is often pictured in very little clothing and holding booze. SO…we have a type of personality, that we have all run into at some point in our lives, to judge this story by. This type person, this type personality, is this someone who makes long term commitments? Someone who sets and achieves difficult goals? Is this the kind of goal that this type of person would hold onto and invest time and effort into? NO. No it is not.
The search for a doctor (complete with many rejections), the planning of a fairly intense surgery and bracing yourself for the stress that goes along with it, the saving of a large amount of cash…is the type of personality we are dealing with here the type of personality who would get past all of that? The type who would hold onto this idea/goal for all the time those things took? Of course not. I would sooner believe that the short guy from “jersey shore” is a chess master. These are not personalities that have the capacity for intense focus.
What we have here is a semi narcissistic airhead (I am sure there is a more official term for this archetype) . And an airhead ain’t going to keep a goal like that moving forward for what would be at least two or three years. It takes time to find a doctor (never mind one who would be able to perform medical miracles for chicken feed), It takes time to plan for a surgery, it takes time to save for a surgery, and most important it takes time to recover. Two or three years if EVERYTHING goes her way. Does this type of personality have that kind of commitment towards things? No.
Can you even CONCEIVE or any person you ever met , deciding that they would have an extra body part attached…and keep that goal in the forefront of their life for 2-3 years ? Someone as loony as this would have many other equally looney ideas in that amount of time. There is simply no way this personality retains the drive necessary to accomplish this for years on end… and not just ANY three years, a mentally volatile three years in anyone’s life (age 18-21). Ignore the back story, ignore the pictures, ignore her alleged motivations…she would need to decide to have a third boob and hold dear to that idea from age 18 to age 21. An 18 year old party girl decides to have a third boob surgically attached, and is so committed to the idea that she goes through age 18, age 19, age 20, still with this goal being at the forefront of her life. This personality was so committed that she overcomes 50-60 rejections, saves 20,000, endures emotional and physical stress involved in major surgery? Nope.
There are personalities that are driven enough at that age, tenacious enough, girded enough, but those personalities do not gloom onto nutty ideas like this. I hate to break all your hearts here and tell you that a spade is a spade, but an airhead is an airhead. Think about the airheads in your life, are they big on reaching long term goals? are they tenacious and committed and unshakable in the face of adversity? Or do they just sort of…bounce from one thing to the next? Now think about the goal oriented people in your life, the ones that do not shrink from long term challenges, do they gloom onto hair brained ideas like this? No and no.
If all that wasn’t damning enough her “motivation” was to look less attractive to men”…that’s not even enough motivation to buy a bad pair of pants, much less have major surgery. There is not enough motivation to do this. Going back to the personality type and consistency of people, anyone who needs so little motivation for a life altering surgery would never stay committed to this goal long enough to achieve it. They would jump to some other equally nutty motive and then another, and another…
So not knowing anything other than human nature you can figure out right off that this was bullsh*t.
Nine times out of ten all you have to do is look at the core of the story with some common sense, details and glitz and loony quotes are just static that stops you from scrutinizing the premise.
Who? (who is this person?) What? ( what exactly did she claim she did?) Where ( where did she accomplish this?) When ( how long ago did the surgery take place? when did she decide she wanted it?) Why? ( why would she do this?)
Always ask questions. Ask these questions , ask what the other side of a story is, ask what the actual facts are and where they came from.
and most importantly remember the theory of -Occam’s Razor- simply put “the simplest explanation is usually the correct one” and the further apart the simple explanation from the complicated one…the more sure you can be that it is the simple explanation. In this case it was either that a 18 year old girl decided to get a third boob and struggled through being rejected by 50 doctors, eventually found one that was able to pull off this miracle, and do it for a mere 20,000, and held tight to the goal all the way into her twenties, saved up 20,000, never wavering and finding some other loony idea and followed through with the surgery, all to make herself less attractive and get a t.v. show.
OR
That this hot 21 year old (who happens to live in Florida near a few of the country’s top special effect studios) got some lonely nerds to help her concoct this fake boob and farce . Turns out it was the latter…and simpler explanation.
You have to train your brain to do more than just input information…because those of you so foolish as to believe this woman had three boobs…your vote counts just as much as mine…START USING YOUR BRAINS.
Thanks in advance.