normative

Regression to the Mean Heuristic for Online Outrage

A useful heuristic for social media outrage is that when you hear something terrible about someone, the truth will turn out to be less terrible, because time and again when details get worked out people did not say the heinous thing or it was more complicated; social media and human psychology distort this because we like our villains to be appropriately villainous.

normativepending

Speaker

Paul Bloom

Evidence Quote

“we like our villains we like our villains to be appropriately villainous and we love stories involving people doing horrific racist ugly things”

Source

16 - The Dark Side— Making Sense with Sam Harris
Created: 6/14/2026, 2:24:40 AM

My Notes

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