I find this example interesting, but it falls a bit short of noticing what the segue to this situation would be today: >>Even mild incentives, however, can sti

I find this example interesting, but it falls a bit short of noticing what the segue to this situation would be today: >>Even mild incentives, however, can still exert pressure on our beliefs. Russ Roberts tells the story of a colleague who, at a picnic, started arguing for an unpopular political opinion — that minimum wage laws can cause harm — whereupon there was a "frost in the air" as his fellow picnickers "edged away from him on the blanket." If this happens once or twice, it's easy enough to shrug off. But when it happens again and again, especially among people whose opinions we care about, sooner or later we'll second-guess our beliefs and be tempted to revise them. It might have been true in a previous age, but in our Internet age, where there’s a big enough corpus of people somewhere that agrees and reinforces you, you won’t have this result. The guy in this example would just shrug off everyone at the picnic as hipster liberals and go back to the virtual place where everyone is agreeing with him. I think that’s exactly what Trump team understood. It’s not just about lying long enough to make a lie true, but more interestingly, to lie and create enough support for that lie for people to feel reinforced in their beliefs even if their closer friend and relatives try to convince them otherwise.