In 2017, Justine R. Damond was shot and killed while I was writing a series about men’s lack of ingroup bias and the effects this has in men, as a group, in legal, social, and moral spheres.
I ended that series asking readers to ensure that the cop who killed her get a fair trial. As no one at AFVM is surprised, nothing like that is happening and no one is outraged. I have two predictions, one is that next week everyone will have an opinion on this, and the other is that it will likely be assigned to them.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never justified the laws and policies that make police homicide legal, the “thin blue line,” or Noor’s human resources record.
My request all along has been that men pay attention and do what they can to ensure that Noor gets a fair trial.
So far I’ve been unpersuasive, for reasons I could have predicted before I ever started writing for AVFM. Men, as it turns out, do not have the mechanism for automatic ingroup bias. Unlike women, men need some similarity or group affiliation in order to overcome their bias against one another. Being a cop, being Muslim, being Somali, black, or white might work for you or be used against you, but you’re always at a moral and legal disadvantage. For whatever reason, our species seems coded this way and this has quite a terrible impact on men’s social and legal status.
With this article, I’d like to publicly seek to enlist the help and attention of an expert at persuasion, perception and prediction, Scott Adams. I would like Mr. Adams to help me make a more persuasive case that humans have this bias and that it makes us blind to the humanity of men. Also that this may play out poorly at scale.
I believe if we don’t, the Noor trial may expedite one of his Scott’s predictions, outlined below.
Adams, you may recall, steadfastly predicted Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidency, in 2015. A trained hypnotist and best selling author on the topic of persuasion, Adams is a believer that humans like to think they make up their own minds, but they instead, have their opinions assigned to them by the media.
He’s also an expert on how memory most likely works.
Interestingly for some AVFM readers, Adams also has a unique insight into false accusations being made against men after being “credibly accused” by a crazy-ass Canadian woman he’s never even met. Coincidentally, this is a trait he shares with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Another reason I would like to get the Mohamed Noor Trial on Scott Adam’s radar is the fact that Fox and CNN have yet to assign public opinions. As my readers know, I’ve been at the trial every day, comparatively watching the media, and am just beginning to write about it.
The Blue Church and the Red Church probably won’t assign people’s opinions until after the trial, if at all, but too late to ensure that the trial is fair.
A fair trial is most definitely in the public interest.
Recap of Trial So Far
Inside the courtroom, there are 11 seats for the public to watch four women collude to punish this officer differently than his 24 predecessors. I’ve been going everyday and have started calling it the Quaintance-Sweasy Show, but there’s probably a better name.
Outside the courtroom, everyone is trying to make sense of something senseless. When that happens, you have a recipe for cognitive dissonance and bias, especially when no one outside the courtroom can see the evidence or hear the testimony. Sometimes that can be insightful, but it’s always a little uncomfortable.
This video, taken by a local public access producer shows prominent Black Lives Matter and Police accountability activists talking about the first day of the trial.
When some of the activists talk about race, the commonly used narratives break down and you see cognitive dissonance. When you see the Australian newscaster repeat himself, you are hearing a story the local news doesn’t cover, and when you see people talk about this trial, you see how the common narratives around police brutality break down.
Now, I’m not claiming that Noor has been falsely accused of killing Damond, but it’s also indisputable that both of Noor’s murder charges are unprecedented in Minnesota State history.
I’d like to bring some attention as to why I think that is.
Unfortunately, it’s more complicated and disturbing than racism. I have plenty of facts, [1][2][3] to support my hypothesis, now I need some help with persuasion and Mr. Adams is in a similar league to Dr. Robert Cialdini, who is widely regarded as the most important thinker and researcher in this space.
There are more Somali born Muslims in Minneapolis (100K) than there are Australian Americans in the United States (65K). In 2003, Adams released a book, called The Religion War in which he predicted that weaponized Chinese Fentanyl (TM) would be attached to drones as weapons of mass destruction.
I don’t read fiction, so I’ve never read his account, but last year, in a stream of consciousness writing about the Minnesota culture that lead to Damond’s death, I predicted the rise of tazerdrones. Time will tell which of us is right.
I’d like to get this trial on Scott Adam’s radar for a number of reasons, but the biggest one of all is that I believe this case is going to tear a hole in the fabric of reality. Adam’s skill stack may make him one of the only men who can halt the phenomena of automatic outgroup derogation in men, which is creating a slow disaster.
If you are on twitter, please share this article with @scottadamssays. I’d very much like to engage him on Whenhub to discuss how I might be more persuasive in my writings as I finalize this series.
