The Epstein files release has resulted in many people seeming to lose their minds: engaging in moral panic, having hysterical overreactions, filtering for worst-case interpretations of ambiguous data, images, and emails. Using a video from the political influencer Kyle Kulinski (who has 2M+ YouTube subscribers) as a case study, I examine how ambiguous snippets—like an audio clip of people seemingly talking about killing deer — get instantly, emotionally interpreted by Kyle and others as highly suspicious evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Why are smart, influential people speaking with absolute certainty about what pixelated photos and ambiguous recordings and emails tell us? Why are people claiming to find evidence of cannibalism in the files? What does all this catastrophizing and ultra-pessimistic thinking tell us about our toxic political polarization problem, and our tendency to assume the worst when our perceived enemies are involved? If you’re concerned about paranoid, conspiracy-minded thinking, and how that ties into our political divides, this episode will help you understand why emotional reasoning is so rampant, and why it’s important to fight against it, when we see others doing it, and within ourselves — not just for the sake of society, but for our own mental health.

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