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Color Commentary Curse of Knowledge Nov 11 HD 1080p: Welcome to Color Commentary. Podcast where stories shaping our world are told in black and white first. And then we dig into the deeper meaning in full color. Each week I'll be bringing you the news like this. First, we'll start with what I like to call the black and white section. a clear, straight shooting rundown of the facts and the tradition of the grace like Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite, and the classic voices of journalism. Then we'll shift into the color commentary section where I have my own personal opinions, flavors, insights, all that good stuff. Sometimes it'll just be me, sometimes we'll have guests. And I as I remind you guys every time, because I get different responses and emails and text about this. I'm a scholar, I'm a hip hop junkie, a movie and culture nerd, and an avid, avid book reader. in these shows, you'll get glimpses of all that. Okay, you're gonna get all my little quirks. So if you come in, you you you you're gonna get all of me. All right. Well, let's let's get into it. And this episode, you know, it might be a little quicker. Two things, just some housekeeping things. I'm on my way out the door. My bags are packed. so I have to knock this out. and I'll try to edit it on the plane. And that's the other thing. Tommy is out gallivanting the world. He's living a great life. no, he's he's traveling for the next few weeks. he does get to do some really cool stuff. So the final edit, this edit might look a little different. All right. This is not my ministry. My ministry is. Is is is writing the words, saying the words, delivering, being a thought leader, giving my opinions. Okay. I I I can edit, but it is not my ministry. So just know that. If this is a few a a little late, give me a little bit of grace, but I still want to get you this stuff, okay? so let's get into it. So, you know, something is changing in who gets to talk to America, and I think we all can feel it. for a long time, if you wanted a big audience, you needed a building to give you a chair. You needed CNN or MSNBC, Fox, newspapers, the Times, you know. They they picked and the rest of us listened. But that's coming apart now. And and people are walking away from the networks, honestly, and a lot of networks are walking away from some of these people. and now they are following regular people with phones and an opinion. And a lot of credential experts who used to run the conversation are finding out that they can't always hold the room on their own anymore. or that when they don't have to go out and fish for the people, the reception tends to be a little different. And they're behind a firewall of sorts that kind of incubated them. And and it's and it's and it's changing. We just had the blue wave happen. And there's a lot of people that used to be talking heads in reputable places that are now kind of struggling or facing a different type of backlash. you know, it's par for the course. Some of it might be earned, some of it might be a little unfair. But we're gonna we're gonna interrogate it. This will be a quick conversation. And I want to introduce a a a term. Well, actually two, but but but I want to introduce these terms because I want them to be in your lexica. I want you to always be informed and know what you're looking at and know when you fall on either side of this. And these things are not wrong. These are just parts of the brains. Just how things work. So you saw a version of this with Angela Rye recently. she worked on the Hill. She ran the Congressional Black Caucus. She was a regular on CNN. And when critics pushed back on her recently, she she told them that some of them lack range. Whether that's true or not is debatable. well Not debatable because they don't they definitely like the range that she has, but she may anyway. We'll we'll get there. Gotta tease it. that's why you write these scripts so I don't go off and do my whole ADHD thing. But you know, Tommy's not here to get me back on track. So y'all gotta just go with me where I go. Tommy, they're gonna miss you. They're gonna they're gonna be Welcoming you back with confetti by the time you get back, because they're gonna be like he does not stay on a point. But anyway, back to Rye, and I'm gonna talk about a few people. not in a negative way either. So if you're looking for that, then you might want to click off. But you know, the internet doesn't side with your resume all the time. And some of these people are finding that out. And it's happening to a whole class of people at once. And I think there's a reason that this is happening. And I don't think it's just ego. I think it's a real documented thing in the brain. And most of us do a quieter version of it. But by the end of this episode, you'll know what it is and whether you do it and why it may cost you in this new world. So let's get to the topic. Here are the facts in black and white. So Let's start with what used to run media, right? For about fifty years, the road to a big audience went through a building, a network, a newsroom, an editor. And if they gave you a seat, millions of people heard you, like whether they liked you or not. And the platform did the hard part. It handed you that crowd. You didn't have to really be relatable. You just have to be credential. You y you kinda had to be chosen by that organization. A lot of people call those gatekeepers, right? Because you get to hand pick who goes in front of the American people. And recently, with the advent of of of fiber optic cables and faster internet, you know, that deal has kind of been broken and you can put some numbers to it. So Pew Research twenty twenty four, about one in five American adults, twenty one percent, say that they regularly get their news from influencers on social media. And for people in the 30, it's like 37%, almost four and ten. And that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And that number is just growing, right? So
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77% of those influencers never worked for a news organization in their life. Nobody handed them a chair. Like they built their own. But that means that they also didn't go to J School journalism school or Where you learn certain things, what the standard is for how you check your sources or clickbait or whatever the case is. And look, we can throw shade at these these influencers and these people on whatever side of political spectrums that have picked up these type of microphones and gotten very, very good with them. But we, if we're gonna blame them, we also gotta blame these organizations that actively went from being news organizations to being entertainment channels. that's a real thing. When CNN started to chase ratings more than they chased the news, when Fox News started to chase sensationalism and fear mongering more than they wanted to actually chase the news, it opened the door for these folks. And sometimes you just want news. But now the way that we live, these things can get you not just your news, but it can talk to you the way and make you feel smart all day throughout the day. It it it placates to you. And so we have this whole new lane of conversation, right? So let's bring this back as we're still in this black and white section. Because I want to really ground us in how news gets delivered, how it's shifted. Like there used to be a newspaper at every doorstep, you know what mean? Like that's how people got their news. And even if it was sensationalized, they still have to slow down, open the paper and read and process these things. And as we continue to become a post literate society, You're just seeing it less and less. And and it's not even that long, thoughtful news segments, long form, even from independent people. I mean, if you're a big name, it might do well. But it's losing out to things like shorts and fifteen seconds and forty second clips. and again, I'm saying this with no judgment. It just is what it is. But what comes with that, and what makes this an interesting topic today, and what I wanted to talk about was a term called the curse of knowledge. Okay? I'm gonna keep this simple. Basically, the short version is the more you know about something, the harder it is to remember what it felt like not to know it, and the harder it is to talk to people who still don't. Economists put the name on it back in 1989, but the experiment that makes it click came out of Stanford in 1990. A researcher named Elizabeth Newton had people tap out a famous song on a table with their finger and had other people try to name it. The tappers figured that the listeners would get it about half the time. The real number was two and a half percent. Because in a tapper's head, The whole song is playing, it's blasting. This is they got subwoofers in their brain. The listener just hears Knuckles on Wood. That is an expert and a regular person that's caught in one experiment. So let's make this make sense a little bit more. Okay. Expertise makes it worse, not better. In 1999, a researcher named Pam Pamela Hines found that the more skilled you are at something. The worse you are guessing how hard it is for a beginner. So the person with 20 years on the heel is by default the person who's had the hardest time imagining never being there. Their knowledge is not automatically a bridge to you, like like left alone, it's a wall. and before anyone says the fix is just to care more and to try harder, a 2023 study tested exactly that. They warned people, they told them. To take the other side. They even paid them. None of it reliably worked. You do not beat this with good intentions. You have to beat it by checking every single time whether the person in front of you is hearing the song or they're just hearing you knock. So now let's put these things together, right? the shift and the wiring and what you get are these moments that we're currently living in. There's a whole class of smart, credentialed people who spent their life on the inside. Their whole careers building it up and having to work through that and go through the the the pains and losses. And so they learned the nuances of these things. And the whole time a platform did the connecting for them. So they didn't have to really make it work for everybody, and not to say that they should have to. Experts are experts for a reason. So the network was the bridge to the regular person. And so now they need to build one themselves. And that's a skill set in and of itself that is not easy to to to to create, especially as a fully formed adult that's stuck in their ways. I I say this from experience. So now with that bridge going, a lot of them are standing on one side pointing at their resume with the audience, while the audience is on the other side, just following somebody who feels like it's their cousin. It feels like somebody they wanna have a beer with. I hate when people say that. I'm my politician, I wanna have a this black and white segment. Sorry, sorry. Sorry. So you can see it playing out right now, right? With a whole run of people who used to have the biggest platforms in the country. Answer Rye i i i d had this issue kind of go out with with this independent creator who they disagreed and and basically Angela told her to stay in her lane. Because I'm out rushing around, you just gotta go find the the clip, but it's not hard to find. And I think Angela was trying to be from, you know, I it's still black and white, so I'm still giving you the facts, but it does seem as if she was trying to be gracious in what she said. But she did tell her, she said, I'm not telling you to to to to shut up and dribble. but she did say that a lot of these people are out of their depth and they lack range. And she got hammered, right? And I don't know if that's just the curse of knowledge. I think a lot of people saw it as elitism. And I don't think, well, a lot of people saw it as elitism where the insider is telling regular people that
they've not earned the right to have an opinion. And listen, in the days of newspaper, you have to earn the right to have an opinion. Everybody doesn't wake up and be a columnist. You actually have to work really hard on a beat or, you know, but to to You have to earn becoming a columnist. It's like a huge honor. And now everybody gets to be a columnist. So if you came up in a certain way, This could be a little jarring for you. And Joy Reed is a different flavor with the same problem. for years on MSNBC, she was one of most, as some will say, dependable voices for the Democratic mainstream. And she was hard on the independent and left flank critics who challenged it. And then MSNBC canceled her show. And she went independent and she started her own show on YouTube. And here's the thing that's interesting about that where Before, if somebody was pushing and prodding and saying, Hey, why should I vote Democrat or for this Democratic candidate? She had some smoke for them. And now as an independent, she's starting to sound a lot like those people. Again, I'm not I'm never mad to somebody in power telling you that you should check up on people. You you should check up on people. Not just the people you don't like, but the people that you really like too. In the last episode of this podcast, I told you to do the same thing. I said, Hey, right now. You need to take inventory of where things are, write down and articulate the status quo, and then write down what these candidates who are now in office said they're gonna do and keep that. I don't want you being emotional when you have to reevaluate in two and four years when it's time to vote again. That's just the beginning. And so it's interesting though, and a lot of people are pushing on her and giving her some some pushback because they like, hey, when we were Saying these things, you you you you shat on us in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers. And now this independent creator over here that went to a quarter of the school you went to and and does not have any of the access that you have has millions of followers that people listen to. And it's interesting when you start to see those people go in with those talking points. And again, this isn't just about Democrats either. Bill Bill Crystal is is is about as inside as the Republican side gets. He was the chief of staff to a vice president. He was the founder and editor of the Weekly Standard and the voice of the party establishment for twenty years. And then the base went to Trump and he could not reach them anymore. His magazine folded in 2018 and he spent the years since respected in green rooms and unable to draw the people that he used to speak for. Same machine, just pointed right. And so when that ground starts to move, the credentials don't necessarily save you. And again, I say this to somebody with credentials. I say this to somebody with actual experience inside of California's Democratic Party that's held some leadership positions. But I had to one of the things that always worked for me is that I knew how to connect with people first. First. People can't hear you if they don't listen to you. And how you make them listen is just really important. And so kudos to the rising tide of people that are doing independent journalism with tact and with respect and not trying to lead you astray. But there's a lot of emotional, wayward and incorrect stuff that's out there. And in this new world, you have to be media literate. But the curse of knowledge is something that should be a part of your vocabulary. Think about it like this. Steve Kerr played next to some of the best basketball players ever to touch a ball. Okay? He's played under some of the greatest coaches to ever coach. And he was a role player. Michael Jordan Is one of the g i not one of. He's the greatest basketball player of all time. In my opinion, 'cause it's still the black and white section. So And but Michael Jordan struggled to run and lead a team. Michael Jordan will struggle as a coach because he is the epitome, the walking embodiment of the curse of knowledge. He knows the game so well that it can be difficult for him to even articulate it to mere mortals because he's processing it so quickly and he doesn't understand. Why, if I am the greatest and I'm the best scorer in the league, I'm one of the greatest scorers that the league has ever seen, and you see me shoot a thousand free throws before the game and after every game, why are you not here with me? It it doesn't make sense to him why you just don't do the things. Whereas Steve Kerr is somebody who had to work really, really hard, and they all worked hard, but this is different, had to work really hard just to have a role. And he learned the articulation of the game. So he can talk to a Klay Thompson, a Steph Curry, and a Draymond Green. He can be the type of coach that connects with these people. Because even though he's super knowledgeable, it is not so far gone off of him to where he was developing. And he can articulate those things. That's the news. That's the news. I want to move to the color commentary section because I think you got it. The the the curse of knowledge is something that's very real. but before we do go there, one last thing because there's always a flip side. But and it's Dunning Kruger. Now, let me be clear. Dunning Kruger as a theory has not been as strongly proven in in the affirmative for it as a theory, the same way that the curse of knowledge has. Okay. So take this with a grain of salt. I'm not trying to feed you some pseudo pop psychology. But a lot people do swear by Dunning Kruger, and I do say it at times. So the Dunning Kruger effect is the idea that the people who know the least about something are often the most sure that they are right. It is the mirror image of what we're talking about. So, and this is life. You have to balance these things. And at times, all of us, myself included, you have probably fallen
into one. Of these. And I think most of us have been both at a time, right? I have a doctorate degree. It don't mean I know everything. It actually means, to be very frank with you, that I know a r a lot, a lot, a lot about a very niche topic that the vast majority of the world probably doesn't care about. But what it does afford me is that there's a standard or a framework for how I do research and how I vet things. That helps me out a little bit more at times. All right. But I don't, just because somebody has a doctorate or a JD or a fancy degree or MBA, doesn't mean they know everything. But it does mean that they have put in a level of work, a level of consorted, rigorous work that dictates how they learn and the thoroughness of it. Now let's talk about it. You listen to color commentary, Dr. Cole. So Is is what's going on in today's landscape and media and punditry, right? Like, I thought about this because when you think about people, and again, I have nothing negative to say about Angela Rye. I'm not that's not what I'm here for. I I actually can empathize on some level, but I also can see where people are coming from. There was a time where them CNN cameras fired up, man. And we were all like, it's like, okay, cool. let's go. There was a time where I really, really trusted CNN. I'm not saying that I don't trust it now. I just don't watch it the way in which I used to. And Abby Phillip, I do like Abby Phillip. I do. I you know, it may be superficial, but I do think she's brilliant. But I don't watch those shows the way that I did when I was younger. I remember Rachel Maddow and what she built. Used to be I used to be it used to be fun to watch Rachel Maddow. I just don't watch her the same. Maybe I'll catch a clip here or there. I don't even know if she still got her show in the same way that she had it before. There's been so many shake ups. And there are these independent journalists who have been the gatekeepers have k kept them out. And now they're in. One of those is a really good friend of mine, Torrin Walker. I think Torren is an exceptional journalist. I think he believes in the things he believes in, but he keeps a cool head. He gives you facts. Now, in data, you may not like the facts and data, but he's very like he's both the the new age. independent media wave, but he also has This Ed Bradley effect to him of there's a level of calm and research that makes you listen. And even when you don't agree, you are at least inclined to go and look up those things and you're like, damn, all of that did check out factually. And I think that in this new world, both of those things are gonna they're gonna now coexist. When I was a kid, there were three or four main channels that had the news. And everybody watched the same local news. And then everybody, a lot of people watch 60 minutes. And I think in a lot of people's minds, those things are tainted now. So is What's going on right now with Angela Rye? Was that the curse of knowledge? Was
it elitism? Was it both? I think it's a little bit of both. Listen, I when we say elitism, I know that it has a connotation. But it's a thing. I'm I wanna you know what? With no Tommy, I'm gonna sit back and I'm I'm gonna just I'm gonna just engage with this because I I gotta get out of here in the next twenty minutes or so so I can go catch this plane. But A lot of these people are getting wake up calls that damn and I know a lot of them are like thinking, did something change about me? Did the way that I give facts change? Or is it different when I gotta go get the audience versus when the audience is brought to me and provided? I think everybody's trying to figure out one, how to get their news out there in today's age. And two, if I want to be a voice, what is my responsibility? And here's the thing where I do have to kind of, you know, show some support to an Angela Rye. Because I still trust her knowledge. And I don't, I may not, I don't, I don't, I make my own opinions. I don't look to anybody for my opinions. I respect a lot of people. Right. I respect Mark Lamonthill. man, his the way he wrote, his his academic stuff helped me get through like grad school. But I don't take my opinions from him, but I I can appreciate his breakdowns. But it's very left slanted, left leaning. Right. And they're the same way that there are some people who might listen to these other people on the right or whatever. I think people have to figure out for themselves how they determine what the truth is. And this is dangerous for us because I hate, I hated this term coming up when I especially when I was in college and just getting out of college. And people start saying that's their truth. It's their truth, my truth. Now fuck that, man. Some things just gotta be true. And not true. But people don't like to deal with that. And the internet today and your phone today allows you to live in your bubble where you are always right and what you think is always right. I host and direct other podcasts. And sometimes in the closed meeting things, especially if I'm producing, it's like I don't want to, if I know everything you're gonna say, I don't want to watch that podcast. Some people do because it's comfortful. It is, I can go to this place where people think how I think, and I'm reassured and I'm not crazy. And that's needed. That's important. I'm not shitting on that. But I like to be challenged. I debated in high school. And one of the things that it trained me to do is you got a topic at the start of the season. But you don't know if you're going to be on the affirmative or the negative of that topic. This is policy debate, not parliamentary, right? And It opens something up for me because I would come in with these very strong, strong feelings about things because of my worldview. But I also had to fully train and have plans in case I was on the other side of that. And so now, and I know this annoys my friends and it makes me good on podcasts, but I can see the
other sides of things. I have a friend of mine that's like, this level of empathy that you give to other people is is is wild, right? And it's not that I feel bad for them. I just I was trained to see all the arguments and all the roads and how you could get there. And sometimes I to push through that and be like, no, no, no. I know that's wrong. I know, but being able to see the humanity in somebody in a time in a world where people's humanity is becoming less prevalent, I do think it's important. I do. Here's the thing, and here's what you're gonna continue to see. These cable panels are gonna try to be more entertaining than what they've ever been before because they gotta keep ratings. Colleges are getting watered down, even though I still believe in universities, I still believe in colleges, and it is still one of the biggest factors in this country that can take you from being poor to not being poor. Access to college. But what is happening is. Colleges are getting more watered down. They're placating more to young people's feelings as opposed to offering them different arguments and teaching them how to argue and amass data and and and evidence and to form thoughts, independent thoughts. We are turning more into a gang society. I'm Republican, I'm Democrat, I'm this, I'm that, I'm Christian, I'm Muslim, I'm Jewish, I'm like everybody is looking for their crew. It is people are revving up for whatever is coming, whether it is just ideological wars or an actual war. And so this is less about an Angela Rye who's gonna be fine and sister keep doing your thing. You feel me? hey, hey man. You gonna be all right? You're gonna be all right. She she I I I but I know she has to be like, what the hell is hap? It's it the the ground is shifting underneath her. It's less about her and them. Cause she gonna she and there's nothing and look, if you elite, you elite. It is what it is. If you get the vacation in nice spaces and rub elbows with leaders and world leaders and multi-millionaires and billionaires, like yo man, you hey, it's fine. You worked hard to get there. I say that with no disdain. But where are you falling as the consumer that's watching and listening to this? I never want you to take anything that I say at face value. None. Go look it up. I want you to get in the habit of exercising that muscle. And once you start looking things up, then you got to be able to tell what's a good source versus a not so good source. Cause all those all those young boys and white boys During the Manosphere time. we could see it. We watched it. Chris and I did a great episode on it. You should go back and watch it. They were trying to do their research, but they did faulty research and they took their research cues from people that did no research. People that were, maybe some of them were earnest in it, but a lot of them were grifting these people. They played to their loneliness. They played to a lot of these white boys feeling like they're being squeezed out or that they can't say anything, or that this country and a new America doesn't work for them. They played on that. See, there's a difference, and that's a skill set. Some people can look at the trends and see what's coming and jump out in front of it. And some of us are trying to lead in truth and in what we truly think is right and may have different ways of going about it. So Go look up on your own the curse of knowledge. Go look up on your own, Dunning Krueger. Go look up on your own the things you care about. Go look up on your own the person that just got elected, whether you like them or not, and see what they promise to do and and take inventory of where things are now. Go look up on your own where inflation sits right now and what's gonna happen in a big blue beautiful bill that takes effect at the start of the year. Because there will be pundits and punditry and people on the internet and people on social media and on TikTok and in threads that are gonna be like, well, look at these numbers. The Democrats are really messing up, blah, blah. I'm not saying that the Democrats won't mess it up, mess up a lot of things. But they're gonna try to put. Things that this current administration did onto this incoming one so they can start from a deficit. These the politrics. And we've afforded ourselves to be open to politrics because we are a less literate society. And we don't like delayed gratification. And when you can get dopamine hits from your phone, all of us, myself included. Shit gets a little warped. But I want you to do this. Get get a friend, get a group of friends, people that you trust, but let let's just say one to one. When you see your friend spiraling or going off onto something, man, just try to bring them back. And we all need our own little totem. Remember that in Inception. You need your totem to to know if you are in the dream world or in the real world. Don't fall off into dream fantasy world. Don't let whatever's going on in your personal life. lead you to a place where you can be led astray by somebody that you don't know but you have this internet relationship with. You do not know these people on these screens. Hell you don't know me. I give you what I give you, but I'm still a human under this. And The same way when you were younger learning how to drive and there was this thing called defensive driving because you don't know what other people on the road are gonna do. I need you to have defensive thinking. And that's not to shoot everybody down, but you just don't know everybody's intentions. So I don't let's figure out what the mental equivalent of using your signal blinkers to to you know what I mean? Some of those signal blinkers are I need to look that up or hey, hey, where did you read that at? Can you share that with me? Hey, who pays for that? Do you know? who sponsors that? We gotta do it. I know it's a different episode. I'm you I'm like I said, I'm on the go. I didn't want to give this to you in a hotel room, but it it is what it is. If I get the inspiration, maybe I'll add on to it. But what I only think I wanna leave you with is you got two new terms. Figure out where you fall on those, and we all go into both at times, maybe. Do a little bit more research on it, and then figure out how you're gonna take in your information and your knowledge and who are your trusted voices. And one thing I would also add, just as the debater in me, I haven't done this since high school, so wouldn't still call myself a debater, but I did win. I I I won the whole thing, just for the record. I won first place team and work first place speaker. I'm still I'm I'm Ed Bundy from Poke High. I'm this is this is my glory. Okay? I'm a champion. Even though was sixteen, seventeen, one of those. But I I you also need to look at people that are respected journalists that might not feel how you feel. And I'm not saying you're looking at them to agree with them. But you gotta be able to look at every side of a topic or an issue. You have to confront history. You have to confront facts. You have to. Because people will repaint that stuff right in your face. And then you will be doomed to repeat it. Anyway. Appreciate you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to another episode of Color Commentary. We love to hear from you. So drop us an email at color commentarypod at gmail.com. One more time. That's color commentarypod at gmail.com. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show. Leave us a five-star rating. Share it on social media. And join us every week for more color commentary with Dr. Yeah.