Speculation is rampant about why FBI Director James Comey has done the things he’s done. Scott Adams offers an explanation that puts him a good light. Many other explanations have been less charitable. From Adams at blog.dilbert.com:
If you’re following the news, you know FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI found a bunch of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
Wait…hold on…the Gods of Humor demand that I pause here to insert a few Weiner jokes before I get to my point about Comey.
http://66.media.tumblr.com/bb4c1a859cbc78bb2eb6af433bf37767/tumblr_inline_ofvsveThGi1t63ajm_500.png
http://66.media.tumblr.com/bb4c1a859cbc78bb2eb6af433bf37767/tumblr_inline_ofvsveThGi1t63ajm_500.png
Okay, I got that out of my system.
Back to Comey.
As my regular readers know, the Persuasion Filter is related to the idea that the human brain never evolved to accurately comprehend reality. In order for us to be here today, our predecessors only needed to survive and procreate. They had no need to understand reality at any basic level. And we have no such need either. That’s why you might believe you are reincarnated from a monk and I might believe my prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse but we can both get through the day just fine. Many different interpretations of reality are good enough for survival. I like to describe reality as each person living their own movie, which works well unless our scripts conflict. When that happens, one of us goes into cognitive dissonance and rewrites our past to make the movies consistent.
That’s how I see the world.
Last year in this blog I suggested that the most productive and predictive way to view reality is through what I call the Persuasion Filter. That’s what I have been using to make spooky-good predictions about the election so far. And that’s what I’ll use today to give you an alternate movie about James Comey. Compare it to the movie you are running in your head and see which one better predicts the future.
The base assumption of the Persuasion Filter is that people are irrational 90% of the time and only rarely – when no emotions are involved – truly rational. This is the reverse of the common filter for reality, in which people are assumed to be rational 90% of the time and a bit crazy 10% of the time. That’s some background for context.
Back to Comey.
I’m hearing several interpretations for these two observations:
1. Comey seemed pro-Clinton when he dropped the initial email case.
2. Comey seems anti-Clinton this week because he announced a new round of investigations right before the election.
How can both behaviors be explained? Or, as I like to ask, which movie does the best job of explaining our observations and also predicting the future?
Some say Comey is a political pawn in a rigged system. By that movie script we can explain why he dropped the initial email case. But we can’t explain why he’s acting against Clinton’s interests now. What changed?
Well, some say Comey had to reopen the case against Clinton after discovering the Weiner laptop emails. If he failed to act, there might be a revolt at the FBI and maybe a whistleblower would come forward. But that leaves unexplained why Comey detailed to Congress how Clinton appeared to be guilty of crimes at the same time he said the FBI was dropping the case. If Comey had been protecting Clinton on the first round, he would have softened his description of her misdeeds, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t seem to hold back anything.
To continue reading: James Comey – As seen through the Persuasion Filter
