Japan's Unprecedented Warning to UK Over Brexit
People supporting bad policies like to say there are no bad consequences.<p>You hear this about Brexit, climate change, bankrupting the government, violence and war, etc. It&#x27;s the same rhetorical tool used for a lot of propaganda: You can lie in a moment; it takes hours or days for people to gather the evidence to disprove it.<p>(To disarm this propaganda: It&#x27;s easy to construct nonsense that sounds plausible - even to you, smart person; don&#x27;t let your ego be your weakness - and professionals make a study and art of it. Don&#x27;t take anything seriously unless it has serious evidence and research behind it in the first place; the first claim has the burden of proof. Also, notice that their real argument is in the unspoken assumptions behind it, how the issue is defined and framed.)<p>Here&#x27;s why I think it works: Most policy consequences are difficult to notice if you are uninformed. You can&#x27;t know nationwide unemployment, GDP growth, or climate change by looking around (with some exceptions). Western economies and societies are huge and complex; often changes are subtle and slow; often they affect one set of people - probably not you - more than another set of people. Finally, in an environment that complex, it&#x27;s hard to provably connect outcomes to actions (is that hurricane due to climate change? did people get cancer because of the factory&#x27;s carcinogen or because of bad luck?), and the propagandists can pump out enough lies to raise doubts in people&#x27;s minds (look up &quot;FUD&quot;).