Cognitive pollution galore

Two recent articles which when juxtaposed have a couple of different interpretations.

First up, Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective by Andy Borowitz

“Let me be clear,” he said in an interview on CNN. “Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”

“I want to reassure our allies and the people of Syria that what we are about to undertake, if we undertake it at all, will have no purpose or goal,” he said. “This is consistent with U.S. foreign policy of the past.”

Then there is Why 'Drink More Water'? by James Hamblin

Why? That is the question.

“40 percent of Americans drink less than half of the recommended amount of water daily,” said Sam Kass, White House senior policy advisor for nutrition policy [sic?], yesterday. Kass and Mrs. Obama’s press secretary Hannah August attributed that statistic to a CDC study.

The problem is, though, that there is no recommended daily amount of water. If we knew how much we should be drinking, and it turned out we weren’t drinking enough, then yes, tell us to drink more. If they were telling us to replace soda in our diets with water, that would also be reasonable and potentially productive. They're explicitly not doing that, though.

If you are keen on politics and view everything through that prism, particularly if you are a Democrat, then there is some cause for alarm when otherwise stalwarts such as the New Yorker are satirizing your foreign policy and The Atlantic is questioning either your intelligence or your motives with regard to health.

If you are more interested in public discourse and reasoned argument, then these articles serve, hopefully, perhaps, as canaries in the coal mine. In the first instance with Borowitz's satire, it is so pitch perfect and consonant with the daily announcements from the State Department and White House, that there is almost no sliver of light between the satire and the press releases. On this particular foreign policy argument, which is consequential from an economic, humanitarian, and national perspective, there is virtually no factual or logical coherence and therefore we are bombarded with what can only be described as cognitive pollution - information intended to delay or obfuscate and not to convince or clarify.

Similarly, with Hamblin's plaintive article. He concludes

I know we're just trying to "keep things positive," but missing the opportunity to use this campaign's massive platform to clearly talk down soda or do something otherwise more productive is lamentable. Public health campaigns of this magnitude don't come around every day. This one squanders both money and precious celebrity Twitter endorsements. Keeping things positive and making an important point are not mutually exclusive, you fools.

His argument is brutal in its simplicity. There is no established water consumption norm by which we can measure whether people are performing well or not. There are no known benefits to indiscriminately consuming more water. There are no arguments, cogent or otherwise, underpinning this campaign.

This is an initiative that will consume time and money and public discourse bandwidth with no anticipated benefits. So why undertake such a campaign? Just more cognitive pollution to dim the waters.