Why such widespread misinformation about fundamental realities?

Islam in Europe from The Economist.

Mistrust of religion is not confined to Islam, but Europeans regard it as more threatening to their national cultures than other faiths (or indeed atheism), according to a 2013 poll by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Germany. The threat of Islamic terrorism is rising, to judge not just by today's slaughter but also by other attacks and a recent upward trend in arrests for religiously-inspired terrorism reported by Europol, the European Union's law-enforcement arm. Perceptions can easily run ahead of reality, however. There were still more arrests for other types of terrorism (motivated by separatism, for example) in Europe in 2013, the last year for which pan-European data are available. And European publics wildly overestimate the proportion of their populations that is Muslim: an Ipsos-Mori poll in 2014 found that on average French respondents thought 31% of their compatriots were Muslim, against an actual figure closer to 8%.

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I find the information about overestimation especially interesting as it is consistent with all sorts of studies. Most people have a dramatically poor ability to properly estimate factual measures and probabilities. It is probably attributable in part to the cognitive bias of frequency illusion. In the US people routinely vastly overestimate the number/percentage of the population of all sorts of groups including African Americans, immigrants, Gays, Muslims, Jews, etc. and facts such as death by terrorism, murder, teen pregnancy, etc. Correspondingly they underestimate other groups (such as Christians) and other events.

It simply is what it is. People are poor at estimation. But these kind of dramatic numbers are a reminder just how flawed is the operating world view of many people. It is not that they are bad people, it is that their priorities are skewed by misperception or misinformation.

But why such gross misestimations?

I don't know. The frequency illusion is probably a contributor. I suspect that geocentricism might be an element as well. In other words, much of the media world, particularly journalists, are centered in a few major cities which also tend to be extremely diverse and often minority majority. If journalists experience those non-representative reality, it probably flows to their reporting, which in turn probably fosters a broader fallacious estimation. Finally it probably also might be a product of the de facto adherence to Saul Alinsky's 'RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.' Advocates have to create a sense of urgency to get a seat at the crowded and ever-shifting table of public attention. Overdramatization of the danger and consequence is a popular means of getting that place at the table. The more relentless the prosecution of misinformation, the more likely it eventually colors the thinking of the general population.