We aspire to be rational but often miss and settle for rationalizing.

Heh.  From I’ll Take ‘White Supremacist Hand Gestures’ for $1,000 by Ben Smith.

The subtitle is descriptive:

How hundreds of “Jeopardy!” contestants talked themselves into a baseless conspiracy theory — and won’t be talked out of it.

This is simply craziness of emotionally enthusiastic individuals unconstrained by logic, reason or evidence.   

It is an ironclad rule of the private Facebook group of past “Jeopardy!” contestants that nobody post about that night’s episode before 11 p.m. Eastern time, to avoid spoiling the show for West Coast viewers.

So the moderators of the group waited until 11 p.m. sharp on April 27 to reassure the roughly 2,800 fellow members that they had the crisis in hand. They had seen a contestant on that night’s show, a big white guy with a red tie, Kelly Donohue, make an odd gesture with three fingers of his right hand. “Based on the evidence we’ve seen being bandied about elsewhere, there is a real possibility he was giving either a white power or a Three Percenter hand gesture,” wrote one moderator, a middle-school teacher who was on the show about five years ago, according to screenshots provided by another group member. And though “we can’t know his intent,” he continued, “we’re not here to provide safe harbor for white supremacists.”

They weren’t the only ones who noticed the gesture. About 50 viewers had tweeted about it, suggesting variously that it was a symbol of the Ku Klux Klan or of QAnon. And “Jeopardy!” contestants searching Mr. Donohue’s personal Facebook page saw what they considered other, damning evidence, including a picture of Mr. Donohue in a red MAGA hat. One leading member of the group wrote up a public letter. Another emailed the Anti-Defamation League to report the incident.

A full 595 former contestants eventually signed on to the final draft of the letter, asking why “Jeopardy!” hadn’t edited out the moment. It went on to proclaim: “We cannot stand up for hate. We cannot stand next to hate. We cannot stand onstage with something that looks like hate.” 

This is one of the deep pathologies of our public discourse these days.  So many people claiming essentially that they are effective mind-readers.  We always make inferences of what people are saying.  It is part of our neurological structure for processing large volumes of information.  But most of us maintain a ready recognition that "I may not have understood . . . " and go back and validate an interpretation.

But in this case, they know what was intended and it is enough to launch a crusade without any backdrop of confirmation and investigation.  They are excellent mind readers.

But the “Jeopardy!” story is a remarkable case study for a couple of reasons. First, the participants represent a particular kind of American achievement — the mastery of facts and trivia, celebrated by one of America’s few universally beloved institutions. A turn on “Jeopardy!” is the best credential there is in America. (When my brother, Emlen, lost valiantly in 2017, it generated more familial excitement than his Ph.D.) And I would say, after talking to a couple of dozen former contestants last week, that they are not just smart people but basically nice and sincere ones, too, from diverse backgrounds all over the country, united only by their ability to recall Madonna lyrics and capital cities.

And second, Snopes is right. Mr. Donohue’s case is unusually clear-cut, and the allegation is obviously false.

Given their breadth and depth of knowledge, these people are bright and not a demographic one might have anticipated being prone to hysteria.

So the element of this story that interests me most is how the beating heart of nerdy, liberal fact-mastery can pump blood into wild social media conspiracy, and send all these smart people down the sort of rabbit hole that leads other groups of Americans to believe that children are being transported inside refrigerators. And, I wanted to know, how they could remain committed to that point of view in the absence of any solid evidence. 

And as so often happens, counter evidence only solidifies their preconceived notion.

Then, two weeks later, the group finally heard back from the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights group that is usually quick to call out anything with the faintest smell of bigotry.

“Thank you for reaching out regarding your concern over a Jeapardy [sic] contestant flashing what you believed to be a white power hand signal,” wrote Aaron Ahlquist, of the A.D.L., according to text posted to the group by the contestant who had emailed the group. “We have reviewed the tape and it looks like he is simply holding up three fingers when they say he is a three-time champion. We do not interpret his hand signal to be indicative of any ideology. However, we are grateful to you for raising your concern, and please do not hesitate to contact us in the future should the need arise.”

The A.D.L.’s response provoked fury among former contestants who had signed the letter.

In the early 1960's we were living in Venezuela and I would have been not more than four years old (for that was when we transferred to Nigeria).  I cannot imagine the context of the conversation between my father and myself, given my age, but I do recall him telling me about "hysteria" and his offering an example.  Apparently at that time, or near that time, people in the US had begun reporting to authorities that people were accessing their homes while they slept, never stealing, merely intruding.  

The conviction apparently was deeply held and widespread across many states that these intruders were wafting chloroform through window air conditioning units thus causing the homeowners to sleep through the intrusion.  I do not recall what the evidence might have been to cause the occupants to know that their home had been broken into, but they absolutely knew the cause.  Chloroform through window AC units.

Hysteria usually is meant in its primary definition "exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement" but the narrower more specific definition is worth recalling.  "A psychological disorder (not now regarded as a single definite condition) whose symptoms include conversion of psychological stress into physical symptoms (somatization), selective amnesia, shallow volatile emotions, and overdramatic or attention-seeking behavior."

The most clear modern version of mass social hysteria that comes to mind was in the 1980s during the scandal of psychologists and counselors using recovered memories from young children to fan a nationwide hysteria about satanic worship in pre-school programs including animal and child-sacrifice.

A set of convictions so absurd and yet so fixed and widespread that people were with some regularity convicted of crimes and sent to jail for crimes never committed.  

It was Elliott Aronson who observed:

Man likes to think of himself as a rational animal. However, it is more true that man is a rationalizing animal, that he attempts to appear reasonable to himself and to others.