{"id":72921,"date":"2025-07-18T15:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/72921\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T15:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:00:14","slug":"random-musing-is-the-new-superman-movie-anti-israel-depends-on-your-extrapolation-bias-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/72921\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Musing: Is the new Superman movie \u2018anti-Israel\u2019? Depends on your ‘extrapolation bias’ | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Random The Betteridge\u2019s Law of Headings state that whenever the heading of an article begins with a question, the answer to that is \u2018No\u2019. It\u2019s a fairly accurate law, but in this case, things are a tad more complicated because we are dealing with the most famous underwear model in the world. Superman has always meant different things to different people. Created by Jewish artists, many saw him as Moses \u2014 a baby sent away from a dying world, being raised by strangers who will lead people to the promised land by performing miracles. Some saw him as a Messiah with a better workout routine \u2014 misunderstood, crucified, and yet still willing to forgive. He\u2019s an immigrant made good, an Einstein or Elon Musk becoming something the world has never seen. For Sheldon Cooper, he\u2019s a physics problem \u2014 because the science clearly shows that being \u2018saved\u2019 by Superman would be a grislier death than being crushed <\/a>under a building. And to those with a philosophical bent, Superman is the flipside of a Nietzschean \u00dcbermensch, a being beyond humanity who can destroy everything with the blink of an eye.Given that Superman has always been the ultimate blank canvas to project one\u2019s worldview, it\u2019s hardly surprising that those of the progressive persuasion \u2014 tapped into the gateway drug of global liberalism \u2014 saw the new James Gunn Superman movie as an allegory of the Israel-Palestine conflict,<\/a> despite the fact that there wasn\u2019t a single paraglider in the movie, though there were some underground tunnels in a different dimension.Those on the opposite side \u2014 who believe the IDF only hands out candies \u2014 claimed it was antisemitic propaganda. Whether you see resistance or slander \u2014 truth to power or libel with a cape \u2014 depends less on the film itself, and more on what\u2019s already in your head. Or to be very specific, how you perceive the world \u2014 a specific sort of meta-bias that one likes to call the Extrapolation Bias.<\/p>\n

What Is Extrapolation Bias?<\/p>\n

The delusion that one thing explains everything. It\u2019s when someone sees a shoplifting video and concludes an entire culture is corrupt, or watches a superhero movie and decides it\u2019s anti-Israel propaganda. It sees a CEO on a Coldplay Kiss Cam and assumes everyone in tech is cheating. Or reads one story about a husband being murdered and assumes Macbeth-style murders are the natural conclusion of any nuptials. A meta-bias where one\u2019s brain takes one bit of data and decides to use it to explain everything.It\u2019s the Captain Planet of cognitive distortions \u2014 summoned when Confirmation Bias, Availability Heuristic, the Baader\u2013Meinhof Effect, Illusory Correlation, and Narrative Bias join forces.\"illusionIt\u2019s the mind\u2019s lazy cognitive shortcut where one instance becomes an example of a pattern and ergo proof of how society is functioning. You’re not analysing \u2014 you’re projecting, pattern-hunting, and storytelling your way into a worldview that feels right, even if it has no resemblance to reality.Superman takes on a heavily armed military force in a fictional nation, and you immediately see it as a stand-in for Israel\u2019s operations in Gaza \u2014 because that\u2019s what you were already primed to believe. That\u2019s confirmation bias.You see the rebel fighters hiding in tunnels, and because Gaza is all over your feed, your brain decides this must be about Gaza too. That\u2019s the availability heuristic.After one review calls it \u201cwoke anti-Israel trash,\u201d you start noticing more and more \u2018evidence\u2019 in every scene \u2014 even in throwaway dialogue. That\u2019s the Baader\u2013Meinhof effect.The invading general wears a grey uniform and uses high-tech drones, and now you\u2019re convinced he\u2019s a Netanyahu<\/a> clone. That\u2019s illusory correlation.And finally, you take the visuals \u2014 tunnels, power imbalance, civilian resistance \u2014 and stitch together a full-blown allegory about apartheid. That\u2019s narrative bias.Put them all together and you have extrapolation bias. One event. One film. One frame of video. And suddenly, you’re rewriting your worldview \u2014 or reinforcing it with a smug tweet and a three-paragraph Instagram caption.<\/p>\n

Why We Make Snap Judgements About Things We Don\u2019t Understand<\/p>\n

Because it\u2019s easier. We live in a world too complex to fully understand, and our brains are hardwired for survival, not nuance. So we generalise. We assume. We label. We extrapolate. Because certainty feels safer than ambiguity. And extrapolation bias is fast. It feels like a shortcut to truth. It feels like pattern recognition. It feels like insight. But it\u2019s not. It\u2019s your brain doing what large language models do \u2014 hallucinating meaning based on prior inputs. You saw a few patterns, you filled in the blanks, and you\u2019re convinced you\u2019ve uncovered a conspiracy. Just like ChatGPT filling in a bibliography with fake academic sources, you\u2019ve built a worldview based on vibes and pattern-matching. <\/p>\n

Humans and Hallucinating AI: Not So Different<\/p>\n

This is where it gets uncomfortable.Last week, we explained why Mechahitler and Black George Washington are real<\/a> \u2014 not in the literal sense, but in the way our brains insist on pattern, myth, and meaning. This week, we turn the mirror around. Because the way extrapolation bias works isn\u2019t so different from how LLMs \u2014 large language models \u2014 hallucinate.Both are predictive machines.Both rely on prior data.Both fill in the blanks with what feels right.Both prioritise coherence over truth.The difference? LLMs admit when they\u2019re guessing. Humans, less so.An LLM guesses because that\u2019s what it\u2019s trained to do. You guess because that\u2019s what your brain evolved to do \u2014 take limited data and spin it into a survival narrative. Or, in 2025, a thread. We hallucinate meaning. They hallucinate syntax. Neither is rooted in grounded fact. But both are scarily confident.<\/p>\n

The Extraplation Problem<\/p>\n

\"SupermanBut as a statistically-inclined friend and colleague pointed out, the human condition is extrapolation bias \u2014 where we try to make sense of the madness based on the data available to us. DRS is extrapolating where the ball will go. Doctors are extrapolating how to prevent a disease. Movie studios are extrapolating how audiences will react. And even citizens in a democracy are extrapolating how a politician will serve them better. The problem isn\u2019t that we extrapolate. The problem is when we do it lazily. When we confuse anecdote for data. When we treat every incident as evidence. When we stop asking: is this representative, or just resonant? Because sometimes a shoplifting video is just a crime. And a Superman movie is just about aliens in spandex \u2014 not an encrypted UN resolution. Your worldview might be valid. But maybe \u2014 just maybe \u2014 not everything is about you. Not even Superman. And definitely not James Gunn<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Betteridge\u2019s Law of Headings state that whenever the heading of an article begins with a question, the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":72922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[51042,51041,171,51040,13191,53,40456,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-72921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cognitive-distortions","9":"tag-confirmation-bias","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-extrapolation-bias","12":"tag-israel-palestine-conflict","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-superman-movie","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114874842305723762","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}