A guide to Federal Electioneering

 

 

Q: What is “Arpa Narpa Narp“?

 

A:Where everyone’s bills are going, according to folksy, down with the biddies, Tony Abbott today.  
Strangely enough Sir Roger don’t recall his bills ever going anywhere else over all his long years. Except at Col’s, where they’re going Darndarn (Proiza Sadarn). Or not.

So why did Abbott, sitting among the cooing old ladies, make such an obvious claim?

He said it because the biddies (and the viewers) would find, oddly enough, that they agreed with him. And they would nod, and frown at the awful bills (Goa Narp).

And people watching on teevee would not only agree but see that Abbott was someone other people agreed with.

“It seems it is all right to agree with Abbott,” they might think, “and what he said makes sense, doesn’t it?”

The problem, of course, is that Arpa Narpa Narp is where bills always go. And despite suggesting otherwise, and despite his royal telephone, or the dimwitted cardinal, there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. And he knows it.

If you think about it you can work that out.

Average incomes have doubled in less than a decade. Inflation isn’t going below zero, nor are interest rates.

Abbott and/or his advisers knew exactly what he was doing. (Actually on balance, probably just his advisers…)

The technique is to make a statement which provokes an instant, automatic response in what Daniel Kahneman calls “System 1” thinking.

System 1 is fast, impulsive, automatic, uses stereotypes, is often inaccurate and can only make good judgments on simple tasks. System 1 thinking doesn’t take much energy at all.

Bread and . . . . . . . . . . . . ?

2 + 2 = . . . . . ?

Quickly: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much is the ball?
Quick! What’s your immediate answer?      $ . . . . . . . .

17 x 13 =  . . . . . . . . . ?

So politicians (and their advisers) attempt to speak directly to System 1, to manipulate a desired response and not to give people time to rouse “System 2”  into action.

System 2 is the thinking that works things out and considers complex problems.

System 2 takes attention. Filling out forms, deciding which phone or soap powder represents the best value, working out what to say to that girl or boy, writing your thesis.

System 2 is much better at working things out but it gets tired really quickly because it uses so much energy.

That’s why politicians and the Murdoch tabloids don’t like to give people a chance to actually think too hard. They might work out the scam.

So Sir Roger recommends not letting them get away with it. Listen to their simplistic nonsense so that you know when they’re lying — (as Stuart Wagstaff used to say, “and isn’t that…all the time?”).

Tell your friends.

  

  

By the way, in our quick test did you get that the ball was 10c?

Sadly, no. If the ball is 10c, then the bat, costing a dollar more than the ball, would be $1.10 and the total for bat and ball would be $1.20, not $1.10 as stated.

The ball is actually 5c.

Oh, and 17 x 13 is obviously a System 2 exercise … can you do it in your head? Well done! 

17 x 13 = 221

And now you feel like taking a nap.

Daniel Kahneman’s book is called Thinking, Fast and Slow. Sir Roger HIGHLY recommends it. Available on Kindle, too.

 

  

Thank you for reading this far!  You might think producing a post like this takes a bit of work. 
It does! If you’ve appreciated it you might consider encouraging me. ( We all like validation! )   

Buy Me A Coffee

All posts

Categories

You might also like:

Sir Roger: Archived in Perpetuity

  Fame of a Sort?   Can Lordship be far behind . . .    ir Roger has just received a request from Canberra saying that the National Library of Australia wished permission to include ValuesAustralia.com in the PANDORA Archive of...

Thank You For Listening and Fuck You

  George W Bush and Dick Cheney address the nation  on the Whitehouse Weekly Radio Address      

John Howard: Strong or Weak?

Choose Your Favourite War Criminal   hat extraordinary influence our Groveller General enjoys with US President Bush. Mr Howard said he will raise the Hicks issue when he meets the US President George W Bush on Tuesday…Mr Howard says he will...

Draft Mateship Guidelines Exhumed

Fair Dinkum Aussie Mateship Cetrificate Test   new Mateship test will ensure Australia strikes the right balance between the British and the rest, says Minister for Aussie Mateship, Smeagol K. Dic. The Ministry today released a draft guide...

Migently Mountain Manifesto: 3

11.   Science is not a set of facts. Science is a process. The process is to — a) observe, b) speculate, c) propose an explanation (or “theory”), d) devise an experiment which i) can be repeated (“replicable”) and ii) can prove the theory false (“falsifiable”) e)...

Rentier Socialists

  Not Gough in his heyday    J ust (sorry) Sir Roger thinks IT’S TIME to refer back to the recent squabble about certain t-shirts and heap some shit on those who assert ownership of the commonly used English phrase “It’s time”. Universities once — in all the...

Millennial Jubilation

   1,000     oday, Sir Roger celebrates his 1,000th post in 1277 days – or exactly 3½ years – since the inaugural, ungainly, embarrassing post – Minister von Rock Opens Australian Refujesus Exhibition – on 15 October 2006. Since then...

Did Dick? Dick Did!

  My Dick dick is bigger than your dikdik   S Vice-President Dick Cheney has arrived in Australia. Dick is visiting to offer John Howard a reach-around for the upcoming federal erection. Values Australia staff report that Howard welcomed Dick...

Jefferson Says – Reboot

President Kennedy told a gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas...

Australian Refujesus Exhibition

Minister von Rock Opens Australian Refujesus Exhibition 15 October, 2006 The Australian Minister for Pacific Island Guano Getaways and Internment (PIGGI), Mistress von Rock, has opened a very tasteful photographic exhibition of pathetically grateful boat people to...

Jefferson Says

  We the People   homas Jefferson was the third President of the United States, a man of the Enlightenment, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most influential Founding Fathers, who envisioned America as...

Grey Cardigans at 20 Paces

  The greater triumphs and achievements   oday in 3QuarksDaily Abbas Raza quotes Nehru:    We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an...

Kev’s Massive Package

  It takes Balls to Punish the Jobless   he thing about the unemployed is that, well, they’re powerless; or rather, they’re disempowered, particularly by the feeling of being unemployed in a culture in which what you do, not to mention...

Jefferson Says – Reboot

President Kennedy told a gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas...

‘this pathetic bleating for shelter from skepticism’

Atheists need a little woman to calm them down   es, we know it is a bit late in the day to be discovering Pharyngula but we did and there is nothing to be done but fall down and worship. No, we mean sit down and learn. PZ Myers is a prolific,...

…But We Weren’t

Moe Keelty - yet again   et's not mince words about Indonesia. While most of its ordinary people, at least the ones we have met, are in the range from friendly to wonderful, it has seemed to us, looking at reasonably recent history, that for...

Spelling It Out

  Okay, no surprise… The Bush White House lied to the American people. …Except that one of the people who knew it at the time, a US Senator, has dropped a “Bombshell on the Senate Floor”. o here it is at last. Not the smoking gun we had before...

Dear DIC

The Ultimate Dreamcometrue  I n the heat of the 2006 Spring Offensive over Australian values Values Australia was born in response to the cynical and ignorant way real Australian values were being abused by politicians and the sycophantic, right-wing media echo...

Lex Australia

  ame across an old post at Gavin Putland’s Leges Dubiae blog which coincides with what we tried to say way back when Haneef was the name on everyone’s lips. Given the change of government and all, it seems timely to question this preposterous...

Bhutto

t wasn’t such a surprise, we suppose, but Benazir Bhutto’s reported assassination, while it saddens us as another display of humanity’s inability to grow up, confirms our contempt for religion in general and that one in particular. Let those who...

For the Record

Eating Air   ir Roger wrote to several Labor pollies recently complaining about Labor’s (really Rudd’s) lack of stance on the Haneef matter. The first response, to his credit, was from on behalf of Kevin Rudd. Dear [….you...

Such Is Life

"Unemployed at last!"    e think this is the best Australian novel ever written. Yes, we know there are many contenders and perhaps The Tree of Man comes a close second. But to us, at least, Such Is Life by “Tom Collins” (Joseph Furphy),...

Rude Britannia & Australian Values

How Very Dare You!  Yes, we know, the British are the world leaders in "la politesse"  and "cortesia" (ironically*). They will never be impolite to anyone. They would never call a black person a "nig-nog". Not to their face. They would never call an Australian a...

Lord Roger Migently?

Back to the Regency Future   ir Roger Migently, as you must surely realise, has been quite unwell. He has been managed like an unlucky skier in an induced coma these many months since September 2013, when the floor of the Migently Mansions...

We Are Humbled…

…and yet proud…  o have some of our work considered worthy of inclusion amongst the writings of the doyens of the ozblogosphere in the Top 40 collection at OnlineOpinion. The piece the judges have chosen is “The Nation That Hangs Together”. We have...

M-m-m-My Corona

  What is it With Toilet Paper?   When age can, uninvited, link the distant poppy past of The Knack with the all too adjacent Present and come up with a pun, Sir Roger is delighted that there are others still living who appreciate the troubling incongruity...

Education and Life

   Be Normal and Fit In    ir Roger’s close confidante writes: My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed...

Dear DIC

The Ultimate Dreamcometrue  I n the heat of the 2006 Spring Offensive over Australian values Values Australia was born in response to the cynical and ignorant way real Australian values were being abused by politicians and the sycophantic, right-wing media echo...

Let Them Eat Yellowcake

Carlo Bonini           STATE OF THE UNION 2003: " Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of Uranium from Africa." Or not ...   Well, as Bill Moyers reminds us, it wasn’t true. It was all a forgery, perpetrated in Rome. And Carlo Bonini, the Italian...

What is Arpa Narpa Narp?

A guide to Federal Electioneering     Q: What is “Arpa Narpa Narp“?   Where everyone’s bills are going, according to folksy, down with the biddies, Tony Abbott today.  Strangely enough Sir Roger don’t recall his bills ever going...

0 Comments