Cognitive Biases #2: The Availability Heuristic
How RFK Jr. became antivax—and what that has to do with why you keep applying for the same kinds of jobs or dating the same people
Question: Are there more words in English that begin with R, or that have R as the third letter?
Take a guess, but don’t look it up. I’ll give you the answer halfway through this post.
Today, let’s start with a guy who who works out in jeans, owns hawks, and was, until recently, running for president. This guy:
A lot’s been said about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his…um…storied past. John Oliver devoted an entire show to him, and the podcast Behind the Bastards spent four whole hours on his life.
The stories are crazy, a little sad, and include far more rotting meat than I was prepared for.
But today I want to take a different look at Kennedy, one that doesn’t get into his politics, one that mentions only once the measles outbreak in Samoa that he might singlehandedly be responsible for.
Instead, I want to take a more generous approach to the man.
Specifically, I want to ask if there are other reasons—besides the usual accusations of misinformation, deception, and a…
