So despite the fact that facelifts can cause this with earlobes you double down Matthew.

STUFF LIKE THIS MAKES US TRADITIONALISTS LOOK LIKE NUTS!


MODERATOR: My sincere apologies, I selected "Modify" and mangled your post, instead of hitting "Quote" which I meant to do.
"Haste makes waste"
I moved my response to the post below.
I haven't made this mistake in many months -- but still, I'm only human, so it's bound to happen from time to time.
Unfortunately, there's no way to bring back your post. If you have it somewhere, please send it to me and I'll restore it.

Found this image while the subject was Vice President with σbαmα his earlobes are still detached, so sometimes between VicePresident and the Tɾυmρ years they grew attached.   Just call me Maxwell Smart!

Bıdɛn does not have a super unique face. He's an old white man with blue eyes, and a certain basic head shape. I'm sure there are guys "close enough" especially if you slightly modified the hairline, did a bit of minor plastic surgery, etc.

Here is why I'm willing to believe there's a problem.

I am fascinated with human beings, human nature, human psychology. Did you know how flawed human memory is? I'll tell you about one experiment you probably won't believe, but it happened. They took a class of students, and at their reunion (don't remember how many years after graduation) they introduced a fake event that DIDN'T take place, but certain agents put forward as having occurred -- I think there were even some pictures. But here was the event: A class field trip involving a hot air balloon ride. You'd think that would be something either you did it, or you didn't -- but no, the students all went along with it. In fact, students even made up memories. They filled in many gaps, even humorous anecdotes and incidents that happened on the trip!

That made an impression on me.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24286258

Also, I watched some videos by the ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ "NLP" mentalist Darren Brown a few years ago. He was able to pay for expensive jewelry using blank slips of white paper. He also had this setup where he was talking down the street talking to a guy, and someone comes in between them with a large painting or something -- during that time, a pre-arranged replacement comes in and Darren Brown leaves. One time, he was replaced with a black guy (Darren Brown is white) and the man he was talking to didn't notice or care.

All kinds of stuff like that.

So do I believe that they could replace Bıdɛn with someone else "vaguely" similar in appearance, and most people wouldn't care/notice? YOU BETCHA. I don't know the psychological name for this phenomenon -- something like "normalcy bias"? -- but just the fact that the Media puts a man forward as Joe Bıdɛn is 99% of the evidence most people need -- including most of us on CI -- to believe he's the real deal.

Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias,^{[Note 1]} is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.^[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is a variation of the more general tendency of apophenia.
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People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of psychological experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts.^[2][3]

The normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a belief people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster and its possible effects, because it causes people to have a bias to believe that things will always function the way things normally function. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare and, on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations.
The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since one has never personally experienced a disaster, one never will. It can result in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. They also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation. Normalcy bias is essentially a "desire for the status quo."^[1]
"With a normalcy bias," writes one observer, "we project current conditions into the future. Normalcy bias is a form of denial where we underestimate the possibility and extent of a looming disaster even when we have incontrovertible evidence that it will happen. We assume that since a disaster never has occurred, then it never will occur. Consequently, we fail to prepare for a disaster and, when it does occur, we may be unable to deal with it."^[1]
A famous observation by Patrick Henry can be seen as a reference to the normalcy bias: "We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."^[2]
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Normalcy bias has also been called analysis paralysis, incredulity response, the ostrich effect^[1] and by first responders, the negative panic.^[3] The opposite of normalcy bias would be overreaction, or "worst-case scenario" bias,^[4][5] in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signaling an impending catastrophe.



In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. The occurrence of cognitive dissonance is a consequence of a person's performing an action that contradicts personal beliefs, ideals, and values; and also occurs when confronted with new information that contradicts said beliefs, ideals, and values.^[1][2]
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In A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), Leon Festinger proposed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency in order to mentally function in the real world. A person who experiences internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance. This is done by changing parts of the cognition to justify the stressful behavior, by adding new parts to the cognition that causes the psychological dissonance, or by actively avoiding social situations and contradictory information that are likely to increase the magnitude of the cognitive dissonance.^[1]

They took a class of students, and at their reunion (don't remember how many years after graduation) they introduced a fake event that DIDN'T take place, but certain agents put forward as having occurred -- I think there were even some pictures. But here was the event: A class field trip involving a hot air balloon ride. You'd think that would be something either you did it, or you didn't -- but no, the students all went along with it. In fact, students even made up memories. They filled in many gaps, even humorous anecdotes and incidents that happened on the trip!