Random Musing: Is the new Superman movie ‘anti-Israel’? Depends on your ‘extrapolation bias’ | World News
The Betteridge’s Law of Headings state that whenever the heading of an article begins with a question, the answer to that is ‘No’. It’s 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 — 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 — misunderstood, crucified, and yet still willing to forgive. He’s an immigrant made good, an Einstein or Elon Musk becoming something the world has never seen. For Sheldon Cooper, he’s a physics problem — because the science clearly shows that being ‘saved’ by Superman would be a grislier death than being crushed under a building. And to those with a philosophical bent, Superman is the flipside of a Nietzschean Übermensch, 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’s worldview, it’s hardly surprising that those of the progressive persuasion — tapped into the gateway drug of global liberalism — saw the new James Gunn Superman movie as an allegory of the Israel-Palestine conflict, despite the fact that there wasn’t a single paraglider in the movie, though there were some underground tunnels in a different dimension.Those on the opposite side — who believe the IDF only hands out candies — claimed it was antisemitic propaganda. Whether you see resistance or slander — truth to power or libel with a cape — depends less on the film itself, and more on what’s already in your head. Or to be very specific, how you perceive the world — a specific sort of meta-bias that one likes to call the Extrapolation Bias.
What Is Extrapolation Bias?
The delusion that one thing explains everything. It’s when someone sees a shoplifting video and concludes an entire culture is corrupt, or watches a superhero movie and decides it’s 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’s brain takes one bit of data and decides to use it to explain everything.It’s the Captain Planet of cognitive distortions — summoned when Confirmation Bias, Availability Heuristic, the Baader–Meinhof Effect, Illusory Correlation, and Narrative Bias join forces.
It’s the mind’s lazy cognitive shortcut where one instance becomes an example of a pattern and ergo proof of how society is functioning. You’re not analysing — 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’s operations in Gaza — because that’s what you were already primed to believe. That’s 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’s the availability heuristic.After one review calls it “woke anti-Israel trash,” you start noticing more and more ‘evidence’ in every scene — even in throwaway dialogue. That’s the Baader–Meinhof effect.The invading general wears a grey uniform and uses high-tech drones, and now you’re convinced he’s a Netanyahu clone. That’s illusory correlation.And finally, you take the visuals — tunnels, power imbalance, civilian resistance — and stitch together a full-blown allegory about apartheid. That’s 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 — or reinforcing it with a smug tweet and a three-paragraph Instagram caption.
Why We Make Snap Judgements About Things We Don’t Understand
Because it’s 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’s not. It’s your brain doing what large language models do — hallucinating meaning based on prior inputs. You saw a few patterns, you filled in the blanks, and you’re convinced you’ve uncovered a conspiracy. Just like ChatGPT filling in a bibliography with fake academic sources, you’ve built a worldview based on vibes and pattern-matching.
Humans and Hallucinating AI: Not So Different
This is where it gets uncomfortable.Last week, we explained why Mechahitler and Black George Washington are real — 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’t so different from how LLMs — large language models — 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’re guessing. Humans, less so.An LLM guesses because that’s what it’s trained to do. You guess because that’s what your brain evolved to do — 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.
The Extraplation Problem
But as a statistically-inclined friend and colleague pointed out, the human condition is extrapolation bias — 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’t 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 — not an encrypted UN resolution. Your worldview might be valid. But maybe — just maybe — not everything is about you. Not even Superman. And definitely not James Gunn.
