Apr 14th, 2020 - Category: Communication
What really are “facts?” It’s a question that current events have brought into sharp focus. Going beyond the usual daily barrage of conspiracy theories and obvious untruths is the deeper level of fake news including the people who use the term “fake news” to cast doubt on potentially truthful and helpful information. Even another step deeper is news where one verifiable expert says “X” is true and other, also verifiable, expert says “Y” is true and it seems like X and Y are in direct conflict with each other.
The ancient story of “Blind men and an elephant” comes to mind. From Wikipedia:
It is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
(From The Heath readers by grades, D.C. Heath and Company (Boston), p. 69)
There is no single solution to this problem. It requires the development of critical thinking and a healthy dose of so-called “common sense.” Fortunately there are several excellent resources that can help develop the skills needed to identify and prevent the spread of misinformation. For examples, News Literacy Project “empowers educators to teach students the skills they need to become smart, active consumers of news and other information and engaged, informed participants in civic life.”
Also, being aware of the limitations of modern science can add a much needed perspective when reading material from experts. Scientists have been aware of something called the Replication Crisis for over a decade and the New Yorker wrote an amazing article called “The Truth Wears Off” about it in 2010. In a nutshell, it is “an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce.” This does not mean that science is always destined to be wrong, but does mean that even information from experts should be subjected to critical thinking.
And of course politicians have long been experts at using emotional manipulation to label useful, truthful information as “fake news.” The most recent, extensive exploration of this that I’ve come across is from Tim Urban’s Wait But Why website. Buried deep in a recent post, “A Sick Giant,” is a section called “Political Junk Food” which is a fascinating read.
Finally, last year CNN published an in-depth special report on what the entire country of Finland (who shares a border with Russia) has been doing since 2014 to teach their citizens and politicians how to counter false, divisive information called “Finland is winning the war on fake news…”
Personally, I’ve gotten into the habit of asking myself critical questions regularly even when reading something from what I consider to be a trustworthy source. For example:
- Is this information / headline written primarily to create an emotional response in me? Why?
- What is the true source of information for this article? What is that source’s overall bias?
- Is there a larger / different context to interpret this situation? How would a shift in context make me see this information differently?
- Are there historical precedents for what we are going through? What was the outcome then?
- The flow of information is endless so how much is enough and how much is perseveration? Is it time to stop reading, watching, discussing, etc.?
Now more than ever, the responsibility falls on each and every one of us to be vigilant about our “information diets,” both what we consume and what we share with others. Can we do it? An old computer science saying goes “Garbage in, garbage out” and there are laws against littering. Is regulation needed to prevent digital littering?