Truth or Dears

"It is often said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance- and in the digital age we need to be as vigilant of our own beliefs as we are of external threats"

Many years ago, I shared this link on Facebook. It’s a 2016 article from IFL Science with the headline: Marijuana Contains "Alien DNA" From Outside Of Our Solar System, NASA Confirms. It’s a test to see who would actually read the article before commenting on the headline. The content is actually about how people aren’t reading news anymore, they are just reacting to clickbait, spouting their opinions, and arguing in the comments section. I’m sure you can all accurately guess how many people passed the test.

In the past decade, things have not gotten better. We may be living in a time of unprecedented rates of change, but one thing has remained constant in human history: lies spread faster than truths.

In our current media landscape, it seems to me that every day fewer & fewer people care less & less about whether their beliefs are true. This famous bit from The Colbert Report used to be satire, but something has changed in the intervening years. Maybe people are just getting tired of the onslaught. We’ve been told countless times how a news diet controlled by social media algorithms leads to echo chambers, group think, and the spreading of misinformation. And the resounding response seems to be: WE DON’T CARE.

As I’ve argued in a pervious post, a partisan society benefits the powers that be financially. But it also helps them maintain the status quo. A divided people are less likely to unite to stand up for themselves. Rather than come together- say to demand serious changes to our tax policies, fight corruption in our institutions, and demand changes to our elections to make them more representative- people unite into their tribes and argue with anyone who holds an opposing point of view. For too many of us, membership to a tribe is more important than believing true things.

A lot of this sentiment boils down to the fact that many people see themselves as soldiers in a cultural/political war. If I can win a battle by fudging the truth, my supporters will reinforce the sentiment and amplify the message. That moral victory is more important right now than strict adherence to the truth because all is fair in love and war.

But are we in a war? It seems like we have to be. If there are opposing sides and they both are fighting a war against the other, then THAT pretty much meets the requisites. In this sense, the extreme sides of any issue can be said to be fighting endless wars. But are most people in that radical category or does it just seem that way because social media amplifies them over more moderate individuals? A war between the extremes may be raging, but the better question is: Is it a war the rest of us ought to join?

Here’s the thing: How you answer that question largely depends on your media diet. According to the authors of that study, consumption of biased media doesn’t have a measurable effect on people’s knowledge of facts, but it largely affects their beliefs above and beyond what those facts logically support. I ask you to really take a second and consider the source of your beliefs no matter which “side” you are on. If you think “woke leftists want to murder babies,” or “police are regularly hunting people of color,” or “Biden was the most corrupt president in US History,” or “Trump staged his assassination attempt,” then I urge you to really scrutinize your facts and honestly question whether your beliefs exceed their rational conclusions.

There will be people who are mad at that last paragraph. They will call me a moral coward for “bothsidesing” the issues. As if just pointing out that the facts at hand do not support the conclusions, is the same as equivocating the issues morally. (It’s not, by the way.) But again, I urge you to gut check the source of your ire if you do feel that way.

If you are uncomfortable when reading a point-of-view that challenges your own, that is a perfectly normal way to feel, but just because you are experiencing cognitive dissonance doesn’t mean the other side is wrong. We often make moral judgements based on “gut feelings” and rationalize them later. When we feel cognitive dissonance, our gut reaction is to resolve it as quickly as possible and an easy way to do that is to tell yourself that the source of that dissonance is morally wrong, and you are on the right side. Your discomfort is merely your righteous indignation.

But maybe…just maybe…you are feeling cognitive dissonance because deep down, somewhere, you are realizing you are incorrect about something. Examine the facts, look for the inconsistencies, and realize you might need to change your opinion. It might be scary because your friend group is still ideologically captured. Maybe it feels shameful because you have stood on your soapbox for so long and you don’t want to eat crow. But don’t turn back now! To do so would truly be moral cowardice! Embrace it, adjust your thinking and guess what:

…the world didn’t end and you are one belief closer to an accurate representation of reality.

Why is this so important? Because accepting ideologies without proper scrutiny is exactly what makes you predictable and therefore more easily controlled. If leaders can know with relative certainty how you are going to react to a message before it is released, then they have the upper hand. What’s worse, if they can do so while not having to worry that you will care if their message is true, it makes their job even easier.

Will this inevitably lead to authoritarianism? Yes. There are real conspiracies in the world. There is real corruption. And authoritarians are always looking for ways to gain power. It is often said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance- and in the digital age we need to be as vigilant of our own beliefs as we are of external threats. If we stop caring about the truth, we expose ourselves to manipulation through the “big lie.”

In Orwell’s 1984, the mantra: War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, was used to demonstrate adherence to the authorities. One didn’t need to believe the words, performing the act of saying them meant your spirit was broken and you were ready to serve mindlessly. Daily we are inundated with false news, misinformation and disinformation, and AI is already starting to exacerbate the problem. It is understandable that people are getting worn down, joining their tribes, and caring less about truth.

Resist! Make Orwell fiction again! Don’t let yourself be ideologically captured by extremists of either side of the political spectrum. Read or listen to the news from a variety of trained journalists. Listen to longform podcasts; choose a few you disagree with and listen to the whole thing. Think for yourself and realize that you can understand some else’s point-of-view without adopting it as your own.

The vast majority of people reading this will likely agree that “other people” fall into these traps, but they themselves are immune to such ideological capture. While, it seems clear to me that none of us (myself included) are as resistant to cognitive biases as we imagine we are, I do hold out hope that things aren’t as bad as they seem. We just need to stop playing the games that the political and economic powers want us to play. We need to see them for the enemies they are rather than our neighbors. A recent study at Berkley lends credence to this hope. They found a simple, yet effective strategy to increase trust on either side of the political divide: Inform people that the “other side” is not as radical as you think they are.

That’s it! That’s the single message out of 24 other solutions that “was top-ranked in reducing voter support for undemocratic practices and also highly effective in reducing support for partisan violence and easing partisan animosity”

Why?

Because it is true.

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