Real Life Matters

“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.” – Valery Legasov (HBO mini-series “Chernobyl”)

The biggest threat facing America today is not climate change, inflation, or rising authoritarianism. The biggest problem is the spread of misinformation. Its consequences are profound. Trust – a prerequisite for any group living together – is obliterated. Empathy – the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference – is destroyed. The carrier of our disease is misinformation. No one is immune – not in the largest city, nor in the smallest town.

Commercializing Mistrust and Contempt

The algorithms used by Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and other big tech companies, are turbocharging the spread of misinformation, resulting in a profound lack of connection in our country. These algorithms, buried deep within applications we use everyday, are driving advertising revenue at a record pace. They are also isolating us and filling our minds with information that is popular – and verifiably false.

Here is how it works in the case of Facebook:

The Facebook Artificial Intelligence powered algorithm is designed to suck users into the content that interests them the most. The technology is tuned to serve up more and more of what you click on, be that yoga, camping, Manchester United, or K-pop. That sounds great, right?

However, the Facebook algorithm also leads tens of millions of its 2.7 billion global users into an abyss of misinformation, a quagmire of lies, and a quicksand of conspiracy theories.^[1]https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/blog/facebook-ai-algorithm-is-destructive

Facebook’s methods for capturing our attention are unique:

Many people talk about partisan news outlets as a major problem driving Americans apart. Yes, the ideological focus of MSNBC is different from FOX and The New York Times leans in a different direction from The Wall Street Journal. However, there is a massive difference between choosing to get your news from a cable TV network or a newspaper vs. having the news appear on your Facebook feed. The element of choice is removed with Facebook because the news comes to you based on what you clicked on in the past rather than what you choose to click on now. This becomes a huge problem for those who are curious enough to dip their toes into a conspiracy theory. Facebook traps people.

Imagine you “like” a story sent by a dear friend about how the Apollo lunar landings were faked, perhaps not even reading the story. Later, you get another link from Facebook on the theme of faked moon landings and it makes you wonder… Maybe you then search Facebook for more stories about the Apollo missions being faked because you are curious. You’re in! Facebook has now trapped you. You will get more and more content based on what you are beginning to (falsely) believe to be true.

As soon as people start seeing lots and lots of similar false stories appear in their Facebook newsfeed, they begin to “know this is true because everybody says so.” ^[2]https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/blog/facebook-ai-algorithm-is-destructive

Fighting Misinformation

Each one of us is predisposed to believing things that are untrue. All decisions made by human beings suffer from some level of bias and noise. Bias is how we tend to look at a problem based upon our cultural background and personal experience.

In a set of groundbreaking studies in 1932, psychologist Frederic Bartlett told volunteers a Native American legend about a young man who hears war cries and, pursuing them, enters a dreamlike battle that eventually leads to his real death. Bartlett asked the volunteers, who were non-Native, to recall the rather confusing story at increasing intervals, from minutes to years later. He found that as time passed, the rememberers tended to distort the tale’s culturally unfamiliar parts such that they were either lost to memory or transformed into more familiar things. We now know that our minds do this all the time: they adjust our understanding of new information so that it fits in with what we already know. One consequence of this so-called confirmation bias is that people often seek out, recall and understand information that best confirms what they already believe.

This tendency is extremely difficult to correct. Experiments consistently show that even when people encounter balanced information containing views from differing perspectives, they tend to find supporting evidence for what they already believe. And when people with divergent beliefs about emotionally charged issues such as climate change are shown the same information on these topics, they become even more committed to their original positions.^[3]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/

In addition to fighting bias, we need to be aware that our decisions are affected by noise:

Bad weather is associated with improved memory; judicial sentences tend to be more severe when it is hot outside; and stock market performance is affected by sunshine.^[4]Kahneman, Daniel; Sibony, Olivier; Sunstein, Cass R. Noise (p. 87). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

A study of nearly seven hundred thousand primary care visits. . . showed that physicians are significantly more likely to prescribe opioids at the end of a long day. Surely, there is no reason why a patient with a 4 pm appointment should be in greater pain than one who shows up at 9 am. Nor should the fact that the doctor is running behind schedule influence prescription decisions. And indeed, prescriptions of other pain treatments, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and referrals to physical therapy, do not display similar patterns. When physicians are under time pressure, they are apparently more inclined to choose a quick-fix solution, despite its serious downsides. Other studies showed that, toward the end of the day, physicians are more likely to prescribe antibiotics and less likely to prescribe flu shots.^[5]Kahneman, Daniel; Sibony, Olivier; Sunstein, Cass R. Noise (p. 87). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

What steps can we take to improve our process for making decisions in our quest to cut through bias and noise and find the truth?

1. Consider the Source

Just because you see something popular on TV, or read about it in Facebook, or Twitter, doesn’t mean it is true. When deciding whom and what to believe, consider the credentials of the journalists involved and the organizations they represent. Science over conspiracy. Facts over lies. Truth over hyperbole.

2. Act like a Judge

A wise friend of mine said to me the other evening, “how can I make a decision about this after only hearing one side of the matter?” Like a courtroom judge, we owe it to our community to hear each side present its case without interruption before making any conclusions, no matter how tempting it may be to retreat to our usual defensive (or offensive!) positions. This is not easy. Hearing from the other side requires meeting and talking with people who do not share your particular viewpoint. It will be uncomfortable, but it also is the only way to find potential areas of mutual understanding.

3. Walk in their Shoes

Use your imagination to see what it would feel like to walk in someone else’s shoes. A failure of empathy leads to extremism in all of its forms. The truth of the matter is that we are all just human beings, trying to do our best. It is human nature to reciprocate gestures of kindness. Even if a kind gesture is rejected, it is always the right thing to do.

4. Turn their Flank

Centuries of military history have proven that a direct assault against an opponent’s strongpoint will be costly. Most likely, it will also fail. An indirect approach is much easier, and more likely to succeed. The best strategies inevitably involve the least possible use of force. Approach a difficult subject from a different angle. Make your opponent comfortable. Move. Be flexible.

5. Don’t go there

It saddens me to scroll through the news and social media and see so many personal attacks on public figures, especially attacks based upon personal appearance or assumed level of intelligence. Personal attacks are tempting to make. They are also cheap, unfair and inhumane. They don’t belong in our public conversations, nor do they belong in our private conversations. They also make compromise almost impossible to reach.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou