Danger: Opinions, Beliefs & Facts

The impact of blurred lines, disinformation & what to do about it.

Increasingly today, the lines are being blurred between opinions, beliefs and facts.

But this is not a new phenomenon. This has always existed. Particularly the conflation of beliefs and facts. The real difference is that now is the first time in the history of the world that so many of us can share our opinions and beliefs with virtually everyone.

Nor is this a bad thing.

When I was first considering this, I thought I would write something about the importance of offering your opinions on what you are talking about or presenting because sharing your opinion can be a window into your values and who you are.

But as I got deeper into my reasoning, I realised I couldn’t do this topic justice without first taking a wider look at the balance of human nature, society and technology. So please bear with me. The goal here is to give you some actionable content to help you make your communications more engaging and compelling. First, though, we need to look at our operating environment.

Let’s start with some definitions. These will become important later.

Facts - These are independently observable things, processes or actions. A fact is something that is irrefutable. Interpretations of these facts vary, but the bedrock is the observable fact. For example, The Titanic sank is a fact. Why the Titanic sank, or who is to blame for the sinking of the Titanic, is an interpretation of the many known facts that surrounded the sinking.

Beliefs - These operating principles we use to make decisions and may influence our involuntary reactions. Beliefs don’t have the same bedrock solidity as facts. By that, I mean we can determine the essential fact of a thing through some simple questioning. We can soon determine if something is a fact or an interpretation by examining what can or has been observed.

But beliefs are not a black-or-white, on-or-off phenomenon. Beliefs occur on a continuum, from strongly held foundational beliefs to assumptions, which are beliefs that you have adopted without much consideration. This is important because our prioritisation of our beliefs makes a huge difference in how we operate, the actions we take, and ultimately, our character, which others observe.

To illustrate, let’s imagine two people have the same two beliefs but with different priorities:

A) People are always trying to take advantage of me, I have to be careful.

B) Family is important. I would do anything for my family.

If a family member were to ask each of our imaginary people to lend them money for a business venture, the answer they will receive will be different. The prioritisation of these beliefs will determine the action each person will take, and although they both believe the same things, that prioritisation will lead to quite different responses. The answer may be yes in both cases, but the amounts and terms may differ.

It is worth noting that this prioritisation of beliefs also translates to your values. More on that later.

Opinions - These are where the Venn diagram of beliefs and ideas meets. Opinions are not something that runs your life. They are not part of your core operating system. They are your ideas about why things happen. They are why you have reasoned out from the things you have observed. Like beliefs, some of our opinions result from careful consideration and some of our opinions we have adopted without much thought, often because they are shared by the people around us.

The current Social Media dilemma

I would suggest that one of the problems we face in the world today is this misunderstanding of, and sometimes willful, sometimes accidental, conflation of facts, beliefs and opinions.

In the past, the information we consumed as a society was fairly clearly defined and largely created by professionals with some knowledge and experience in what they were doing. We had news presenters and reporters who gave facts and then added some interpretation to those facts, being clear about what was fact and interpretation.

People gave us stories for entertainment, fictional stories, or gossip-style stories. Because we knew those sources, we knew where to slot this new information into our mental databases and could access that data appropriately for our mental operating system.

Today, we are all accessing a wide swath of information of data from Social Media. I rarely watch the national news on television, I don’t read newspapers, and the only time I read an online news story is if someone sends me a link. I get my news from Social Media sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter (not so much anymore), and podcasts.

Chances are this is true for you also.

The difficulty is that many of these sources blur the lines between facts, beliefs and opinions. Most do so unintentionally, but a few are very intentional in how they use this to manipulate their readers or viewers in order to get a specific outcome.

It is not uncommon to find a series of posts, videos and articles that start with an opinion and build on it with rhetoric, conjecture and comparison until that opinion is held as a belief that must be held by this certain tribe or group. This is how people are radicalised on the internet.

Using this information

Now, you may think, “This is all very interesting, Chris, but what does it have to do with me?” Fair question, so let’s look at what this means for someone who wants to share a message with the world either from a stage or a Social Media platform.

While you may not have defined things the way I have above, you and the people you are talking to have thought about this problem to some degree. We have all shared that experience on Social Media where we have heard something interesting from someone. It piqued our interest, and we followed them a little while later, we realised that this person was going off on a tangent we were uncomfortable with. So we stopped following them.

You need to realise that this experience is being replicated millions of times daily with every person engaging in Social Media or sitting in an audience. We have all learned through our shared experiences to be a little reserved and a little more discerning about who we pay attention to and follow.

So, the takeaway I am suggesting for you is clarity.

Be clear in your communications about what is a definitive fact, your interpretation of that fact, your opinions, and how this is all coloured by your beliefs.

It is a fact that the advent of Social Media has enabled more people to share more ideas with more people than ever before in history.

It is one of my fundamental beliefs that the sharing of ideas, the adding, mixing, reinterpretation and sharing again is necessary for the evolution of our thinking as a society and will lead us to a better place, improving lives and opening new possibilities. I can’t prove this. But I believe it deeply, which is why I do what I do.

I also believe that Social Media has disrupted the systemic way we receive and organise our information. Leading to an explosion of conspiracy theories and tribalism on a scale that is unlike anything in our history.

I don’t think this disruption is a bad long-term thing, but I do think that, as a society, we are floundering through this change and trying to figure out what works and how to navigate it.

I also think that if we start to communicate in a way that clearly labels what is a fact, what is interpretation or opinion, and how our beliefs are colouring this, we will reach the audience we want to reach, have the impact we want to have, and accelerate the evolution of ideas that we each feel is important.

Do you need to spell these things out in every post or comment? -Of course not.

If you share some of your core beliefs in some of your posts or talks, and you get into the habit of pointing out when you are going from fact to opinion or interpretation, then I think you will enjoy a higher level of credibility, and you will find your critical thinking on your topic will be the better for it.

Please comment below with an example of an opinion or belief expressed as a fact, and how you dealt with it.

This article was originally published in the newsletter on 23rd July 2023. To get more like this, subscribe to The Compelling Communicator, a free weekly newsletter. https://compellingcommunicator.beehiiv.com/