Taking Charge of the Truth

Our world is changing at a more rapid rate than ever.  Where will we be in another 90 days?  What is the new normal (see my blog last week)?  What are the facts and what is the truth? Who do we believe? To better understand where we are going, we need to truly understand what is actually happening and what are the facts.

FACT: a thing that is known or proved to be true.

“Leaders have to fully educate themselves on the facts surrounding every aspect of the crisis.  Do not downplay the facts.  Do not over sensationalize them” - Indra Nooyi.

From Psychology Today (Rathje), ”Why does political identity shape our thinking and perception so dramatically? NYU psychology professor Jay Van Bavel explains the results of studies like these with his “identity-based” model of political belief: Oftentimes, the actual consequences of particular party positions matter less to our daily lives than the social consequences of believing in these party positions. Our desire to hold identity-consistent beliefs often far outweigh our goals to hold accurate beliefs. This may be because being a part of a political party or social group fulfills fundamental needs, like the need for belonging, which supersede our need to search for the truth.”

The human mind is incredible, with an ability to process facts and opinions interchangeably based on our beliefs.  Over the past few months, we find ourselves lamenting that sometimes our leaders think facts seem less important than opinions.  We also tend to see this as a recent phenomenon – the devaluation of the importance of facts. But this is a phenomenon with a long history.  

As the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote in 1980, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

From an article by Peter Ellerton in The Conversation, “What we think are facts – that is, those things we think are true – can end up being wrong despite our most honest commitment to genuine inquiry.  For example, is red wine good or bad for you? And was there a dinosaur called the brontosaurus or not?"  

The Harvard researcher Samuel Arbesman points out these examples and others of how facts change in his book – The Half Life of Facts.  “It’s not only that facts can change that is a problem. While we might be happy to consider it a fact that Earth is spherical, we would be wrong to do so because it’s actually a bit pear-shaped. Thinking it a sphere, however, is very different from thinking it to be flat”.

“Matters of fact are confined to empirical claims, such as what the boiling point of a substance is, whether lead is denser than water, or whether the planet is warming. 

Matters of opinion are non-empirical claims and include questions of value and of personal preference such as whether it’s ok to eat animals, and whether vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate.  Matters of opinion can be informed by matters of fact (for example, finding out that animals can suffer may influence whether I choose to eat them), but ultimately they are not answered by matters of fact (why is it relevant if they can suffer?).” (Arbesman).

Did you know that 88 percent of the 1,002 respondents to one Pew Research survey said fake news is a source of at least some confusion?  In the same Pew survey, 23 percent of respondents admitted to sharing fake news, while 14 percent said they shared an article knowing it was fake. And… according to a 2016 Gallup poll, trust in mass media among Americans has plummeted to 32 percent, an all-time low from 72 percent in 1976.

We need knowledge and facts to make better decisions. How can we sort through all this and why is all this important?  It is important so you can re-center yourself on how to focus on the facts - as we are bombarded daily with opinions, beliefs, politics and hearsay (and dare I say “fake news”).

When you come across some new information that you may or may not agree with - remember new information we read or hear in the news or journals may be true but hasn’t had time to be validated by other studies just yet. 

“This kind of healthy skepticism does not mean you’re dismissing everything as false—it simply means remembering the things you hear could be false, but they could also be true…or they could be something in between,” Emma Frans, an epidemiology and psychiatry researcher at Oxford University in the UK and Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

We need to "trust yet verify" in the information we are being given. We need to look to the experts. The scientists, the economists, the doctors.

“It’s not important what famous people say … people with knowledge [should] talk about it.” - Jürgen Klopp

This pandemic has us all concerned at some level, both for our health and our finances.  We all want more answers than we have.  Being ready, able, and willing to think when necessary protects us from incorrect knowledge. Thinking also protects us when facts we know and have relied on change.  And facts do change.

Psychologists often talk about substituting beliefs (and prejudices) for knowledge as a widely used strategy for avoiding thought.  If we choose to think, it can protect us from confusing beliefs for facts. Sometimes, we speak about the importance of having an open mind, an ambiguous phrase of uncertain meaning. What we really mean is having the willingness and ability to think.

For many of us, it is doubtless the case that the more we know, the less we think. The greater truth, however, is the more we believe we know, the less we will think. The more certain our leaders and their followers are of what they know, the less the lives of all of us globally will be thoughtfully governed.  The collective “we” need to stay informed of the facts.  You have control over finding accurate information and questioning inaccurate data. Ask "why" and "trust yet verify".

As a personal example, some of the top sources I use for research about Covid-19 are the national and international groups like the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the American Economic Association, etc.  

As John Wooden said, “Focus on what you can control, and do it with the best of your ability”.

Together.  We.  Win.