"As the coronavirus has spread around the world, so has misinformation about the disease. Technology giants have touted the steps they are taking to combat coronavirus misinformation, but these efforts have failed to help the Benassis. The family's suffering highlights the potential for blatant falsehoods to be rewarded and amplified by social media platforms. It also serves as a powerful reminder that misinformation online, however wild or obviously untrue it may seem, can have real and lasting consequences offline."
The pandemic has surely become an open door of opportunities. Regimes, business interests, churches, pundits and many groups of various persuasions have begun to wager on these opportunities. The discourse on television and particularly on cyberspace, no doubt, has become a Pandora's asylum for both the tamed and the malevolent, and even for the fence-sitters in between.
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| Meme Crunch |
It's time to call on its antidote.
It's time for a healthy, very robust, kind of cynicism.
To be a cynic is to be a skeptic. It is to doubt the familiar; to question the truths and the truth-bearers; to demand proofs; to sniff out errors; to detect bullshit. It is to think with reason and compassion, and to require accountability.
To be cynical is to take everything with a grain of salt:
(1) The message/content: the news, speeches, press releases, reports, analyses, expert opinions, sacred texts, and other textbook interpretations; and,
(2) The writers and the carriers of the messages.
To be a cynic is to unlearn and relearn. It is to sift through what has been spoon-fed; to reexamine dogmas, accepted beliefs, propositions, theories and principles; to audit memes and motives; and, to make both the message writers, the messengers and the readers accountable for the truth. Good faith may be presumed, but that presumption still has to be tested.
It's time to read the labels anew. It's time to see what's behind them. It is important to check if what they claim is indeed true or just snake oil, or worse, arsenic. We have layered so many realities on our world that it is very tricky, almost impossible, to cut through the thickness of things.
How do we acid-test reality? How do we stress-test, weed out the scabs of "truths" that compete for our attention and action?
Four helpful tools of a cynic:
(1) Personal toolbox:
I remember The Four Way Test. I read it on a billboard in the 1990s. It says:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
I wonder if this test is still being used today. Is there a way to update this to the 21st Century?
I usually ask these questions about what I read:
- What are the assumptions/givens? Are the assumptions correct? Are they credible? Can they be verified? What are the sources of the facts/data that underlie the assumptions? Are the sources credible/verifiable at all?
- Do the conclusions follow logically, clearly and correctly from the assumptions?
- Are there sweeping generalizations? Hyperboles? Appeals to fears/emotions/biases? Fallacies?
- Who wrote the material? Is the material within the writer's purview, expertise or authority? What is his/her level of credibility? Is there any unstated agenda to this?
- What is the consensus of the majority? Is there a minority view? Other "stray" opinions on the subject?
- No one, nothing is infallible. There is always room for error/s. Error/s is/are our human condition. It/they are essential to our growth and learning.
- Other questions that need to be asked? How are the issues presented and answered? Any negative pregnant or its siblings of lies?
- Am I missing something?
(2) Technology and artificial intelligence. Maybe this article can help supplement a cynic's arsenal: Detecting Fake News At Its Source.
(3) The wisdom/lessons of history/well-rounded education can help sift through the debris and catch those truths that have withstood/will withstand the test of time. History is our collective memory and, hopefully, a reliable repository of these truths (there are those who have doubts about this).
(4) Critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.
Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following :
- understand the logical connections between ideas
- identify, construct and evaluate arguments
- detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning
- solve problems systematically
- identify the relevance and importance of ideas
- reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values
Critical thinking is not a matter of accumulating information. A person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. A critical thinker is able to deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform himself.
Bento Box
*Spoken by Jack Nicholson's character in "How Do You Know" (2010).
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