We live in an incredible epoch. Our world is filled with knowledge, scholars, and free will. How we use these factors matters a great deal even if we do not fully grasp their importance. In an age where information is crafted for clicks and often stripped of nuance, it can be tiresome to sift through the noise and infer the truth. Half-truths are particularly insidious because they homogenize facts with distortions, making it challenging to discern what’s real.
My goal is not to alienate one tribe of thought from another; however, I want to provide a framework for becoming a more pragmatic user of the vast chasms of information available to us. I hope you find the following useful…
Humanity began its journey into critical thinking by its very need for survival. A caveman (or cavewoman) would be foolish to not think of the lion before venturing out to forage. Regardless of the cliche that is the caveman vs. lion story, it harbors the underlying tone that humanity found solace in its ability to think, infer, and analyze.
Although we are not facing lions and other beasts, humanity, once again, is stifled by the information age- especially in the 21st century. As society developed over generations, we began to think scholastically as opposed to only thinking of survival. That is- we began to thrive. For the first time, humans could analyze the world around them in a more nuanced way.
The Power of Inference
Humans, while surrounded by 1’s and 0’s, do not think in binary ways. If I walk outside and see that the sky is blue, I may also infer that it is daytime- because I can see the Earth’s stratosphere revealing itself as the blue that we have come to know. But what if there are pockets of rain showers sprinkled throughout the sky? Is the sky still blue, or is it rainy? Two things can be true at once.
In 2019, a deadly coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) unleashed a worldwide pandemic- killing millions and ravaging even the world’s most robust economies. During global catastrophes, like the Covid-19 pandemic, information channels begin to fall apart- especially near the genesis of such events. COVID (the sky) was ravaging millions while guidelines from health officials (the rain clouds) confused the masses.
Can two things be true at once? Yes- and they often are. Guidelines, especially in the realm of health, are based on data that is contemporary. We cannot perfectly predict what a new strain of virus will do to a population- but we can infer. We can read between the lines, using the information at hand to determine the best course of action; yet, and for reasons I still can’t quite grasp, the presence of misguidance led to a cult-like rebuttal that the virus wasn’t deadly. Herman Cain, the famous Tea Party activist, lashed out against COVID-19 and the science behind it. Like many, Cain saw single flaws in a vast conglomerate of scientific information- and chose to ignore the advice of so many scientists. Cain surrounded himself not with inference, but with misinformation rooted in a vacuum of critical thinking. Cain died from COVID-19 on July 30, 2020, at the age of 74. Shortly after his death, Cain’s staff continued to press lies about COVID-19.
The ability to think freely makes humanity such an enigmatic complexity. It has allowed us to travel to outer space, create new drugs for battling microscopic tumors, and harness the power of the sun in an attempt to revert climate change. With these capabilities, we must read between the lines- that we see both the blue sky and its clouds- that we understand a deadly virus is killing people- and that we must choose inference over dogma.
Thoughts Are a Dinner Table
Imagine a thunderous storm is raging outside. The trees are dancing with the wind while your home’s shutters beat against the walls. As you sit for dinner, an unexpected knock at the door happens. You answer it to find a cloaked stranger drenched from the night’s downpour. You invite the stranger in, seat him for dinner, and begin to eat. When dinner is over, the stranger thanks you, and they depart- your good deed will hopefully go unpunished. Surely you wouldn’t have invited the stranger to stay the night, you barely know them.
So why, then, do we invite new thoughts and information to stay the night– or even to stay with us permanently?
Some weeks ago, I was walking around at work and happened upon a group of coworkers who were on their lunch break. They were huddled around a cell phone and listening to what I inferred was a podcast clip. The clip spoke of recent natural disasters and how certain entities within the government were blocking access to recovery efforts. One of the workers chimed in that they “had also heard that from a friend” and that “they saw a post just the other day” on a theory about how such entities were behaving. A single soundbite from a podcast clip (the stranger) amalgamated into fact within the minds of these coworkers (the home.) The soundbite, as it turns out, was verified as misinformation. It remains online at the time of this post.
We choose to believe illogical dogma all the time- and we don’t even realize it. Our confirmation biases are powered up by those around us. When one person believes something, regardless of empirical status, it tends to only live with that one person or a small group. When a podcaster with millions of followers spreads the same lie- it lives as a faux truth; echoed into eternity. What is more dangerous than allowing a total stranger to sleep in your home?
Analysis: The Silver Lining
Albert Einstein will, undoubtedly, remain one of the most trail-blazing pioneers in human history. Einstein’s theories and observations are methodical. How a person could use empirical data only available here on Earth and by telescope is beyond me and; yet, Einstein’s predictions and theories are constantly being found as fact. Even with billions of dollars worth of high-tech space instruments, Einstein’s chalkboard math holds steady.
Einstein applied not only logic but analysis to his work. He didn’t simply read a scientific headline and share it with a friend or relative- he analyzed it. “So what? I analyze stuff all the time!” But do you?
In 2023, approximately 3 to 5 exabytes (EB) of data were shared or generated daily across the internet. Now, of course, not all of those are going to be news articles or social media posts. My point is that we cannot simply fathom the extraordinary amount of 1’s and 0’s firing on all cylinders every millisecond of every day. And yet those 1’s and 0’s cannot infer (unless aided by AI- which I will not cover here.) We have to interpret them- and we are often misled in the process.
How often do you log in to your favorite social media app, see a headline, maybe skim it, and then share it to your feed? How often do you read (infer) between the lines? We all do this quick sharing, I will be the first to admit. But we shouldn’t, and we know we shouldn’t- yet we do it anyway.
Analytical thinking only works when we slow down to truly see things as they are. Much like Einstein did, it’s important to understand the context of things, their relationship to other ideas, and how we can challenge the view of data. If the data holds up, then great: we have established that as fact. And until something is uprooted and shown to be false, shouldn’t we agree that it is forever factual? Wrong. The scientific method protects us from these fallacies. The method is designed to constantly test and re-test a hypothesis- discovering new truths and maybe more nuance along the way. The sky is blue; it’s more nuanced than that. The sun is a massive ball of fire; it’s more nuanced than that.
We make fun of fact-checkers because we believe they “aren’t on our side.” But shouldn’t we be fact-checking ourselves- against real and empirical information? But, in a paradoxical sense, humans are more nuanced than that. We strive to confirm the biases we hold- not because we want to be lied to but, rather, because we don’t want to admit that we’ve been lied to. Because of this, we dig ourselves deeper into the pit- bringing those around us with. In this process, lies become truth and truth becomes power.
We’ve traded objectivity for dogmatic realities- aligning ourselves with convenient groupthink that helps “explain” the wrongdoings that we feel have been done to us. We believe and even spread unfactual realities because we cannot place ego aside and admit that we were lied to. We cannot fact-check what we believe to be reality because perception is often reality. How do we fix this? We don’t know, yet.
Until we are comfortable outside of our echo chambers, and until the world around us stops existing in 30-second soundbites- we cannot move forward. A study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene also estimates that about 5,800 people were admitted to hospital as a result of false [COVID-19] information on social media. Poking fun at a political party based on false information is one thing. Convincing immunocompromised patients not to take a life-saving vaccine because of something you read on X (formerly Twitter) is not only dogmatic- it’s deadly.
This post was revised on October 19th at 12:04PM
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