We have met the enemy, and he is us

We have met the enemy…

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We all seem to be worried (OK, that is everyone but TheDonald) that the Russians and the North Koreans have the ability to screw up our elections. To be honest, we should be terrified that they can (and do) create havoc in our civic discourse, by spreading false facts that incite and inflame.

(Yes, this even includes Mike Conaway of Texas (R), who proclaimed that the “committee” found no evidence of collusion or coordination.  I’m not saying there was or was not collusion- because the data has not been fully divulged.  But, even TheDonald’s intelligence heads agree that the Russians had a clear preference for TheDonald.  And, this is the first time that the House Intelligence Committee [which now deserves a “sic” appendation] has abandoned principles for partisanship.  I await the Mueller investigation conclusion- in every aspect of the word conclusion.)

But…

As I discussed yesterday, we are often are own worst enemies. We spread rumors that we haven’t verified. We spread big whoppers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube without once determining if there is more than a microgram of truth behind.

am including myself in this. I sent around something without verifying it. It turned out to be false. Thankfully, this was within 20 minutes of my sending it in an eMail, so I was able to reach almost every single person to whom I sent it BEFORE they read it. But, that was luck and not skill.

 

I know many of us feel that personal responsibility for our civic discourse or the veracity of the information we share was not a burden to which we agreed. To which I respond with the same drash I gave yesterday about the rumormonger and the feather pillows.

Rumors are like feathers

Couple that with the instant spread of our missives via Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and all the rest of them, the problem is self-evident. Especially now that the MIT researchers have shown that just 1000 tweets that are whoppers create an avalanche of responses on Twitter.It’s why TheDonald uses Twitter- because there is no knowledgeable journalist that can question his proclamations- and so he gets away with spreading Fake News.

 

Back when I was speaking out on campuses and city squares, I knew the imperative of providing facts and avoiding rumors. I- and the rest of the leadership of these organizations- knew that it was civic discourse that we would need to employ to change the world, not guns or bullets- or fake news.

And, when the internet first arrived  (we are going back to the days when I communicated to 23.194.117.104- that’s Microsoft ip address, if you don’t already know it– there wasn’t any familiar names for sites or destinations), we all thought that this internet thing was going to make our information quicker, more reliable, and more politic. (NOTE: That’s politic, not political!!!!)

Except that isn’t the way life turned out. We tend to respond to sensationalism more rapidly than we do to (boring) facts.
Our political actions are (I believe the quote belongs to von Clausewitz, the military theorist) our way to effect war without using bullets or bombs.

Our capitalist leanings led us to believe that when power is dispersed, the effects are positive. The unwashed masses were to be able to achieve better results than could a single genius or even our government bureaucracy. Except, that assumes the unwashed masses know what questions to ask.  Therein lies the rub- it seems we are all better suited to ask the wrong questions.

[Tomorrow’s post will talk about how parents need to instill scientific thinking in their kids. And, there’s no excuse for not doing so- since having the answer is not the guiding principle. Instead, we all need to learn how to hypothesize, obtain results, refine our hypothesis, so we can develop the proper answer(s).]

This situation gets worse when sophisticated folks fan our sensationalism, using bots, retweets, etc. That’s exactly what the Russians and North Koreans did- and continue to do so.

More than Trust, But Verify

So, it’s no longer trust, but verify. It’s trust, verify, then share.
For the good of our country and the world.

Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A.

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4 thoughts on “We have met the enemy…”

  1. Roy – thank you once again!
    I try not to do too much sharing of news on social media for this very reason… I do share the feel-good news most often (and once in a while, it might have not been verified by me but well, at least it is feel-good!), while the sensational ones – well, I read, I verify, and then decide if it needs sharing..
    but yes, it is scary that all this is possible and so easily..
    i do let friends and family know when they have sent out fake news by mistake and do tell my kids to check and recheck sources (as so much of their school work does depend on researching on the ‘internet’ for both past and current news)

  2. It’s so easy to react to something emotionally and not verify before posting. I think we have all done it. The important thing is that you caught it and immediately took action, trying to stuff some of the feathers back into the pillow. That’s such a wonderful analogy, the feathers.
    Alana recently posted..Winter Wonders – The Tracks of Our Tears

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