Surfing the culture of disinformation
Do we confront it, do we use it, or do we attempt to improve it?
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So, I am actively planning — at least in the very earliest stages — our next feature documentary film here at Skeptoid Media. As always, the basic topic will be information vs misinformation — the pervasiveness of the latter, its harm, and the benefits of the former. How to zero in on a more specific subject from there? Well, pop culture today definitely presents us the problem of an embarrassment of riches — in the form of, unfortunately, great black volumes of popular misinformation.
As an educational nonprofit, we avoid politics and religion. We want to be a big tent that welcomes all willing to listen, where there is no purity test to enter, nobody is branded with a scarlet letter, and all should be able to find something new and engaging that excites them. This is always a tricky proposition, but it’s never impossible. However, it is harder these days. We do live in a time when the saying (apocryphally attributed to Sinclair Lewis):
When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
…seems less like last century’s dystopian novels and more like tonight’s evening news. The saying does conjure up an image of a large segment of the American public: banning books, denying vaccines, denying climate science, vilifying other groups; acting out in real life the fundamental folly described by behavioral economics — “winning” no matter how great the loss, rather than coming out ahead without caring if it looks like a win or a loss to others.
The popular thing to for me to do would be to confront such movements directly. To call them out. To take “the other side”. But longtime listeners to Skeptoid will note that I’ve never (or rarely) done this, perhaps to your disappointment. Why? Because becoming a partisan show is great for clicks and views and popularity, and accomplishes exactly nothing. It changes nobody’s mind. Indeed, it aggravates the passions of division.
Our “big tent” philosophy is based on a respect for every individual person. Even those who belong to a “group” or a “tribe” that we despise are complex humans, who generally want to do the right thing, they want to know what’s true and what’s real, they want to be prosperous and they want the best for those they care about. These are the fundamental common grounds that nearly all of us share, and which I attempt to use as the launching pads for all of our projects, be they podcasts or movies or videos. We won’t all agree on whether books that mention terminated pregnancies should be banned in schools, but we can all agree that Grandma’s poodle is probably not psychic and there are interesting and universal lessons to be taken from the process of how we establish that. And guess what: When we all embrace those lessons and learn to employ them to improve our knowledge about other aspects of the world, we eventually come on our own to reconsider the effects of banning books.
Teaching people how to think is always more effective than telling them what to think.
So that’s where the planning process is on the next film. Make a film that’s a head-on assault against a broken thought process that’s tearing society apart, and we might end up with a film that’s wildly popular with half the population and ignored by the other half and that accomplishes nothing; or, make a film that is palatable to all audiences and explores ways we can all improve ourselves, our situation, and life in general.
I welcome your thoughts.
I have kept an active query in the psychology literature on the lookout for research articles that might address this issue. There has simply been no definitive answer to how to handle the disinformation. Humans appear to be very malleable at a young age and so, as referred to in that famous Rodgers and Hammerstein song "You've Got to be Carefully Taught." I believe we see it now with all the expressions of hate coming to the surface. These people were "carefully taught" to hate starting at a young age and they want to keep hate in their education so there is no chance of unlearning it. I have begun to believe that starting to educate humans at a very young age may be one corrective action. Like the "for babies" series and the "baby loves" series, humans must be taught beginning at a young age, not only science and mathematics, but also social acceptance of other humans. They can then apply their education from a very early age and recognize nonsense when they are drowning in it.
Thanks Brian. It’s tough to keep it even handed.