The Dark Side of Information
We live in the Information Age, but it’s not clear exactly when the Information Age started. A paper envisioning what we call the internet (essentially a group of linked computers sharing data) was delivered in 1962. For technology-oriented folk, the internet as a delivery system for the world wide web became available in early 1993. (1) The Google search engine dates to around 1996. We’ve been in the world wide web era for more than twenty years. The difference between the amount of information available to us in the early 90’s and now is simply staggering and it is increasing exponentially.
This is wonderful, right? Not so fast.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Dickens wrote in a different context, but his words now seem prophetic for the Information Age. How can easy access to information 24/7 be anything other than an unqualified good? Read on as we explore The Dark Side of Information.
Ask Siri a fact question like “Siri, ‘What is the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi?” and you’re quite likely to get an accurate answer. Most of us do this kind of fact-checking frequently because it is so easy to do. We don’t have to pause to find the answer. During the recent Tokyo Olympics we could easily find out while a competition was underway what the world record is for an event and who got the gold medal in the Rio Olympics. Ask Siri about COVID-19 vaccination and all bets are off. Here Siri will respond with a non-committal: “Here’s what I found on the Web.” It’s up to you to work through what Siri (or Google) has unearthed and to weigh the merits of its choices.
The democratic nature of the web means there are no real filters on the information it presents.
Anyone can create a web site and post whatever they wish. That means there’s an incredible amount of misinformation out there that masquerades as authoritative. This is an enormous danger! How can we sort through and discard the misinformation? The short answer is through reflective thinking, but for most people that’s unlikely with Google open in front of them. Nassim Taleb put it pungently: “To bankrupt a fool, give him information.”
Most of us know somewhere in our heads that there are ways to push particular web pages higher in search engines. We probably are at least vaguely aware that those methods often involve money and marketing and are sometimes used for manipulation. That hardly sounds like dispassionate objectivity.
Skewing of information—highlighting some voices and burying others is one of the major problems of our time. (2)
Social media is even worse. What you’ve previously clicked on (which leads to pages on the internet) has a good deal to do with what you see in your social media feed and in your use of other pages on the internet. If you’ve recently been looking for a product, you know that it doesn’t take long before you are besieged on unrelated pages with adds from alternate vendors and products even if you decided not to buy the item. Why should it be different for more substantive issues? If you frequent conspiracy theory sites, you’ll get more of the same. If you spend time at alternative medicine sites, you’re much less likely to see mainstream medicine perspectives.
One of the side-effects of this customization is something called confirmation bias. Because our expectations are confirmed by our social media, unsolicited ads, and even in the autocomplete function for our searches, we can easily be misled into thinking we know more than we really do. Our actions on our devices inexorably construct the silos we are “choosing” to live in. Nowhere is this more true than in social media where we join others who convince us we have chosen the right silo.
Being in the “right” silo plays into a narrative that exalts our intelligence and discernment and this plays straight to our egos. A prerequisite to learning is intellectual humility.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
― Mark Twain
Mark Twain puts his finger on the problem we can call the illusion of knowledge. Because information is readily available, I can easily think I understand something when, in fact, I’m just repeating what my (possibly skewed) sources say—which is part of what defines my silo (tribe). The confidence problem is exaggerated the less you know as the Dunning-Kruger effect shows:
Graphic is in the public domain
A learner should be interested in moving from the big picture through a variety of options to discern the best answer or the wisest approach to a problem. Prematurely excluding options isn’t healthy for deep learning. When you encounter a variety of viewpoints, you’re forced to reckon with the way each is using ideas and logic. Many people find this extremely disconcerting. They don’t like to give some viewpoints careful consideration because they already know those are wrong. They are not unlike small children who insist that they don’t like olives and can’t eat them because to do so would make them sick, although they’ve never tried olives.
The truth is that we learn best when we have to employ the tools of reason and evidence to all of the alternatives.
This is a skill that everyone can acquire if it is approached properly. The essence of this blog and its accompanying podcast is to help you to skillfully use these tools for your personal growth and so you can have respectful constructive dialog with viewpoints you disagree with. If you have sufficient intellectual humility, you may even discover you’re mistaken. Perhaps you are operating under a misconception or you have made an error in logic. Those are correctable if you don’t retreat to your hardened silo!
For most complex questions or difficult problems there is a best solution available in the universe of possibilities. The path to that solution involves rejecting misinformation and inappropriate assumptions. Rejection is not an emotional response. Instead think of ideas and assumptions being tested objectively, and failing the test. You can learn how to do this testing. This is the path to discernment and good judgement. I want to help you get there as we journey together.
Discernment in action
An instructive article in the New York Times, “Learning to Love GMOs” (3) can help us make this process of evaluating solutions objectively concrete. The article follows several people who had historically rejected so-called genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) on the basis that they are “not natural.” This objection doesn’t hold up when we explore the concept of natural.
Perhaps the idea (concept) of what natural means to the average person is best captured in the first advertising slogan of Simply Orange juice which was “Simply Unfooled Around With.” While this has some gut-level appeal, it simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The entire history of agriculture is a history of “fooling around.” Humans (and natural processes) create mixtures of genes. The so-called “heirloom” varieties represent thousands of years of human (and natural) intervention. This means that all of our crops are genetically modified. The phrase is not informative and is propaganda used pejoratively.
The upshot is that traditional plant varieties were the result of mixing genes without significant control of the makeup of the crops. In contrast, DNA technology allows letter by letter precision in changing only the gene(s) involved in obtaining the desired characteristic. Genetic engineering is the phrase that best captures this intentionality and precision. This isn’t semantics, it’s an example of clear-thinking!
Bias in Google searches:
GMOs: