#15 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Sunday May 2)
Happy Sunday!
There has been a lot of commentary about the ubiquity of misinformation, not just in messages on social media, but information willingly disseminated by those who claim to be “journalists.” And that misinformation is being eaten up by those whose confirmation bias encourages them to accept as fact “evidence” that is patently false or misleading. It is no wonder that the Russians were able to manipulate American minds and feed prejudices to affect the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Added to the misinformation in writing is the emergence of the “deep fake,” a technology that allows one to manipulate a photograph or video of a person, living or dead, to suit one’s interest. If you don’t have a witty comment from Winston Churchill to support your argument or if you can’t find Martin Luther King Jr. supporting your position, fear not! You can now create these yourself. It is only with information that one can verify the validity of a post.
Underlying all of this—the lies being perpetrated, the “deep fake” videos, foreign governments playing on our biases and insecurities, and the manipulated data, is that people fall for it.
I have said in the past that our schools need to do a better job teaching kids how to think critically, evaluate statistics, and identify misinformation. Bob Badal agrees, noting:
“Your latest Musings only reinforces something I mentioned earlier: one defense against misinformation and deception is to instill better evaluative skills in consumers of information and to do so at an early age. The exercise of judgment is a learned skill and can be honed over time. Note how Mark Ferrell was able to unpack the Jimmy Dean commercial because he knew the fact of Dean’s death. He used a fact to evaluate the merits of the commercial and was, therefore, not fooled into believing that Dean did the voiceover in real time. The exercise of judgment based on evaluative skill.”
Judgment. Evaluative skill. Imagine if our fellow citizens possessed these talents!
Have a good day,
Glenn