rethinking our standards for truth

I keep com­ing back to the idea that ‘truth’ in this age of the In­ter­net is pret­ty much a joke. 

I re­mem­ber my par­ents telling me back in the day “don’t be­lieve every­thing you see on TV.” But for some rea­son now it seems that peo­ple think the In­ter­net is a ver­i­ta­ble well­spring of ax­ioms. Which brings us to this election.

We need to suck it up and ad­mit that a large part of the rea­son Clin­ton lost this elec­tion is ac­tu­al­ly due to wide­spread con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. Most of the dis­like of Clin­ton is root­ed in (some­times vague) feel­ings of mis­trust. The Clin­ton Foun­da­tion, Beng­hazi, the pri­vate email serv­er. The list goes on. Ask any­one who vot­ed against her, and in­evitable these is­sues will spring up.

How­ev­er, the facts are that the at­tack on the em­bassy in Libya has been ex­haus­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Sec. Clin­ton ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the deaths, even though she was­n’t in­volved in any part of the de­ci­sion mak­ing process that led to the com­pound be­ing un­der-de­fend­ed and thus vul­ner­a­ble to a re­ac­tionary attack.

The pri­vate email serv­er she kept was de­ter­mined to be non-crim­i­nal in na­ture by the FBI. The Clin­ton Foun­da­tion has a 4/4 rat­ing on Char­i­ty Nav­i­ga­tor.

These are the facts, but be­cause of the na­ture of the In­ter­net, an in­di­vid­ual can de­cid­ed whether these are facts or not as suits their taste. 

If you’re a Clin­ton sup­port­er, it’s an open and shut case on all counts. If you’re a Trump or John­son or Stein sup­port­er, you can even­tu­al­ly Google your way to a source that will claim that Hillary is in league with the Il­lu­mi­nati and is bent on de­stroy­ing the world. It won’t even take that long, giv­en that there are mas­sive news out­lets that bare­ly even pre­tend to be non­par­ti­san. (Psst: they make mon­ey off your clicks, not the un­var­nished facts.)

Hav­ing said all that, I’m not go­ing to vouch for a par­tic­u­lar source of in­for­ma­tion on the In­ter­net (I do gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er Wikipedia and Snopes.com to be credible). 

What I will urge in­stead is that you con­sid­er WHY you’ve de­cid­ed some­thing you see on the In­ter­net or the TV or the news­pa­per is true. Is it true be­cause it aligns with your be­liefs? Is it true be­cause enough peo­ple have said it and be­lieved it? Is it a con­ve­nient truth that pre­vents you from hav­ing to think about some­thing upsetting?

Re­gard­less of who you vot­ed for this year, or what you be­lieve, we must raise our stan­dards for truth. 

We have to be will­ing to stand by our so-called facts and ad­mit that “I be­lieve this fact, be­cause some­one wrote an ar­ti­cle on CNN/Fox News about it.”

We have to be will­ing to ex­am­ine our sources with a crit­i­cal eye. The least we can do is look to the author’s mo­tive. Un­der­stand where the bias is. Think crit­i­cal­ly be­yond the talk­ing points, sound bytes, and click bait hed­lines.

We must, oth­er­wise our coun­try is go­ing to con­tin­ue this spi­ral into in­di­vid­ual echo cham­bers full of mu­tu­al distrust.
 
 

—dar­cy nelson

Flom­mist Dar­cy Nel­son is a hard-charg­ing, gun-tot­ing pro­gram­mer-for-hire, ply­ing her trade on the sil­i­con tides of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia – FLOMM! THE BAT­TLE For MOD­eRN 1923 show­cas­es her hand­i­work. Copy­right © 2016 Dar­cy Nel­son. Im­age by flom­mist Dan­ny Joe Gib­son, Celebritease, 2016.

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