Imagine you walk by your neighbor’s house, and as you glance into the window, you think you notice them doing something truly vile, like making counterfeit money, building a death ray, or eating Limburger on purpose. Being a good citizen, you are sure to warn everyone. Suppose their reputation plummets, but later you realize what you said wasn’t true. Whether you saw something on their TV instead of them or whether forgot your glasses that day, the damage is done. You might as well pluck a chicken, cast the feathers to the wind, and then try to gather them all again, at least according to a story we all had to hear in middle school for some reason. You can’t fully undo the damage you cause by spreading lies.
Now imagine someone read that story and thought it was inspirational, realizing they could manipulate the world with so little effort. In real life, we tend to impose social pressure not to behave this way, but even before the internet, many have found ways around this. What would such a one do if shielded from consequences?
In a previous post, I urged you to slow down sharing articles, to give yourself real time to to check whatever landed in your feed is true and fair, to ask yourself if this is really helpful. Today I’m afraid I’ve got bad news: if you do this, you will always be behind those who don’t. In some ways, your concern for truth is a liability, “a weakness your enemies will not share” to quote Ducard. As the saying goes, “A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes”, and unfortunately there are some who truly do not care about the damage they can cause.
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
This phenomenon has been dubbed the BS Asymmetry Principle. The number of effortful debunkings one may construct is dwarfed by the number of falsehoods another may put forth in the same amount of time. It takes a lot of time, effort, and above all patience to convince someone to reverse a belief, but it does not take much effort to jumble a few words together, with no regard for how true the are, and publish it to your family, friends, and followers.
Let’s examine a silly example. Suppose your uncle reads that cherry coke can cure cancer. He shares it on Facebook, and you express your concern, since you know that your aunt is battling cancer, and you want her to have the best chance of beating it, rather than wasting time with bad ideas. You express your concern, but by the time you’re able to convince him this is a bad idea, the publication he read the first story from has released articles supporting pouring motor oil out at your local park to kill pests, claiming that bald people are only bald because they think bad thoughts, or claiming to provide evidence that Lithuania invented hurricanes in order to help naval transport beat out air travel. What do you do about those?
These are silly examples, to be sure, but you could see how that if a person took them seriously, it would affect how that person interacts with their local green space, people they know with hair loss, how they interact with Lithuanians, and how they interact with anyone who has any feature that reminds them of one of these. Previous posts I’ve written have been about the negative impact of misinformation. This post is about how scary it is that, no matter how ridiculous each claim, those who deal in such things can continue to make more and more in less time that it takes you to deal with the impact of even one of them. We cannot possibly work hard enough, so we have to work smarter instead.
Stop the Spread
Just like how we deal with an outbreak of disease, I think we can apply similar techniques to an outbreak of disinformation.
Inoculate
Behaviorial scientists Dr. Sander van der Linden and Jon Roozenbeek write “Just as the administration of a weakened dose of a virus (the vaccine) triggers antibodies in the immune system to fight off future infection, we reasoned that pre-emptively exposing people to weakened examples of common techniques that are used in the production of fake news would generate ‘mental antibodies’. After all, if enough individuals are immunized, the informational ‘virus’ won’t be able to spread.”
If you can train yourself to look for the garbage, you should be more resistant to sharing it. With that in mind, the researchers I quoted above made a short, browser-based game called Bad News, which exposes you to some of these strategies from the perspective of the person who’s creating the stream of garbage news. I highly recommend you give it a play; it shouldn’t take more than a half hour of your time (for the impatient, I’ve posted the six strategies they use in a spoiler box below).
- Emotion
- Trolling
- Conspiracy
- Impersonation
- Discredit
- Polarization
Quarantine
Ok, so you’ve got yourself covered. You can smell BS from a mile away, and you can scroll by unaffected to see the cute animal pictures you were looking for in the first place. At least, most of the time. Maybe now and then a new variant of garbage evolves and catches you off guard, or hits an emotional weak point. One of my deep convictions is that all of us are subject to weakness, so it is no insult to imagine us falling for something. Knowing it’s possible to trick us, what can we do about it? My suggestion: if a trusted source lies to you, stop listening to them.
To be clear, I am specifically talking about sources of information such as news networks, websites and blogs. I’m not here talking about cutting off relationships; topics like that are far out of scope for this conversation. But when news sources, columnists, or other sources trade your attention for garbage, your confidence for something they just made up, just turn them off. Delete the bookmark to their website, unsubscribe from their podcast, and retire their TV channel’s number.
Is this heavy-handed? Maybe, but the reason I feel so strongly about this is that I know the harm caused by bad sources. For instance, if people act foolishly during a pandemic, it’s because the sources they trust told them not to worry. Lies can have fatal consequences, so anyone in a place of public influence must be held to a higher standard of truth-telling. If they don’t deserve their platform, take it away from them.
I’ve tried to keep as neutral as I can, naming criteria rather than specific examples; I do have a long list of people I think you should stop listening to, but if I gave you that list, I fear I’d risk putting you, the reader, on defense, and that’s not productive for this conversation. Trust me, though, if you catch me at the wrong (or right?) moment, I’ve got a long list of people I think you should stop listening to, but for now, I’d ask you to filter your own sources and build that list yourself.
A Personal Note
I’ve tried to keep a light tone, but the reason I wrote this post in the first place was out of anger and despair. Over the past several years, I’ve watched as liars have turned kind and thoughtful people into enemies, their words like swords severing family from family and friend from friend, poisoning their minds to be cruel to one another, and robbing them of the ability to feel shame or even compassion for the harm they’ve caused or been complicit in. There’s a lot of healing to be done, but before that can happen, we need to stop drinking from the unending springs of toxic sludge.
A final note for fellow Christians
If you’re a Christian, sit back down; I’ve got a couple more words for you.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour is one commandment left to us, with far-reaching implications, and I particularly appreciate the explanation given in the Larger Westminster Catechism, q. 143-145. I encourage you to read it in full. There are things required of us to do, and things we are forbidden from doing. This commandment has much to say not just about what we say about our neighbors, but how we hold them in our hearts and minds, and our love for truth must outshine our tendency toward favoritism. Here are some in particular:
- Preserve and promote of truth between man and man, and the good name of your neighbor
- Hold your neighbor in charitable esteem, being unwilling to hear an evil report about them
- Do not be silent when there’s a just cause, or hold your peace when the situation calls for you to intervene
- Do not search out unnecessarily the faults of your neighbor
- Do not raise false rumors, receiving evil reports, or refuse to hear a just defense of your neighbor
Here’s how this relates to the topic at hand.
Love Thy Neighbor
The bible has much to say not just about how you act toward your neighbor but how you hold your neighbor in your heart. It is not enough merely to act charitably toward your neighbor, you must think charitably about them, for they are made in the image of God, and their maker is none other than your own maker.
In this article, I’ve demonsrated the power available to those with platforms who hold no regard for the truth, and I’ve counseled you to learn to spot their tactics and to stop your ears to falsehoods. Understanding this, as well as the commandment as laid out above, you can’t afford to be lazy in seeing if something is true or fair before you spread it to the world. Check first, accept correction, and do better. It is laughable to the watching world that misinformation is so readily shared by those who claim to have the Spirit of Truth.