Translator: vivian qian Reviewer: Vanessa Soneghet So, where do you go for facts? I've been asking this question for years and obsessed with it. Actually, it started when I was a teenager.
My dad had this really interesting policy: we couldn't eat dinner unless we came to the table with a fact. Okay, that was challenging. So I had an encyclopedia.
I knew how to do this. I came to the table, and I had a fact: the capital of Bolívia is La Paz. That worked.
Well, after a few days, my dad was like, "You know what, Danny, I'm seeing a pattern here. I know all of the capitals of South American countries. Be creative, do something unique.
" Alright, I got this covered. So the next night, I came back and I got this one: "Miles Davis is the greatest trumpet player that ever lived. " I was so proud of that.
And my dad had this funny look on his face, and he went, "Danny, that's not a fact. That's an opinion. You're getting facts and opinions confused.
" "- But Dad, it's like… It's on the album! " (Laughter) He was like, "No dinner for you. " And like most 15 year-olds, I was quite mature I thought, and I dealt with this in a mature way, I said," I hate you!
" and I went to my room. Well, many many years later, it looks like Dad was right. And his inspiration made me go into becoming a college professor, and teaching about facts, doing research on critical thinking.
And we do have a problem: we're getting facts and opinions confused. So let's start with some clarity. What is a fact?
A fact is a statement of information that is empirical - which means "observable" - objective and measurable. "This shirt is blue," that is a fact, not to be confused with an opinion which is none of those, "this shirt is awesome," "this shirt is amazing. " You can't do that here.
Then, there's the worst possibility, the fake facts, misinformation: "this shirt gives me super powers. " Aw! No, it doesn't.
So, what are we going to do? And how are we going to get some clarity about facts? Well, I decided to do some research looking at how people think about facts, and what they do, and how they discriminate between what's a fact and what's not.
We gave our subjects questions, actually statements, and we asked them to analyze them. I'm going to give you an example of what we did with our subjects. I'm going to give you two statements, one of the statements is true, and one of the statements is not true.
Okay? Raise your hand if you think this is true. "All bats are blind.
" Come on, some of you guys raise your hand. Come on, play with me here, even if you don't believe it. Alright, the next one.
"We only use 10% of our brain. " Yeah, there's some hands. I see some hands.
You don't see them but there're plenty of hands out there. Well, alright, I lied. Both of these facts were not true.
(Laughter) But, not knowing that it's not going to change your life, what was interesting is how you get to think about this, where you stored this, and where this all comes from. So what we did with our subjects? We had subjects and gave them 10 statements.
We told them five of them were true and five were not true. And just like here, we lied, none of the statements were true. We also asked them to rate their confidence, how confident they were in their facts.
The other thing we did with our subjects, is we divided them into groups of five or an individual. That seems to be interesting because No. 1, the subjects in the groups of five tended to be a lot more confident in their facts than the individuals.
The other thing that happened was when we told them that none of the facts were true, the subjects in the groups were like, "I knew that wasn't true, I really did, but everybody in my group was so confident, I just decided, 'Yeah, that's probably what it was. '" What was happening here is a type of something we call in psychology "confirmation bias. " Confirmation bias happens when you have a belief and you look for support and information that support your belief.
For example, if you think vitamin C can cure your cold, you're going to look for information that supports that. And our subjects fell into that category. What was happening here with our subjects?
It was more important for them to agree with the other subjects than it was for the validity, objectivity or measurability of the fact. Agreement was driving their decision. Social value was driving their decision.
Now there's a whole bunch of emerging research that seems to say in neuroscience that our brains involve in this. When we agree, our brain releases a neurotransmitter called "dopamine. " You may have heard of dopamine.
You get a dopamine squirt whenever somebody gives you a hug. You get a dopamine squirt when your team wins. And you get a dopamine squirt when you agree with somebody.
So now what is driving our understanding of facts are the social value of agreement and this biological imperative of dopamine squirts. We like to agree. We are a country of "agree-ers.
" Yes, there's some people who don't agree. They become lawyers or vice-principals. (Laughher) Here was a vice-principal yesterday who totally disagreed with that, so that makes sense actually.
And conformation bias is not just something that happens to adults. It happens when we're kids. I was talking to my grandson, who turned seven, about Santa Claus.
I was saying,"You know what, Liam? It takes us four hours to get to grandma's house right? - Yeah.
- But you claim Santa Claus can make it around the world in one night, How do you explain that? ” He said, "You know what, papa? You know nothing about Santa Claus.
(Laughter) You're old. " (Laughter) He had a point. But another thing about what he said led me to another barrier we have when it comes to facts.
That has to do with the credibility of the source. Granted, I'm not a credible source when it comes to Santa Claus. I admitted that.
But when it comes to facts, what are we going to do with all the sources we're getting? You know back in the 70s - sorry, I'm old, as my grandson pointed out - back in the 70s, we had two sources of information for news, claims and facts. We had the newspaper where we had editorial boards with integrity.
Newspaper stories could not get published unless it was vetted. There was no such thing as fake news. And then we had television, we had Walter Cronkite.
You may know Walter, The most trusted man in America. When Walter said it, everybody believed it was true. There's no confusion.
We had confidence. Let's come to the present. What do we have?
Google, Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, Snapchat . . .
Seriously? People are gaining their news from sources that are not vetted, that are not curated. Do you know that Google has 3.
5 billion hits a day, 40,000 searches a second? If you started tracking Google when I started talking, we would be well over a million searches with no control. There's no organization that checks what's on line.
This is a problem. So what we try to do is come up with a way to, at least, get closer to the truth and to the facts, and the information we get everyday from the Internet. The first thing we thought about was something called "inoculation.
" No, you don't have to get a shot. We use it as a metaphor. Inoculation is when you go to the doctor to prevent the flu.
In social psychology, we use "inoculation" to describe what happens with persuasion. A lot of times in persuasion, you just get one-sided arguments. So researchers have found that if we force people to look at another perspective and get out of their comfort zone, it protects them against the dogma of the one-sided argument.
Think about Facebook: you're in this echo chamber where you're around people who agree with you. You get a new story that you agree with. You've got to get outside that zone and look for different perspectives, alternative explanations.
It may not change your mind, but at least, it gives you a start at looking at a sort of other perspective. Another thing is we are a nation of lazy clickers. We like to go to that first page of Google and stop there.
When we asked our subjects about that, they said, "Yeah, it must be true if it's on the first page. " No, that's not true. When you go on a Google search and look at those links, you need to go to the third page, the fourth page, beyond those first pages.
There's something called "Google scholar" which provides you with peer-reviewed articles that are done by people who have done research, and you have a very, very good chance that that information has been vetted. There's another feature called "verbatim" you may not know about, Verbatim is really cool because it filters out your search so that the only words, the words you use in your search take you to websites that have all those words, and not some random words to take you to some random crazy website. Alright.
The next, experts. What's going on with experts? I mean over the last two years, there have been books written about this, that we don't rely on experts.
We don't need them. We've got WebMD, who needs to go to the doctor? Okay?
You need experts. Experts has spent their whole career doing research in areas that we have no knowledge of. Experts are important.
Who do you want flying your plane? Sully? or some guy who just got his license?
Who do you want doing your surgery? An expert, right? Who do you want fixing your car?
An expert. So why not when you go on line, check for the experts, for the source of the articles, or the claims that are being made. It's there.
By the way, if you can't find a credible source associated with a claim or a fact on line, that fact is not true. So assume that this expert knows what he's talking about. Give him a chance or her a chance.
Okay, so the next time you go on line, I'm going to ask you to do three things. Inoculate, don't be a lazy clicker, and trust experts. They know what they're talking about.
They're filled with knowledge that you don't know. Alright. I am going to conclude with a quote.
I find this ironic because the quote has been associated with Mark Twain and Will Rogers. And fact checking tells us neither one of these guys said this. (Laughter) It's crazy, man!
I was in a movie, and it had Mark Twain who was like,"No, he didn't say it. " Somebody said this, so here is something you can do when you do your Google search later. Find out who said this quote because I think it does a great summary of what I am trying to tell you.
Here's the quote: "It's not what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure, but ain't so. ” Thank you.
