Remain Skeptical!

First, I don’t think it’s become national news (I couldn’t find any mention of it on the New York Times website, for example) but out here there’s a furor over an eighth-grade writing assignment in Rialto. In the assignment, students were asked to research and write an essay about the Holocaust, arguing either that it occurred or that it was a fabrication for political purposes. Needless to say, the shit has hit the fan, the Rialto authorities are backpedaling and apologizing like crazy, and the students are going to get a different assignment.

Secondly, in watching “Cosmos” the last several weeks (as you should be as well, it’s “most excellent” as Bill and Ted would say) a recurring theme is that the people who changed the world and changed the way we see it were the people who questioned the accepted “truth,” the people who asked for proof instead of doctrine.”

Thirdly, in David Brin’s “Uplift Saga,” a pivotal plot point is that after the spunky, underdog, pesky humans (yeah, humans!) discover a billion-year old Galactic civilization, they’re the only ones who question the factual accuracy of the centrally controlled Galactic Encyclopedia. Of course, they find errors, omissions, outright falsehoods, and many novels worth of action and excitement ensue.

Finally, look on the internet (especially FaceBook it seems) almost any day and you’ll find people passing around some picture or story that has them either astonished (tonight only Mars will be bigger than the moon!) or morally outraged (Obama’s letting the UN take our guns!). The outrage often comes from some political or religious point of view. However, the tiniest little bit of fact checking will usually show how bogus the information is. It’s even worse when the source of the bullshit is a mainstream media outlet, but we’ll discuss Faux News some other time.

The theme running though all of these coalescing thoughts (at least, they combined and coagulated in my brain today) is one of a healthy skepticism. I’m a firm believer in that kind of skepticism, but I would urge everyone to temper it just a bit with some common sense and balance.

• Skepticism
• Common sense.
• Balance.
• Stay away from the extremes.
• Be very, very skeptical of conspiracy theories. The more complex and convoluted they are, the more skeptical you should be.
• Set the trigger point on your “bullshit alarm” very low — but not at zero.

At one end of the spectrum, it’s okay to believe the Holocaust occurred without having personally been at Auschwitz and witnessed the horrors that occurred there. It’s okay to believe that the Earth is round, even if it looks flat from where you’re standing. It’s okay to believe that Neil Armstrong and eleven other Americans walked on the moon, even though you weren’t one of them.

At the other end of the spectrum, when the tobacco industry spent decades “proving” that cigarettes were not addictive and were not unhealthy — maybe that should have been double checked. When the cable and internet companies tell you that monopolies will make sure you get better, faster, and cheaper service — maybe someone should take another look at those calculations. When any politician (from any political party at any level of  government in any country or era) says anything, assume they’re lying until you verify for yourself what the facts are.

As far as the internet goes, Brin’s idea was ahead of  its time. Be skeptical of everything online and always get multiple viewpoints and sources. If the NY Times, LA Times, Fox News, CNN, Reuters, and NPR are all reporting something to be true, your confidence level can be high. If every one of those places has a different “spin” and is picking and choosing which facts to lead with and which to bury deep in the text, then you should not be cherry picking which source you believe.

Remember, you don’t have to believe any one source — especially when there are a lot of different versions of the facts.

As for what shows up online, jeez louise people, did y’all turn off your brains when the computer screen turned on? There are articles out there passing as fact that are so outrageous even The Onion wouldn’t print them, yet folks keep passing them around as the gospel truth.

In that huge grey area between those extremes, remain skeptical!

Multiple sources are your friend.

When in doubt, check Snopes!

If it sounds too good (or too awful) to be true — assume that it’s not!

Guess what — people lie to you! Especially if they’re making billions of dollars by lying. (See tobacco companies, oil & gas companies, politicians, and so on.)

Finally, when that viral bit comes across your screen, before you pass it on to everyone you know online, no matter how much you want to spread the joy or revel in humiliating your enemies, step back for a second and double check a second source. Google it. If the first few things you see use the word “hoax” a lot, don’t perpetuate the bullshit. There’s too much of it to begin with.

Now, go enjoy the internet, but remember to be a spunky, underdog, pesky, skeptical human!