Week 5 / Navigating through the sea of information
Information is the biggest uncertainty in this information age. How should we navigate through it?
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Earlier this week, MIT Technology Review published an article rebut the environmental-friendly myth, built by the corporate world, of electric scooters. I still remember seeing the hype about how good of an alternative electric scooter is for short-distance commute on social media and on the streets in San Francisco last summer. How the claim got reversed in a relatively short period of time reminds me of the bustling topic of fake news.
When there is a study that concludes that “dockless scooters generally produce more greenhouse-gas emissions per passenger mile than their alternatives,” does it mean that articles that claim otherwise is fake news? I think yes, and no. Here’s why:
There is fake-ness in every information
We usually associate fake news as misinformation, something that’s the opposite of
truth.” Given this definition, we can argue that the environmental-friendliness claim that shapes scooters companies’ value proposition, to a certain extent, is fake news. It might be true that electric scooters emit less greenhouse-gas during usage, but if the cumulative emission is higher than their alternatives, can we say they are environmental-friendly? What’s interesting about this whole fake news concept is that we only say information is fake when it gets manipulated, but not when it’s being presented incompletely when both can be equally harmful.
I personally believe that there is no capital T truth for three reasons:
Information is produced by humans, who are inherently bias. We see the world through our own unique lens, which don’t always align with how others see it. One thing is true for one person might not be true for another. The closest we can get to the capital T truth is through gaining diverse perspectives (this explains why quantifiable scientific research is seen as more objective than qualitative opinions on art).
We are not capable of seeing every aspect of something at one point in time. There will always be holes in our arguments and aspects that never crossed our minds. Again, one thing is true for one person might not be true for another.
Nature evolves. Humans evolve. Everything evolves. What’s true today might not be true in the future. The technology we have today only accelerates that evolution.
In short, truth is subject to our cognitive diversity and changes that occur over time. To put the complexity of the truthfulness (and fake-ness) into perspective, I map different types of information on the diagram below:
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The purpose of Information Consumption Evaluation Matrix is to help consumers evaluate and navigate through the sea of information based on two key variables: (1) the intent to manipulate, and (2) quantity and credibility of evidence. There are four buckets the information can fall into:
Closest to truth: information that falls under this bucket is what we usually refer to as “facts.” The intent to manipulate consumers is low and the credibility of the evidence is high. It’s not an absolute truth because, as elaborated upon earlier, everything is subjected to change.
Need to monitor its impact to determine: information that falls under this bucket has high intent to manipulate as well as a credible source of evidence. The impact on consumers cannot be determined immediately since the high intent to manipulate can have different impacts on different people in different circumstances. Examples would be a new startup idea that has a product-market fit (quantifiable evidence) and aims to change the way people live in some way or another (high intent to manipulate), the actual impact on people’s lives depend on how the idea is implemented in the long run.
Naive: information that falls under this bucket has low intent to manipulate but also low credibility and quantity in evidence. This type of information needs more evidence to make it more “true” but low impact on consumers because of its low intent to manipulate.
Fake-ness alert: information that falls under this bucket has high intent to manipulate and low credibility and quantity in evidence. This is usually what we associate as fake news. The intent is to manipulate how people think and behave using information that has little or no evidence.
The diagram below is an example of how the matrix could be applied. Note that these information mapping is based on my personal experiences, which means the same might not apply to others. For me, the claim that electric scooters are environmental-friendly would fall under the fake-ness alert zone, given its high intent to manipulate (for economic reasons) and relatively low credibility given its incomplete presentation of information.
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The soft skills needed to navigate through the sea of possibly-fake information
Having the matrix is a good starting point, but not enough. In last week’s entry, I listed the top five soft skills needed to navigate through the uncertainty of this century. Information is the biggest uncertainty in this information age. Below are guidelines and resources on how we can develop the five soft skills necessary to navigate through the sea of possibly-fake information:
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Below are the relevant resources that I find useful to develop the above skills to evaluate information:
Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform by Shane Parrish (especially good for developing critical and systems-thinking skills)
Shane Parrish is the Founder for Farnam Street, a publication with a mission to "master the best of what other people have already figured out" to help people make better decisions and improve themselves. He used to work as a cybersecurity expert at Canada’s top intelligence agency.
He wrote this article to present a way we can examine the long-term consequences of our decisions.
Bullshit as a Problem of Social Epistemology by Joshua Wakeham (to gain context on how fake-ness is not black and white, but a spectrum)
Joshua Wakeham is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama, Department of Criminal Justice. He graduated from Harvard University with Ph.D. in Sociology.
He wrote this article to present how bullshit is a problem of social epistemology and to examine several different types of bullshit in light of this tension between the individual pragmatic need to have true beliefs and the social pragmatic need to get along.
The Moral Bias Behind Your Search Results by Andreas Ekström
Andreas Ekström is a staff writer at Sydsvenskan, a daily morning paper in Malmö, Sweden. His passion is educating for digital equality, and he has a vision for a world in which we share the wealth -- not only financially, but also in terms of knowledge and power.
He spoke at TEDxOslo to present reasons why it is so hard to get true and objective knowledge and how behind algorithms is always a person with a set of personal beliefs that no code can ever completely eradicate.
The traditional education system trains us to think that whatever is in the textbook or what the person of authority (teachers, bosses, etc.,) say is absolutely true. This makes sense as we need to know the rules to break them. However, at this rate of change, we simply don’t have the time to go through the whole cycle of knowing the rules, assuming they are rule, and then breaking them. We need to admit and learn fast that there will always be some degree of fake-ness in every information.
They always say “we are what we eat.” I’d say “we are what we consume”: our ways of thinking is shaped by the information we consume. Therefore, as someone living in the 21st century, we need to equip ourselves with the ways of thinking to navigate through the information to pick and choose what is appropriate for our own unique ways of living.
What are your thoughts?
In addition to general feedback you might have, I’m curious about what mental models you use to evaluate the credibility and relevance of information you consume on a daily basis and how you organize what you consume.
Thanks for giving my thoughts your attention ❣️
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If you have thoughts on this, reply to share them.
Happy self-made,
Mind
All views are my own.