I suppose like many “experts” and not a few scientists, I’ve
been troubled by the apparently recent rise of alternative facts, fake news and
the like. Of course it’s only apparent (rather than real) and it’s ancient not
recent (see Matt 28:11-15). I’ve already discussed why the notion that complex
issues are simple and that all that is needed is a dispassionate collection and
analysis of facts is problematic. However, on further reflection it turns out
that it’s naïve as well. In part, my reflections were stimulated by an excellent
article by Tim Harford, the FT’s
Undercover Economist (“The problem with facts”; unfortunately this is
behind the FT’s paywall so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription,
but see this).
He discusses at length how big tobacco combatted a whole slew of facts showing
that their product was killing people in their thousands if not millions. They
managed to delay by decades any kind of serious reckoning that would east into
their profits. Sixty years on from when the evidence that smoking kills began
to mount, they are still turning a pretty profit. It turns out that it’s the
tobacco playbook that the likes of the Trump and Brexit campaigns have been
following either intuitively or explicitly.
So how do you combat inconvenient but true facts? To quote
Harford about the indisputable facts from unquestionable sources on smoking: “The
indisputable facts were disputed. The unquestionable sources were questioned”.
The aim? To manufacture, encourage and maintain ignorance rather than knowledge
and truth, an exercise Robert Proctor, a Stanford historian, has called “agnotology”.
In fact, last May, during the election campaign, then president Obama spotted
this and commented on it in a speech delivered at Rutgers University. He pointed out that
ignorance is not a virtue. Clearly, however, as a tactic it’s pretty effective.
Look what happened come last November. It turns out that ignorance is in the
interest of some people, and that truth is not an unalloyed good. So make an
issue sound as complicated as you can, with certainly more than one side and preferably
more than two. Question the motives of those whose facts you don’t like and
give them motives if they don’t apparently have any. Destroy the notion of the
seeker after truth for truth’s sake.
Of course the problem is, and this is why these tactics are
so potentially powerful, that we live in a messy world in which many issues are
complicated and motives mixed. Put this together with the observation that
genuine facts are tricky things to find and trickier to deal with effectively,
and you begin to understand the problem. And then of course (and this is why I
was being naïve) clearly there are those (like of big tobacco) whose motives
are very decidedly less than pure (profit over lives). The answer can’t just be
more facts, although if repeating non-facts (ie lies) gives them a deal of
credibility, then repeating facts and finding new and relevant ones must count
for something. It has to be a more subtle analysis that sifts the facts, looks
at the sources, weighs competing motives and judges the relative importance of
different outcomes.
This all takes time and effort. But maybe for democracy to
function, that’s what as citizens we have to do. Investigate, collate,
triangulate, think, judge. Perhaps this is not something we are prepared to do.
Could it be that in complacency most of us would rather stick to narrow sources
of information (our favourite web site, like-thinking friends on social media,
a single newspaper or tv channel), be told what to think, be credulous about
what we’re told, allow ourselves to believe alt-facts we find convenient? If democracy
ceases to function, we’re heading towards something less palatable. In this and other domains it’s time to “be
adults in our thinking” (1 Cor 14:20).
