[Image from here]
One of my several useless superpowers is picking the wrong line, especially at the grocery store. And it isn’t because the people ahead of me are jerks trying pay with pennies or something; it’s just that the moment I get in that line is the moment that bar codes are wrong, or the computer can’t handle some kind of payment reasonably, or toads start falling from the ceiling. Okay, not that last one, but close enough.
And, because of this really sucky superpower, I have spent a lot of time looking at, and sometimes reading, magazines in the checkout line. And The National Enquirer had a kind of bad car crash fascination for me. It seemed to me the Etch-a-Sketch of news sources. The Etch-a-Sketch, if you don’t know, was a really fun device on which you could create various drawings (within limits) and then shake it and the previous drawing would disappear.
That, it seemed to me, perfectly described The National Enquirer. Every issue wiped clean the slate of a previous one. And, yet, every issue presented its information as obviously true. I remember—even read—the issue when a major star died of cancer. The previous week had the headline that he had been completely cured of cancer through a miracle treatment! The issue announcing his death didn’t mention that previous error.
That failure to admit error is important because admitting error is at the heart of effective decision-making—whether you’re thinking about what car to buy, what media you consume, how you behave at work, what kind of relationship you want, what movie reviewers you should believe, how you treat others, and how you should vote. You can’t get better unless you admit you were wrong. If you never admit you have made a mistake, then you’ll keep making that mistake.
If you’re willing to admit you’ve made a mistake, that’s great. But if you treat that mistake as a one-off, and not really relevant, then you’re still not learning from your mistake.
The point is not just that The National Enquirer was wrong about that actor, but that it was wrong to present its information as certain. Learning from mistakes doesn’t just mean that we learn that this claim was wrong (that actor had not been miraculously cured) but that our source is imperfect and its information is not certainly true.
When I mention this to students, about various sources (all over the political spectrum), some of them will say something along the lines of, “Well, yeah, but they got this right.” When I argue with people (again, all over the political spectrum) who are citing completely false information (claims on which their source has been shown to be completely wrong), I can sometimes get them to admit that error, but they still intend to rely on that source. They still refuse to admit their source is unreliable because, they say, “they got this other thing right.”
And that’s assuming I can even get them to admit that their source was wrong. Too often, they’ll refuse to look at any source that says their favored source is wrong simply on the grounds that it disagrees with them. That’s kind of shocking if you think about it.
Here is a person claiming something is true, and they refuse to consider any evidence that they might be wrong, on the grounds that the source is biased because it says they might be wrong. It’s a perfect circle of ignorance.
Good decision-making isn’t about getting some things right; it’s about being willing to admit to being wrong. No matter what your profession, if you go through that profession refusing to consider any criticism of you, your actions, and/or your policies on the grounds that only “biased” people would criticize you, you’re running your business into the ground.
Imagine, for instance, being a doctor. You were trained to believe that infections are the consequence of miasma. Would it be reasonable for you to refuse to read any studies that said that you were wrong about infections? Would you be a good doctor if you refused to pay attention to anything that complicated or contradicted your understanding of infection?
You’d be a lousy doctor.
You’d be a lousy doctor not because you’re a bad person, or because you mean to hurt people, or even because you’re stupid, but because being right means being willing to be wrong. Far too many people reason on the basis of in-group loyalty (I’m right because this seems right to me, and everyone like me agrees about this), and won’t admit that they’ve ever been wrong, let alone that they rely on sources that have been wrong. There are major media sources that regularly engage in the equivalent of “this actor is cured and whoops, now he’s dead but we’re still a reliable source!” And the consumers of those sources never conclude that the persistent inaccuracy of a source is a reason to doubt its reliability.
And that is what is wrong with our current state of public discourse. Too many people aren’t willing to admit to being wrong, and if they do grant a fact or two here and there, they aren’t willing to give up on sources.
It doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum your sources are; what matters is
1) Are you getting your information from a source that links to opposition sources (that is, is the source so confident in its representation of the opposition that it gives you direct access to their arguments, instead of their mediated version);
2) Do your sources admit when they’re wrong, and admit corrections clearly and unequivocally, without scapegoating? A source that never admits error is not a more reliable source—it’s bigoted propaganda;
3) Does your source make falsifiable claims? That is, does your source spend all its time ranting about evil the other side is rather than making falsifiable claims about what your side will do?
Again, imagine that you’re a doctor, or that you’re a patient seeing a doctor, and you’re trying to decide whether to get surgery, try medications, or perhaps make major lifestyle changes. Would you think that the way that the pundits on Fox or Rachel Maddow or various tremendously popular people on youtube argue would be a good way to make a decision about your health?
They all argue different things, but they all argue the same way: the correct course of action is obvious, and everyone who disagrees is spit from the bowels of Satan, and if you’re a good [in-group] member, you’ll make this choice and refuse to listen to anyone who says it’s the wrong choice.
Refusing to listen to out-group sources, dismissing as biased anyone who tells you that you’re wrong, believing that the only problem is that we have to commit more purely to the in-group—those are terrible ways to make decisions, in every aspect of a life.
Imagine that you’re in a hospital bed, and you’re presented with a variety of options, or you’re a surgeon, and you’re trying to decide what to do, and a doctor comes to you and says, “I support Trump [or Warren, or Biden, or whoever], so this the right kind of surgery for you.” Or, perhaps, “I’m a Republican, so I’m going to choose this surgery.” As a patient or surgeon, you’d recognize that’s a terrible way to make decisions. A good surgeon would assess the choices regardless of politics; no even remotely competent surgeon would make a decision about a surgical practice on the basis of the political affiliation of the people advocating this practice versus that.
Since we recognize that loyalty to party would be a terrible way to make decisions about policies regarding our bodies, why not admit it’s equally terrible when it comes to policies about our body politic?