WEBVTT - Ep40 "Is there any such thing as true news?" (Truth Part1) 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:09.600 How do we find truth in media? Why do cameras 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:12.120 not tell us what we think they do, whether that's 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:16.720 from war photographers or police officers. What is important about 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.239 the history of pamphleteering and what does any of this 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.720 have to do with agriculture in the USSR or book 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:28.200 banning in America or dog whistles or phone apps that 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.360 only tell facts? Why is it so hard to understand 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:40.320 the viewpoints of millions of brains at once. Welcome to 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:44.280 Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.600 an author at Stanford, and in these episodes we sail 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.360 deeply into our three pound universe to understand why and 0:00:51.520 --> 0:01:03.840 how our lives look the way they do. Today's episode 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:08.280 is about truth in media? What is the truth? We 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.800 all know about fake news, and we've all been living 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:17.560 with concern about the ease with which misinformation and disinformation spreads. 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.959 We see this in social media feeds that become social 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.440 echo chambers. We see this when people are likely to 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:27.759 believe information that confirms their existing beliefs, and they're less 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:32.880 likely to be exposed to opposing viewpoints. People generally seek 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:37.320 information from sources that agree with them and therefore they're 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:40.000 not even aware of the full picture. That can be 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:44.480 dangerous as it leads people to making decisions based on 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:50.640 false information sometimes. So against this background, I started receiving 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:56.400 calls from various academic colleagues back in twenty twenty, and 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.080 they told me they wanted to submit a grant to 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:03.560 the National Science Foundation to get funding to figure out 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:09.760 or propose how to get truth back into the media. 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:11.920 And they were asking me if I would be a 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.960 part of their grant. Specifically, they were worried about this 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:21.280 spread of misinformation and disinformation. They saw so many tweets 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.799 that had assertions in them, and sometimes these were out 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.080 and out lies, but much more often something they felt 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:30.840 was a twisting of the truth, a spin that they 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:34.200 didn't quite like. And so they felt, why can't we 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.640 use the tools of science to figure out how to 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:42.720 make social media or a news organization simply tell the truth? 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.920 What algorithms could you put into place, What system for 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:52.520 checking veracity could you implement? Now? I was flattered that 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:56.840 they called, but I challenged them on their fundamental assumption. 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:01.960 I asked them, what do you mean by truth? Because 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:05.120 what I was afraid of is they meant their truth, 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.040 and a little bit of probing turned out to reveal 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:11.079 that for the most part that was the case. Whatever 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:15.520 they happened to believe politically, that was the truth, and 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.280 whatever the other side of the political spectrum was saying 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.760 was simply untrue, whether that was by ignorance or deception 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:25.880 or malice on the part of those other people making 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:30.520 those other tweets. And so I'm making these next three 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:34.080 episodes about truth, and I want to be clear that 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.400 I'm not pumping for any particular political side here. No 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:42.160 side of the spectrum gets favored here. Instead, I'm looking 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:44.680 at this as a neuroscientist. I'm looking at this in 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:48.560 terms of human behavior. What I'm interested in are the 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:53.120 illusions and cognitive biases that we are all subject to. 0:03:54.360 --> 0:03:58.119 So let me start very generally about how we all 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.520 come to believe our own truths. So I did an 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:05.000 earlier episode on this where I asked the question, why 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.800 do we all believe that we see the truth? Clearly? 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:13.560 Wherever you look on the political spectrum, each person feels, look, 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:16.520 I know the truth, and I just don't understand why 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:21.159 other people can't see the truth that's so clearly arrayed 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.120 in front of us. All. My only explanation is that 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:29.839 they must be trolls, or misinformed, or Russian bots, or stubborn, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.000 or just doing what their friends are doing without thinking 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:37.039 about it very deeply, or whatever. But what's clear is 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:40.080 that there is a true answer, and I see it, 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.800 and if I could just shout loudly enough in all 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.680 caps on Twitter, everyone would come to agree with me. 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:51.120 So that is how we generally feel about everything in 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:55.800 our world of political opinions. But that's rarely made explicit. 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.400 And in my next book, called Empire of the Invisible, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:04.080 I call this the illusion of complete knowledge, which is 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:08.320 to say, we each feel that we believe our internal 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:13.520 model is essentially correct and complete. But the fact is 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.640 that we each follow a very thin trajectory through space 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.720 and time, and that forms your beliefs, and you grow 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.640 up in a particular house, in a particular neighborhood, and 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:29.279 a particular culture, and that shapes what you think is true. 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:35.400 There's a great quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior, who wrote, quote, 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.839 we are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.479 of our tribe. The record may seem superficial, but it 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:48.039 is indelible unquote. The end result is that each of 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:51.080 us ends up with an internal model in our heads 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:57.000 that is woefully incomplete, but we each believe, Yeah, I 0:05:57.120 --> 0:05:59.479 read the right news stories, and I see the right 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:03.160 tweets and watch the right TikTok videos, and so I 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:07.720 know what is correct. Now, if you want to hear 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:10.560 more on how we come to derive our notion of 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.520 the truth, please listen to episode sixteen, which is titled 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:18.680 why is everyone who disagrees with you? Misinformed? But today, 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.640 what I want to concentrate on is the next step, 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.240 which is that these colleagues were calling me and asking 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:29.600 how to get truth back in the media, and that 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.560 really got me thinking about this old and fundamental philosophical question, 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:39.719 is there such a thing as the truth? So for 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:44.920 clear definitions, let's agree that for decidable propositions, there is 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.560 an objective truth. But what I'm probing for the rest 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.800 of this episode is the local version of truth, the 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:59.040 question of whether our subjective truths approximate or even can approximate, 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:03.600 the object truth, and why we each believe that we 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:07.440 have an advantage with this. Now, if you have been 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.000 listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:15.040 that I am pathologically optimistic, but I'm a little bit 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:19.280 cynical about this notion of finding truth. I think the 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.160 search for truth for most people is really just a 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.640 search for confirmation of what they already believe. And so 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:30.360 I want to give a very clear argument about why 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:35.120 this notion of finding truth is mostly illusory and why 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.640 it typically just means I want to see my version 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.600 of the truth in print. And I want to argue 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:43.520 why I think we would be better off as a 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.400 society if we were able to distance ourselves a little 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.960 bit from this illusion. So let's begin with a fundamental 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:55.560 point which will help us frame everything, and that question 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.640 is is all this fake news and the misinformation and 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:04.840 distant information? Is this new? Because nowadays we discuss this 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.640 all the time, these concerns about the ease with which 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:12.840 disinformation spreads, the problem of fake news and echo chambers, 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:16.040 and so the background assumption which I hear a lot 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:19.679 is that people used to be better about the truth. 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.520 You could turn on the news and you would know 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.200 that the folks there were telling you the truth. I 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.880 recently heard someone argue that back in the old days, 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.960 everyone got their news from the same source, from watching 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:39.599 Walter Cronkite speak on television, but that is patently untrue. 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:44.800 This is simply retrospective romanticization, and it's important for us 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:49.240 to see why. So let's start with newspapers from let's 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.439 say fifty years ago. The first time I was exposed 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:56.400 to newspapers was in my grandparents' generation, and I learned 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:00.200 that in every major city there were at least two newspapers, 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:04.400 one that aligned with your political views, and the others 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.480 were the rags that you would never deign to pick up. 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:12.120 The different newspapers in any city had diverse angles and 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:17.439 non equivalent coverage for the politics and war, economy, and whatever. 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:23.520 The newspapers appealed to different audiences, and from an economic angle, 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:27.040 this is the only reason why you could have multiple newspapers, 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.240 because if they were saying the same things and had 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.120 the same opinions and appealed to the same market, there 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:37.680 would be no reason for more than one. And beyond newspapers, 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:42.280 there was a surprising proliferation of rags. Just do a 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:46.800 Google image search on National Inquirer headlines and you'll see 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.160 thousands of stories of people who are kidnapped by space 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:55.480 aliens or a mermaid cemetery discovered, or Hillary Clinton adopts 0:09:55.480 --> 0:10:00.160 an alien baby. And there were many, many rag newspapers. 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.480 I'll give you just one example, the English paper The 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.200 Sun in nineteen eighty nine, and note this was before 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:11.240 the Internet. The Sun covered a disaster at the Hillsboro 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.800 football Stadium in England in which the South Yorkshire Police 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.920 made a bunch of wrong decisions about crowd control and 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:23.800 ninety seven people died in a human crush, and most 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:26.280 of the newspapers pointed out that it was the fault 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:30.880 of the police doing crowd control, but the Sun newspaper reported, 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:35.000 under a huge headline that read the truth that people 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.680 were scapegoating the police and that the real cause of 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:42.400 the disaster was unruly Liverpool fans. They had caused the 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:45.840 whole thing. So I'll skip all the lawsuits and hearings 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.600 that resulted from all this, but this coverage from the 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:52.280 Sun was shown to be the fakest of fake news, 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.960 and the paper later called it the most terrible blunder 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:58.080 in its history. I raised this as one of the 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:02.440 countless examples of the way that news ran wild in 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:05.840 all directions well before the Internet. And I'll come back 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.679 to this topic next week. But the point for now 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.160 is that fake news has always been around, and in 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.800 many senses it can be argued that it was more 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:19.040 important in damaging than it is now, precisely because if 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.800 there were fewer places to get one's news, each venue 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.120 had more eyeballs. In other words, if I start some 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.160 website now and write some fake news on it, maybe 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.240 I'll get one hundred or one thousand views, but that's 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.520 very different than having a million viewers for the Sun newspaper. 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.479 So the idea that everyone got their news from cronkite 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.839 on television has no basis. In reality, people got most 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:49.199 of their news from newspapers and rag newspapers, and also 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:54.720 from pamphlets. Pamphleteering was a big thing that doesn't exist 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:57.880 much anymore, but anyone who is my age or older 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:02.079 might remember seeing these things. As a kid, you'd write 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.200 your address on a list and a pamphlet would get 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:09.479 mailed to your inbox. Snail mailed no different than subscribing 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.040 to a newsletter and getting that in your electronic inbox. 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.439 And I remember as a kid finding a pamphlet from 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:20.240 the American Nazi Party on the ground, and it was 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.600 full of the most horrific things about Blacks and Jews 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:26.960 and Hispanics and so on. But that's how people would 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:29.920 get their news. You would sign up for whatever fit 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.439 your political model and what you wanted to arrive in 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:37.240 your inbox. The point is you could get any kind 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:41.640 of misinformation or disinformation that you wanted. There was no 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.199 difference between that pamphlet and something you might read on 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:50.040 four chan or some website or watch on TikTok. And 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:54.720 let's address this question of echo chambers. Beyond newspapers and 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:59.000 pamphlets and so on, we all watched disinformation spread in 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:04.439 real life from flesh and blood friends who repeated factually 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:09.640 incorrect stories purposefully or on accident. And because we're very 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.640 social creatures, we tend to listen to those people around us, 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.480 whether in our family or our neighborhood, or our college 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:21.320 friends or our culture. More generally, that's where we get 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:26.080 our information, and that is what shapes our limited model 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.800 of the world. So there's nothing new about echo chambers. 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:33.720 Humans have never needed social media for that to happen. 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:35.920 I remember when I was a little kid, I was 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.360 talking with my grandmother about an election that had just 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:44.720 concluded in her state, and she said, dumbfounded. I don't 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.680 know a single person who voted for that man, and 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:51.880 she was telling the truth. She didn't have acquaintance with 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.440 anyone who felt differently than she did, even though that 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:01.000 was obviously over half her state. From time, I'm immemorial, 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:05.520 we always hang out with people who think generally like us, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:10.240 and so whenever our candidate loses an election, we immediately 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.439 cook up excuses. People don't know who to vote for. 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.400 They were intimidated into voting for him. The election was rigged, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.600 They were tricked into voting for him. There are so 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.800 many dumb young people or old people, or poor people 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.240 or rich people who have no idea how to see 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:31.320 through his deception. We are all veteran experts at offering 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:36.960 up explanations every time our candidate doesn't win. So in 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.880 most discussions that I'm in, social media takes most of 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.640 the heat for the fake news, But perhaps the question 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:47.760 we need to ask is whether there's something new about 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.960 the behaviors that arise in social media, or instead whether 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:56.640 fake news always emerges from thousands or millions of human 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:01.200 brains interacting with one another. Next week's episode, I'm going 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:03.760 to dive deeper into the issue of truth in social 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:07.480 media and why the Internet may actually be enormously helpful 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.640 for exposing the truth. Wait for next week's argument. You 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.400 might be pleasantly surprised by it, but for now, let 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:18.160 me just emphasize that it is illusory to believe that 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:23.400 people in previous generations did not suffer the same biases 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:27.800 in their fact gathering and meaning making. Let's not get 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:32.960 trapped in a romanticization of earlier eras, because it limits 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.440 our ability to see the bigger picture about human behavior, 0:15:36.960 --> 0:15:42.000 and instead it misdirects our attention to Zucker, TikTok or 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:45.440 musk as though that's the core problem and if they 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:51.240 didn't exist, everyone would be happily obtaining only true news, 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:56.440 just like we used to do back in some illusory time. Now, 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.280 from a neuroscience angle, why do we think that the 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.120 truth used to be clearer? It's mostly because we have 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.840 terrible memories. I mentioned in an earlier episode that I 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:11.240 saw a bumper sticker that said make America America again, 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.840 and everyone seemed to like that sticker from whatever side 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:19.920 of the political spectrum. Because we each have impoverished memories, 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:23.360 and we believe that when we were a kid and 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:27.240 not really paying attention to politics. Everything was simpler and 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:31.880 everyone generally agreed with one another. But it's only because 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:35.280 we were children and not generally thinking about the kind 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:40.000 of polarization that happens in a society to generate events 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:44.640 like the Chinese Communist Revolution or the Russian Revolution, or 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:49.960 Nazism in Germany, or fascism in Italy, or polepot in Cambodia, 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:53.480 or the massacre of the Tutsi in Rwanda, or on 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.360 and on, looking at what has just happened in the 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:01.720 past century, all before the existence of the Internet. So 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:03.760 that's the first point I want to make. We have 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:08.560 terrible memories about whether things were truthy in the past, 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.840 and we tend to always think they were. And in 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.440 an upcoming episode, I'm going to cover a great new 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:19.080 Nature paper about why we think that morality is declining, 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:23.720 which it turns out people erroneously believe in every generation 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.040 and have for about two thousand years, and we will 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:31.439 see it's exactly the same issue, very bad memories. But 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:34.479 all I want to emphasize for today's episode is this 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:38.760 fact that the concern about truth is not new, but 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:43.760 as we will unpack further, very very old So, returning 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:46.520 to the present time, I said no to all these 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:51.240 invitations to collaborate on National Science Foundation grants because I 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.600 thought the endeavor was misguided. The heart of the problem 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.600 is believing that there is one truth and you're the 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.080 one with access to it while the others are trolls, 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:06.080 were misinformed. Most of us find it difficult to take 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:09.879 the perspective that there are billions of heads on this planet, 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:14.560 and they each have their own internal cosmos with their 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.520 sense of what is right and what is wrong. So 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:22.439 there are multiple perspectives on essentially everything. Now, that's not 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:26.640 equivalent to saying that everyone is factually correct when they're 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.440 commenting on something that happened. I am not making a 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:34.160 moral equivalence between different positions, some of which are closer 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:38.120 or more distant from the objective truth. Instead, what I'm 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:42.520 pointing to is the complexity of a world made of 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:47.320 lots of individual brains and the difficulty or often impossibility 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:51.359 of getting to the truth or knowing when you actually 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.879 have it. In other words, let's assume that the truth 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:59.000 exists independent of any individual, but it's not the case 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:01.840 that people can eat easily get to it. When I 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.600 say your truth and my truth. I don't mean that 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.800 this is actually the objective truth. I mean that all 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.359 we have are our perspectives, and this is for the 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:14.560 most part all we ever have access to. And I'll 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.040 give you lots of examples in this episode so you 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:37.960 can distinguish what I'm saying from mere cynicism. So take 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:43.000 any economic truth. Is inflation rising because of the president's 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:47.040 policies or the policies of the president before, or does 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:48.760 it have very little to do with that and more 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.119 to do with foreign policy or an inherent diminishment of 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:56.960 technical capacities, or because of bad luck with a number 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:01.400 of hurricanes or earthquakes, or because of chain technologies which 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:05.120 another country now has the lead on, or whatever. The answer, 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:07.639 of course is that it might involve all of these 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:12.720 and one hundred more factors, because the economy is a dynamic, 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:18.439 emergent property of the behavior of hundreds of millions of humans. So, 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.880 if you are interested in publishing only the truth on 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:28.240 your social media site, which story do you publish? And 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:32.200 the related problem is whose truth do you publish? Based 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.439 on different points of view, there may be many different 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:39.320 perspectives on the same event. Any real world event is 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:44.040 complex with thousands of different viewpoints. Take something like a 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.920 battle that happens between two countries. What's the right way 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.399 to tell that story? From the point of view of 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:55.240 a young breadmaker who sees the effects of the invading army, 0:20:55.680 --> 0:21:00.040 or the elder statesman who has many complex relationships that 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:02.719 can strain his next moves if he wants to be 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.080 remembered to history or re elected. Or the point of 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:08.520 view of a soldier on the ground who has no 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.080 idea why bombs are suddenly falling when this wasn't part 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.800 of the original mission plan that he was told about. 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:19.200 Or the seamstress who is apolitical and only cares about 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:21.960 her children and can't believe the mess the world has 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.320 gotten into. There are a million ways to tell the story, 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:30.120 and anyone can choose whatever shoes they want. Just look 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:34.160 at the October seventh massacre of Israelis by Hamas. Some 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:36.800 people choose to tell the story from the point of 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:39.080 view of the Israelis, some choose to tell from the 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.360 point of view of Hamas, same event on the ground, 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:48.680 but diametrically opposed interpretations of the meaning. So what does 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:52.280 it mean to tell the truth? Whose truth? Every person 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.800 in the world has a different perspective on which facts 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.080 matter in the telling of a story, and that's why 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:02.320 I was a little scared about my colleagues's idea of 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:07.440 let's make sure the media tells the truth. But I'm 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:12.040 just getting started and I want to unpack this much further. Okay, 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:15.360 so next maybe you'll say, look, at least we can 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.639 tell scientific truths, and a lot of people when they 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:20.800 think about this issue of truth in the media, they'll 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:24.720 cite issues about COVID, for example, and misinformation around that. 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:28.439 So look, I'm a scientist and I would love to 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:30.640 pump up my own field, but the fact is that 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:35.280 science is not infallible. Now, let me be absolutely clear 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:40.200 about something important. The scientific method is the best toolkit 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:44.760 humanity has ever had. And what is special about science 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:47.520 is that it is willing to knock down its own walls. 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:51.480 And this feature is a necessary part of how modern 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:55.679 science progresses. So that means it can change, and that 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:59.880 is part of its greatest strength. That's not a weakness. However, 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.240 it does mean that the notion that we can make 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:07.880 sure to always have clear scientific truths is inherently misguided. 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:11.920 So just look at COVID nineteen A sudden pandemic took 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:15.960 over the globe, and literally thousands of laboratories were trying 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:18.520 to figure it out all at once. But the culprit 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:22.080 was sub microscopic. So how do you figure it out? 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.000 Well by doing lots and lots of experiments and trying 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.040 to get things straight. But you remember that in March 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:31.159 of twenty twenty, it wasn't the least bit clear what 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.800 was going on with it. Was it something left on doorknobs? 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:38.800 Did we need to wash our groceries? People were coming 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:41.760 home and getting undressed in their backyards and hosing the 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.560 kids off, and they were wiping down their cardboard Amazon 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:49.720 boxes with tons of disinfectants. And you remember that the 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:53.159 Center for Disease Control announced in March of twenty twenty 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.680 that masks would not do any good, and then they 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:01.240 soon changed their mind and said everyone should wear masks. Now, 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:05.560 was this deception at play? No, it was figuring out 0:24:05.720 --> 0:24:10.080 new data and new recommendations on the fly. And for 0:24:10.160 --> 0:24:13.119 any of you who followed the scientific literature for the 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:16.359 past several years, you know there were hundreds or maybe 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:20.040 thousands of new papers on COVID nineteen that came out 0:24:20.119 --> 0:24:23.879 every month. And what that represented at every moment was 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:29.520 that the story was evolving, and sometimes and evolving understanding 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:34.000 involves a change in direction. So if you are a 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:37.200 newspaper or a social media company that is only going 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:40.560 to publish the truth, what does that look like in 0:24:40.560 --> 0:24:42.840 March of twenty twenty? Do you publish that there's no 0:24:42.960 --> 0:24:46.360 point in citizens wearing any masks and you suppress any 0:24:46.400 --> 0:24:50.000 voices that say otherwise because that was the official word 0:24:50.040 --> 0:24:54.520 of the Center for Disease Control. I'm not criticizing the 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:59.080 desire to have truth. I'm merely pointing out the naivete 0:24:59.119 --> 0:25:02.280 of thinking that they're there is a single knowable version 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:06.679 of the truth that should be published, and maybe thinking 0:25:06.720 --> 0:25:10.199 that science will always have access to that truth, and 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:12.080 that if you do the right things and consult the 0:25:12.160 --> 0:25:18.440 right experts, you can guarantee untouchable guardrails. That's the kind 0:25:18.520 --> 0:25:21.880 of thing that led to deep troubles for the Soviet 0:25:22.000 --> 0:25:26.840 Union when they assigned their nationwide agricultural oversight to a 0:25:26.880 --> 0:25:31.000 man named Trophime Laishenko. Lashenko was a biologist who felt 0:25:31.080 --> 0:25:35.840 that he knew the truth about proper farming practices, and 0:25:35.920 --> 0:25:40.400 so he dictated these to Russians across thirteen time zones 0:25:40.880 --> 0:25:45.960 and an enormous variety of climates and soils. In Soviet style, 0:25:46.480 --> 0:25:50.560 this truth of how agriculture should be done was implemented 0:25:50.600 --> 0:25:55.240 with an iron fist, and the mass starvation that resulted 0:25:55.240 --> 0:25:59.320 from Lashenkoism is generally considered one of the factors that 0:25:59.480 --> 0:26:04.480 led to the downfall of the USSR. But Lyashenko believed it. 0:26:04.760 --> 0:26:08.800 To him his agricultural recommendations were the truth, and if 0:26:08.840 --> 0:26:11.080 he could just get the others to see his truth, 0:26:11.400 --> 0:26:14.359 everything would be so simple, and he wouldn't have to 0:26:14.840 --> 0:26:18.560 imprison or execute the biologists who couldn't see the truth 0:26:18.880 --> 0:26:23.120 as clearly as he could. So all this means it's 0:26:23.160 --> 0:26:25.159 not as though we can just turn to science and 0:26:25.200 --> 0:26:27.960 say that will give us the truth. Science is the 0:26:28.000 --> 0:26:31.520 best set of tools we have ever developed, but let's 0:26:31.560 --> 0:26:35.840 not pretend it can always answer everything. And by the way, 0:26:35.920 --> 0:26:40.359 science is really not about truth. Instead, it's about falsehoods. 0:26:40.680 --> 0:26:44.000 All science ever seeks to do is clarify our thinking 0:26:44.440 --> 0:26:47.879 by ruling out things that are incorrect. But that's not 0:26:47.960 --> 0:26:52.119