The truth helps: our search for something real

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”—Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

“Don’t say that you’re telling the truth. I don’t know what truth is. Report the facts.”—Conrad Fink, intimidating but legendary UGA journalism professor

Before I was a lawyer, I was a journalist.

Both professions value facts, which we should define as statements that are supported by empirical evidence.

The public trusts neither profession, however, and it hurts to hear my colleagues targeted with “first we kill the lawyers”-style comments, while once-trusted news sources are derided as “fake news.”

In a way, I understand it. I’m being cynical here, but political and commercial influencers try to persuade us to believe THEIR version of the truth so they can win our votes and our dollars.

There’s nothing wrong with this--up to a point. Political hucksterism and sales puffery are an American tradition.

It becomes a problem when we’ve lost faith in our system of government. If we don’t believe that our vote matters, then we feel we haven’t got a voice. We’re not invested in the system, and our representative republic is compromised.

Reporting the facts

While journalistic accuracy is a vast subject and is outside the scope of this post, I wanted to explain the above quote from my journalism professor, Conrad Fink, because I think it makes an important point about truth.

In class, Mr. Fink would pose as various public officials and hold mock press conferences. He would then grade us on the quality of our questions and on our resulting mock news articles.

He was a stickler for accuracy. He would penalize us for failing to ask the speaker how to spell his name—and for misspelling it in our article. He took even more points off if you took one of his statements at face value and failed to ask follow-up questions.

One of his pet peeves was our tendency to be sloppy with how we quoted sources. Don’t say, “The mayor believes…” or “The witness saw….” You don’t know that!

The correct way to do it: “The mayor said he believes that the factory will create jobs” or “The witness said that she saw a red car in the driveway.”

It sounds nitpicky, but it’s important. We don’t know what the mayor thinks or what the witness saw. We can only know what these people SAY. We report the facts and leave it up to the reader to determine the TRUTH.

It’s the same with law. We submit evidence, but it is up to the trier of fact to decide whether the evidence is credible and how much weight to give it. We report the facts and leave it up to the jury to return a verdict.

These are noble statements, but how do we get it so wrong? Why are we all seeing the same things but perceiving them differently?

What is the truth, and why can’t we find it?

Confirmation bias

We like to think that we form our opinions by gathering reliable information and then using those facts to shape our well-reasoned opinion.

We do the opposite, however.

Instead, we form our opinions, and then we cherry-pick facts that support our opinion. We give greater weight to information that is favorable to our viewpoint, while we discount or ignore information that contradicts it.

This phenomenon is called confirmation bias, and we all do it.

No matter what your political beliefs are, you’ve probably disagreed with someone recently about politics. You were frustrated to find that, the more facts you offered to support your argument, the more your friend defended HIS argument. You’d think you could change your friend’s mind by calmly offering facts that disprove his theory, but you can’t.

Surprisingly, the opposite is true. The more you argue, even when you’re offering verifiable facts, the more attached your friend becomes to his theory. Remember, we form our opinions emotionally and not factually, so we’re emotionally attached to them. When others attack our opinion, we’re defensive and hold our opinion even closer in order to protect it. It reminds me of the way we defend our family members, even when we know they’re imperfect. We can criticize them, but if someone else does, “Hey! That’s my sister you’re talking about!”

Case study: Vaccines

The ongoing debate regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines is the perfect tool to understand confirmation bias.

Consider an argument I witnessed recently between a person who believes vaccines are safe and effective, and someone who thinks they are unsafe and unnecessary.

The anti-vaxxer’s main points were: 1) Big pharma and doctors make more money when we’re sick, so they conspire to keep us that way. 2) Vaccines contain harmful chemicals that can injure young children. 3) Vaccines do not prevent disease, and it is instead other phenomena that have eradicated disease (such as the availability of better health care and improved sanitation). 4) Anecdotes featuring children who were vaccinated and developed neurological symptoms thereafter.

The pro-vaxxer’s main points were: 1) That’s ridiculous about big pharma. 2) Vaccines don’t contain harmful chemicals, and they’ve “greened” vaccines in the last few years. 3) Vaccines prevent disease. Diseases have been eradicated, and study after study proves the safety and efficacy of vaccines. 4) We were vaccinated, and we turned out fine.

If you believe vaccines are safe and effective (as do I), you’re rolling your eyes at the anti-vaxxer’s familiar arguments. You’ve noticed that she did not provide any evidence to support her theories. She’s a victim of confirmation bias!

BUT WAIT: Did you notice that the pro-vaxxer didn’t offer any evidence to support his counterarguments? While he could have easily located peer-reviewed scientific studies to show that vaccines are safe and effective, he had never done so and could not name any diseases that had been eradicated.

The anti-vaxxer is a victim of confirmation bias. She can’t support her arguments with facts and was quite defensive when challenged. The same is true of the pro-vaxxer, however.

They formed their opinions without gathering facts, and they walked away from the argument even more convinced that their position was the correct one.

Us and them

Our judgment is compromised by confirmation bias, and it can be further muddied by our tribal mentality. We pick a side, and we stick with it.

My friend Tim and I have frequent deep, philosophical conversations. I thoroughly enjoy these talks, and Tim’s perspective makes me a deeper, more careful thinker. Everyone should have such a friend!

Once Trump was elected president, we noticed that people who criticized Obama for his presidential power grabs were supportive when Trump committed similar overreaches.

We theorized that those who identify themselves as either conservative or liberal do not necessarily subscribe to the full range of conservative or liberal ideals. Instead, they choose their party based on a single issue, or perhaps two.

For example, we surmised that someone who is anti-abortion and pro-gun rights would likely choose to vote Republican, even if they weren’t particularly interested in, say, limited government and the free market. Meanwhile, a liberal voter may not be invested in core liberal principles but may support Democrat policies on gay marriage or single-payer health care, for example.

In these cases, the constituent votes Republican or Democrat accordingly, but he or she would continue to vote this way even if the candidate was a member of their party but didn’t exactly embrace the party’s core principles. In other words, as long as the candidate’s policies supports MY core principles, I’ll vote for the candidate even if the rest of the candidate’s platform is counter to my chosen party’s philosophy.

Recently, we wondered if it’s not even deeper than that. I wonder if we choose a side, and then stick with it until it becomes impossible for us to do so. Until we cross that line, however, we stick with our “side” past the point of all reason.

Trump provides an excellent example of this. Pre-Trump, conservative voters abhorred socialism and presidential overreach and valued small government, constitutional originalism, family values, and military service. Suddenly, we’re being told “I voted for a president, not a pastor” and “Trump should use his emergency powers to bypass the legislature and use eminent domain to build that wall!”

My law school classmate argued that Trump (strong, central federal government) should take control of pharmaceutical companies (the private means of production) so Americans could buy medicine cheaply (for the greater good of the collective). Let’s have some price controls to manage this free market economy. Finally, we’ve gotten rid of that Marxist Obama!

Obama supporters weren’t immune to this, however. I was stunned to find that liberal voters who had protested war under Republican presidents now overlooked the war machine’s continued grind under Obama, with its trillion-dollar expenditures, drone strikes, failure to address Guantanamo, assassination of Gadaffi, and various other hawkish decisions made by Obama with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Confirmation bias causes us to cherry-pick facts, but apparently it also causes us to cherry-pick wars!

We’ve chosen our team, and once we’re firmly attached, we’ll be true to our school until we conclude that it has become untenable.

Your level of tenable may vary.

Survival of the fittest

A tribal mentality sounds primitive and therefore sounds like a bad thing.

In a way, it’s necessary, however.

Evolutionary biology required us to form tribes and to be wary of new people and new ideas. Having an open mind and a childlike curiosity would get you eaten by a saber-tooth tiger or enslaved by a rival clan. (This is primarily why, despite his faithful adherence to a paleo diet and vigorous exercise routine, the Paleolithic man had a short lifespan.)

This fear of the other has followed us into the modern age and is likely a basis for irrational and harmful tendencies, such as racial prejudice and antisemitism.

To be fair, however, it would be hard to make decisions without at least a moderate amount of group consensus. We can’t painstakingly weigh every minute decision. Sometimes, it’s necessary to follow your tribe, and a two-party system tends to bring things into balance.

We’re social animals, and we make judgments socially, for better or for worse.

I want the truth

It can be hard to separate fact from fiction, but if we’re going to outsmart confirmation bias, we’ve got to try.

Recognize bias

We’re all biased, but we’re ashamed of this so we try to ignore it. We shouldn’t.

When I believe that I may be giving too much weight to one set of facts, I play a mental trick on myself and pretend that I’m a person who believes the opposite. How would I view these facts if I were on the other “side”? This is uncomfortable, but it’s worth it.

I also use this to dismantle road rage. When someone cuts me off in traffic, rather than blow my horn in anger, I pretend that the other driver is me. Maybe I’m unfamiliar with the neighborhood, or a family member is sick and I’m distracted.

We judge our actions and statements by our underlying intentions. We judge other people’s actions and statements by the things themselves. If you can make this mental switch, you can trick yourself into getting around your biases.

Real news

In the Internet age, so many websites masquerade as legitimate news sources. There’s nothing wrong with blogs, but it’s just one person’s analysis (including this one).

At least make sure it’s a dot-com and not a dot-com-co (say… nbcnews.com and not nbcnews.com.co). Also, is it a news source at all, or a special interest group with a blog (such as environmental group or perhaps a religious organization)?

Many people check suspicious stories through Snopes or PolitiFact, while others do not trust these fact-checking sites. Still, if you read their reports, you’ll see that they list their sources. You can check the sources yourself if you don’t trust the fact-checkers.

Even if it is a legitimate news source, however, the story can be hastily written and therefore inaccurate.

How many sources are cited and are the sources reliable?. Even if it’s a public official who is in a position to know, do they offer evidence of what they’re saying? Also, it’s worthwhile to examine whether the person is who they claim to be.

For example, someone recently disagreed with a statement I had made on immigration, and to support his argument, he sent me a link to a news article from a right-wing website. The article quoted a man who identified himself as a rancher who owns land on the Mexican border in a particular county in Arizona and claimed to have found discarded Muslim prayer rugs on his property, meaning that Muslim terrorists were entering the U.S. at this point. Because of MY confirmation bias, I was skeptical of this man’s statements. I accessed the real property records of this county and found that no one of this name owned property anywhere near the Mexican border. In fact, this man owned a modest home in a subdivision 20+ miles from the border. He had recently bought the home, where he had moved from Berkeley, Calif., and has apparently never worked in ranching (according to his profile on LinkedIn).

Reporters should be doing this follow-up, but if they don’t, you can do it with public records available for free on the Internet.

The American Press Institute has published a guide on how to tell if a news source is legitimate. I find it thorough, fair, and helpful: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/six-critical-questions-can-use-evaluate-media-content/

Socratic method

When someone is trying to convince me to adopt their political position, I listen carefully but then ask: What are the downsides to this policy?

Law students recognize this as the “argue both sides” exercise. It’s very effective, but don’t just ask other people to do it. Do it to yourself. You’ll find weaknesses in your own argument.

If an argument can survive this, it’s probably a sound one.

Follow-up questions

I try not to believe everything that I hear.

I ask follow-up questions to see if the story holds up.

For example, people often tell me that they’ve witnessed shoppers buying beer and cigarettes with Food Stamps. (You can’t buy beer and cigarettes with Food Stamps, and one wonders how the witness knew how a stranger was paying with an EBT card and not a regular debit card.) You won’t get very far by saying that, however. Instead, I ask: “Which store? When was this, approximately? Did they go through the line to buy the beer, and then pay with the same card when they went to customer service to buy the cigarettes?” By this point, the story has fallen apart.

This is a helpful tool to examine specious anecdotal evidence. It also makes you popular at dinner parties. Everyone loves to have their stories picked apart by a self-righteous lawyer type!

Truth or consequences

As I was writing this post, I read the ideas of a few philosophers on the concept of truth itself.

Many wonder whether truth exists at all.

Who can say, but I’m with Conrad Fink on this one: Give me the facts, and I’ll do my best to find the truth.

What other choice have we got?