Whom Do You Trust?

There is a book by Vernor Vinge called a Fire Upon the Deep. It is a great space opera read, but that is not what this post is about. In the book there are many alien civilizations that use an intra-galactic network to communicate with each other. It is obviously modeled on the early internet. In this book it is often called “The Net of a Thousand Lies” as there is no way to verify every piece of information posted on it by ever poster. This too is similar to the internet. Which leads to the Dog’s question today; how do you decide what to trust and what to ignore?

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

It is a question we should be asking ourselves on a regular basis. Part of what the Dog hears decried on the blogs is the lack of independent media, but short of fact checking organizations (who also could be biased) how do you decide what is true and what is hogwash? There is a tendency to only go and read or listen to those who share your opinions. If you are not accepting of the ideas of those who propose alternate theories of what happened on 9/11 (as the Dog is), how often would go to read them and think about them? While the Dog is has not seen any evidence that has convinced him it is all a cover up, there is always the chance there might actually be some. If one never looks, how would you find it?

This is not to say that everything should be judged to have the same value. There can be mistakes and bias in any published or posted piece of information. In the blogasphere is particularly true. It is not that there are not many (most even) bloggers who take accuracy as a major concern. It is that there are always going to be some who want to win for their cause by slanting or spinning things. There is nothing nefarious (most of the time) in this, everyone, even the Dog, is going to pitch things they like as positive and things they don’t as negative. The requirement is to have some kind of measurement system in place to allow for this and still be able to find useful information you can count on to in your decision making.

No matter what you do, if you want to have any level of confidence it will require work. The reality is you can not just rely on any single source to be so unbiased and fully accurate that you do not have to spend some time backing it up. If you want to know (as opposed to assume) then it will require cross checking wherever possible. While it is important to know what the interests are there is a danger in assigning motive to anyone, especially those you disagree with when trying to determine accuracy. It is nearly impossible to know why people do things (do you know why you do everything you do?) so this is an easy but added complication which needs to be treated with caution.

There is a tendency to decide that a certain source is not trust worthy ever. Fox news is a good example of this. At this point we know, with a high level of certainty that Fox is going to always slant the news in the direction of the conservative side of the equation. Prior to 2001 or so, there could be an argument, but now there is plenty of evidence. This is an easy one to identify but not all outlets are that way. Take the Washington Post for example. The Editorial page there is reliably conservatively slanted, but at the same time not all of the articles in the paper are that way. It does you no good to assume all of the information there is going to be biased. The best that can be said it some maybe.

If we are concerned about the bias of what is being posted or reported it is also important to recognize our own bias, the ones we use to filter the world. We tend to assume the things we like are correct and the things which we don’t or that contradict our existing point of view are wrong. It is never pleasant to learn that something you assumed was correct is not, especially if it goes to a deeply held belief. This is true whether that belief is that President Obama will always do what we thought he promised or if the belief is the Military Industrial Complex rules our nation through puppets.

To the Dog’s mind, one of the reasons the Republican Party is in such trouble is a failure to take in new information. There is a massive resistance to new ideas and data if they conflict with the accepted world view of the base of the party. Worse they have set up self-disciplining structures which are even now, in the face of two disastrous elections, losing the White House and both Houses of Congress to large majorities by the Democrats are keeping new ideas and reassessment of old ones from happening. While this is an extreme example the same can happen to individuals. It is important to challenge our assumptions from time to time, if for no other reason that to reaffirm them if the data still supports them.

Is all of this a lot harder than just reading and listing to those we agree with and assuming they are accurate in what they say? Hell yes! However when we are talking about the governance of our nation, shouldn’t we be willing to put in the time and the effort required to be sure? The Dog thinks this is actually the minimum level of effort, after all is there anything more important than how we are governed?

The floor is yours.