Learn How To Be a Responsible Consumer of Information
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
Approximate Hours of Course Media
A society is only as good as its citizens, and our intellectual contributions or lack thereof have far-reaching effects. While this short course is unlikely to make you a master of parsing information, it's a heck of a good start!
Learn How To Be a Responsible Consumer of Information
A fact is a fact, right? Unfortunately, it's not that simple. A "fact" is primarily defined as "a thing that is indisputably the case." The problem with that definition, is that virtually anything can be disputed, and most things are. But the legal language of "beyond reasonable doubt" applies to this definition. Many times, especially on the Internet, facts that are disputed are done so WITHOUT reasonable doubt. For example, there is an entire organization devoted to disputing the fact that the earth is NOT flat.
A secondary definition of "fact" is "a piece of information used as evidence or as part of a report or news article." These "facts" are still "things that are indisputably the case," or are supposed to be, but used in this context, facts are used to support a theory, conclusion, or opinion. For example, one might argue that the government is out to enslave its citizens. They may offer several facts to support that argument including the facts that the government can imprison people, the government HAS imprisoned people, and the government has no plans to stop imprisoning people. No reasonable person would dispute those facts, but that doesn't mean that the facts adequately support the argument or claim.
Very little information we consume is straight fact. We consume opinion, commentary, satire, gossip, conspiracy theories, marketing copy, and other forms of non-facts. Even when we are given facts, it can be done in such way to mislead, deceive, and manipulate where we are led to develop a false sense of confidence in our conclusions based on these facts.
Oh, by the way, "alternative facts," are falsehoods.
We may not have a legal obligation when it comes to being a responsible consumer of information. But one can easily argue that we do have a moral obligation. A society is only as good as its citizens, and our intellectual contributions or lack thereof have far-reaching effects. While this short course is unlikely to make you a master of parsing information, it's a heck of a good start!
We're not blank slates. We all bring to the table a lifetime of values, beliefs, and background information that play a big part in how we interpret new information. In addition, our brains are not wired for reason; they're wired for procreation and survival. This results in us taking mental shortcuts to conserve cognitive energy at the expense of reason. This phenomenon is demonstrated through what are known as cognitive biases. In this lesson, we'll go over ten of the most problematic cognitive biases when it comes to consuming information. The reason we're doing this, is because the most effective way to combat our own biases is to be aware of them.
Let's not pretend objective facts don't exist and everything is up for debate. In practical terms (not bizarrely philosophical terms), there are things are simply true, no matter how many people deny them.
This is the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.
This is a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").
This is an effect where someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion.
This is the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people, or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself.
This is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
This is the tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.
This is the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one personality area to another in others' perceptions of them.
This is the tendency to respond more strongly to a single identified person at risk than to a large group of people at risk.
This is the tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity.
Through subjective validation, a person will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them.
People and media sources share information that is entertaining/interesting. Billions of things happen every day that are neither entertaining nor interesting, thus do not make the "news," yet make up our reality. In the game of information, the most entertaining/interesting information wins—not necessarily the true information. Through critical thinking and healthy skepticism, we can focus on what is true and ignore that which is not.
John Oliver discusses how and why media outlets so often report untrue or incomplete information as science.
A "lie" is only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg when it comes to things that are not true. Misinformation comes in many forms, and in this lesson, I'll show you how to spot some of the most common ways people are misled, deceived, manipulated, and outright lied to.
Bo Bennett, PhD. Bo Bennett, PhD. Bo Bennett's personal motto is "Expose an irrational belief, keep a person rational for a day. Expose irrational thinking, keep a person rational for a lifetime." Much of his work is in the area of education—not teaching people what to think, but how to think. His projects include his books, The Concept: A Critical and Honest Look at God and Religion, Logically Fallacious, the most comprehensive collection of logical fallacies, and Year To Success, a full year course in success. Bo has a podcast/blog called "The Dr. Bo Show" at http://www.TheDrBoShow.com where he takes a critical thinking-, reason-, and science-based approach to issues that matter with the goal of educating and entertaining.
Bo holds a PhD in social psychology, with a master's degree in general psychology and bachelor's degree in marketing. His complete bio along with current projects can be found at http://www.BoBennett.com.
