CHEYENNE — My Aunt Lucille was a strong woman who worried that I was a vulnerable softie prone to be taken advantage of.
Don’t be gullible, she would say.
“Don’t be a patsy.”
It was good advice. She had a hard-eyed view of people and could recognize a liar or a phony pretty fast. She wasn’t negative or mean; just skeptical.
I think this is the time to be skeptical as we enter what promises to be a tumultuous election year. One where we will encounter lots of political news, including misinformation, false information and the occasional new wacko conspiracy theory.
There are plenty of national and international experts who believe the effects of misinformation and false information are highly dangerous to society.
In January, 1,490 experts rated misinformation and false information as the leading global risk for the next two years. They rated it as more dangerous than war, migration and climatic disaster in a report released by the World Economic Forum, according to an article in The New Yorker magazine a few months ago.
That article went on to list some of the new books that carry the same message.
One of them is “Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight it,” by M.I.T. political scientist Adam J. Berinsky.
“A democracy when falsehoods run rampant can only result in dysfunction,” Berinsky wrote.
And, showing the global interest in the subject, a Cambridge socio-psychology professor, Sander von der Linden, wrote that “viruses of the mind” spread by false tweets and misleading headlines pose serious threats to to the integrity of elections and democracies “worldwide.”
Linden goes on to, in effect, compare misinformation and conspiracies to brain worms that latch on “and insert themselves deep into our consciousness.”
Well, that’s not good news.
After presenting additional excerpts from other books enumerating evidence of the dangers of misinformation, the author of the magazine article, Manvir Singh questions whether these experts—the human credulity theorists—are on the right track.
Singh challenges their conclusions in general.
His article titled ”How Gullible Are You; don’t believe what they’re telling you about misinformation,” identifies him as a critic at large.
The theorists, he wrote have shown few examples of how rumors or misinformation have resulted in a real world outcome.
The example he gives is the ridiculous story that Hilary Clinton and her allies ran a child sex ring from the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza joint.
After all the outcries, the threats, nothing happened.
The lies and information had no identifiable impact on the 2020 election.
He also said there is little evidence that misinformation alters what people believe.
Some scientists see misinformation more as a or a symptom than a disease.
“Unless we address issues of polarization and institutional trust we will make little headway against an “endless supply of alluring fabrications.”
That’s great but I could not find any instruction from the scientists in the article how to remedy those problems.
But I did share the scientists’ opinion that misinformation can be extremely dangerous; for example if people believe a fabrication like the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Numerous audits and the like proved it was not.
But a large segment of Republican politicians claim they believe their candidate Donald Trump won the election, whether they really believe that is highly questionable.
The scientists did not deal with that particularly dichotomy.
Singh did touch on something the scientists mostly ignored which is the social piece; the alienation of so many citizens who have felt left out and feel marginalized.
Because they are disenchanted this is the group that will turn to a new “strange new creed.”
Our “strange new creed” is MAGA, the group that has wrested control of the national Republican Party from the hands of old guard Republicans of the Reagan - Goldwater stripe.
Being skeptical is okay.
Don’t be a patsy.
Joan Barron can be reached at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
