Many points and phrases resonate for me. In particular, I like "ego armor" because it makes me think that as soon as we say "I know" about some topic we often feel we need to prepare to defend ourselves against possible attacks that we are wrong versus right. So the ego puts on its armor. Not only is the armor heavy, I think it also blinds us to seeing clearly. Think of the visor that flips down on a helmet "protecting" our vision. To say "I don't know" is indeed a radical act.
For many years we ran an information service, and many of our clients were published authors, professional journalists, etc. Although most of them were honorable people, a disturbing minority were careless, even posting unvetted and untrue information on purpose and with intent. This was decades before the Internet. I learned to take nothing for granted.
Thanks very much for posting this. Below is a short piece I wrote for a class I taught on evaluating media sources: What You’ll Never See Posted By Any Media
From the Publisher:
Sorry, we don’t have verifiable information–nothing more than speculation and innuendo to titillate, inflame, and manipulate (and boost our online circulation to please our advertisers)–so we’ll wait to publish our latest report until we have objective data to share. Takes a few days to fact-check against conflicting authorities. Just because many sources are in agreement doesn’t make the information true.
And our competition will have different takes on the same events because we all have different political biases. And much of what we post will be meaningless within a few hours, regardless of our due diligence, because it will be superseded by new facts and events. Take care; it will be very difficult to decide whose version of the facts to believe.
My advice: beware of trusting our information to make important decisions, because historically our posts often are proven to be wrong in hindsight: tis the nature of our beast.
Feels like a permission slip to always being a student in this life 🙏🏼 thank you for this share.
Yes, Yes, and YES.
Many points and phrases resonate for me. In particular, I like "ego armor" because it makes me think that as soon as we say "I know" about some topic we often feel we need to prepare to defend ourselves against possible attacks that we are wrong versus right. So the ego puts on its armor. Not only is the armor heavy, I think it also blinds us to seeing clearly. Think of the visor that flips down on a helmet "protecting" our vision. To say "I don't know" is indeed a radical act.
For many years we ran an information service, and many of our clients were published authors, professional journalists, etc. Although most of them were honorable people, a disturbing minority were careless, even posting unvetted and untrue information on purpose and with intent. This was decades before the Internet. I learned to take nothing for granted.
Thanks very much for posting this. Below is a short piece I wrote for a class I taught on evaluating media sources: What You’ll Never See Posted By Any Media
From the Publisher:
Sorry, we don’t have verifiable information–nothing more than speculation and innuendo to titillate, inflame, and manipulate (and boost our online circulation to please our advertisers)–so we’ll wait to publish our latest report until we have objective data to share. Takes a few days to fact-check against conflicting authorities. Just because many sources are in agreement doesn’t make the information true.
And our competition will have different takes on the same events because we all have different political biases. And much of what we post will be meaningless within a few hours, regardless of our due diligence, because it will be superseded by new facts and events. Take care; it will be very difficult to decide whose version of the facts to believe.
My advice: beware of trusting our information to make important decisions, because historically our posts often are proven to be wrong in hindsight: tis the nature of our beast.
That’s epic Pat. What a great response.