George Will: Some policy dentistry could combat truth decay
These developments and others worry two of the virtuoso worriers at the
The authors discern four trends inimical to fact-based discourse and policymaking: increasing disagreement about facts and the interpretation of them (e.g., "The fact that immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than people born in
Gerrymandering, "assortative mating" (people from the same socio-cultural backgrounds marrying each other), geographic segregation of the like-minded — all these are both causes and effects of living in echo chambers, which produces polarization. Furthermore, when, on social media and elsewhere, filters and gatekeepers are dispensed with, barriers to entry into public discourse become negligible, so being intemperate or ignorant — or both, in the service of partisanship — are not barriers, and toxic digital subcultures proliferate. Kavanagh and Rich say that not only do new media technologies exacerbate cognitive biases, they also promote "the permeation of partisanship throughout the media landscape." They dryly say, "When the length of news broadcasts increased from two to 24 hours per day, there was not a 12-fold increase in the amount of reported facts."
Kavanagh and Rich are earnest social scientists with a long list of policy dentistry to combat truth decay. Their suggestions range from the anodyne (schools that teach critical reasoning; imagine that) to the appalling ("public money to support long-form and investigative journalism"). But their main purpose is, appropriately, to suggest research projects that will yield facts about the consequences of the new media and intellectual landscape. Unfortunately, truth decay also spreads because campuses have become safe spaces for dime-store Nietzscheans (there are no facts, only interpretations), and that what happens on campuses does not stay on campuses.
Also, there is simple mendacity: Social justice warriors at Google probably think they are clever and heroic in saying that Lincoln was a member not of the
We should regret only unjust distrust; distrust of the untrustworthy is healthy. Considering the preceding 50 years, from Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, through
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