As many others out there I am still trying to process the
result of the US elections. I don’t usually write about politics but I think
this does have relevance to science. The
result brought me flashbacks of the outcome of the Brexit vote. In both
occasions I woke up to a result that I found shocking and disheartening. Both
times I went to work in a dazed state of denial trying to come to terms with
the fact that so many people have viewpoints that are so different from mine.
Personally, I find repugnant that both elections were so much about racism and
fomenting protectionist and anti-immigration movements. There are many
political and social issues around these elections that I am not going to touch
on. The important point to science and scientists here is that these elections
were won using many false statements and arguments. I know I am biased because
these were not the outcomes I was hoping for. Still, I don’t think I am
exaggerating when I say that the winning sides of both elections used a similar
strategy of inventing a suitable reality that they pushed to their advantage. I
am used to politicians bending the truth and making promises that they don’t
keep but more and more they simply lie. As someone trained to be
rational and critical to flaws in argument I live through it in complete
disbelief. Trump did this all the time but one particular interview in the US
elections really brought this point to home to me:
Newt Gingrich clearly states it here – it does not matter
what the truth is, it matters what people feel
the truth is. This is what Steven Colbert termed as truthiness, a joke that he
should be thinking a lot about these days. The rise of truthiness is a danger
to society. To get your way you no longer have to find arguments based on the
present reality, you just have to be able to warp reality in your favor.
Filter bubbles and confirmation bias
The internet, with its immediate access to information and
its global reach, should be a weapon in favor of reason. Instead it has
actually increased our isolation as we sort ourselves by affinity to beliefs. I
am this shocked with the results of these elections because I barely interact with
those with the same set of beliefs of the winning groups. We live in filter
bubbles (book, TED talk) in all the media that we consume and even in the
places where we live in. This affinity based social sorting is amoral. The same
ease of access that allows scientists to collaborate globally is bringing
together any other likeminded group of people. In the book “Here Comes Everybody” Clay Shirky gives examples of groups of bulimics teaching each other
techniques to avoid eating and how the internet may help terrorist groups. It
is hard to break into these echo chambers because people tend to perceive as
true whatever confirms their beliefs. This well-known phenomenon of confirmation bias gets magnified by communal reinforcement within the filter bubbles. Savvy social
manipulators don’t have to change the opinions of those in these echo chambers,
they can try to connect with and shepherd those within.
What do we do when truth and reason no longer matter? Scientific
findings are no longer facts but just opinions and values. People can be pro or
against vaccination for example. This is starting to have very serious and
concrete consequences (e.g. global warming) and looks to be increasingly getting worse. Although in
both elections the younger generations were less likely to have voted for the
winning outcomes, I don’t think that echo chambers and the attack on reason are
a generational problem. Maybe scientists should be having a more active role in
promoting the importance rational thought or maybe it is a challenge that can
only be solved by improving the education system.