E032 Tools to Keep Better Informed

Passionately Wrong Podcast Episode E032

Tools to Keep Better Informed

Key takeaway: Randy and James explore why it’s so hard to feel well-informed nowadays, and what we can do to improve our chances. Among other tools: keep an open mind, be open to the possibility you could be wrong, collect information before making snap judgments, gather information from multiple sources, really consider arguments from the other side, and don’t consider everything as black and white.

Topics covered in this video: 

• We have more information than ever before, and yet much of it seems less helpful
• Sources of information have fragmented; people can find support for any position
• The importance of critical thinking in navigating an opinion-rich and polarized time
• Thinking is hard, relying on experts used to make sense
• What happens when more people are peddling propaganda?
• Avoid being passionately wrong by assuming you probably are wrong (or at least that you don’t already know everything and so are open to learning new things)
• Don’t be quick to make assumptions about facts or people’s motivations
• New sources of information, newsletters from former mainstream media reporters
• Many topics people disagree about are not black and white, but gray
• Be especially wary of people telling you things you wish were true
• Motivated reasoning is everywhere
• Why it is so helpful to make the best argument for the other side yourself

Resources in this video

Lex Fridman podcast (https://lexfridman.com/podcast/) 

Bari Weiss substack (The Free Press) (https://substack.com/@bariweiss) 

Michael Schellenberger substack (https://substack.com/@shellenberger) 

Matt Taibi substack (https://substack.com/@taibbi) 

Transcript

James: 0:00

So either people believe that they have found, an accurate source of truth and everyone else is an idiot, or they think they're uniquely positioned to figure out what's true and what's not true by reading widely. And to me, both of those are suspect beliefs. Greetings, friends. I'm James.

Randy: 0:18

And I'm Randy. You're listening to The Passionately Wrong podcast where we challenge your assumptions, offer some different perspectives, and hopefully help you make better decisions.

James: 0:30

Hello everybody. Welcome to the Passionately Wrong podcast. Randy Surles and I, James Bezo are here to tell up to you today about how to be better informed. this is something that a lot of people are worried about today because we feel like. We're in a paradoxical time. We have access to more information than humanity has ever had before, and we are also awash in misinformation or misleading information or wrong information. So the challenge for all of us becomes how do you sift through the information that we're all floating in and decide what are the things that are true, and what are the things that will actually help you make progress in life? This is not a trivial problem, and it's one that I talk to most of the people I meet that I spend any time with, I ask them, Hey, how do you get informed about what's going on in the world? And. It's interesting where I think the way that people do this has shifted over time. It used to be that there were fewer channels, fewer, and by channels I just mean sources of information. But one of them would've been you got information from the National News Media. There were three or four TV stations, and you got the nightly news. And you would also have as a compliment to that, the morning newspaper. So between the newspaper and the morning, and then news in the evening, you got a sense of what was going on in the world. And it wasn't always only factual. You also got indirectly a sense of how to think about it because the way the news presenter talked about it formed a little bit your opinions. That seems to me to have entirely fragmented. In the meantime, there's still obviously news and many more channels of news. There's. Newspapers and online publications, but there's nothing like a consistent message that is produced by those people. In effect, you are entirely free to choose the news and the narrative, if I can use that overused word, the story that you wish to choose. almost anything that you wanna believe you can justify by saying, oh, I saw it on the internet. Oh, okay. that doesn't mean that it's true, I think the starting problem we have is people still wanna know what's going on in the world. They still wanna be well informed, but they have so many places to choose from that it's difficult to know if the sources they've chosen are accurate. The. Interesting phenomenon. I've, I have observed when I talk to friends and acquaintances and I ask them about where they get their news, is that people will say, oh, I know most of the news is fake and unreliable, and people are just trying to manipulate me. and then they say one of two things, which doesn't make sense to me, but I just wanna see if, maybe we can figure it out. They say first well, Other newspapers and other news sources are corrupt, but the ones I read are accurate. And this is not limited to left or right or any particular belief. It's just, people think, oh, you know those people over there who believe something different are idiots, but my news sources are accurate. Or the person will say, I know my news sources are also suspect, but I read widely. So I read on the left. I read on the right, I read this news source and that news source, and I try to triangulate to some sort of truth in the middle. So either people believe that they have found, an accurate source of truth and everyone else is an idiot, or they think they're uniquely positioned to figure out what's true and what's not true by reading widely. And to me, both of those are suspect beliefs. They're not consistent with how human psychology works. But anyway, that's the problem. A lot of information, hard to figure out what's true. And anything else you want to add to the setup?

Randy: 4:06

I agree with everything you said. I think a problem we have in maybe our edu I feel like when you and I were educated, we were given a lot more, encouragement for critical thinking, and I feel like I'm, I feel like that's maybe lacking in a lot. secondary schooling, maybe even in the college level if, depending on where you get your source of what's going on in college. and I fall into the second GA category. I listen to. Cnn, I listen to NPR r, which I consider, more left and, and liberal. and then I also listen to some, daily wire stuff, which is obviously more right. I think the biggest problem I notice is everything seems to be more opinionated than just the facts, ma'am. And I remember, we're old enough to remember. When Reagan was running for president and they had, I, I forgot which news channel, but the newscasters were making disparaging facial. depending on who said something or what they said they were do, were doing something with their face that the audience could see and they were reprimanded for it later on. and that was because everyone wanted to be neutral. The news was supposed to be neutral and not influence the can. The candidates were supposed to influence the people, not the news people. And I think that's gone out the window now. I think there, everyone in the news is trying to influence. You know what you're thinking and that's why we're watching specific channels now, and that's why podcasts and online, news sources are becoming more popular than cnn, for instance, which is apparently losing a lot of ratings. I. I don't know what you're gonna come up with an answer for this, or if we're just gonna talk about what's going on right now, but I agree with everything you said. I think it's very polarized. There's a lot of opinions going around. It's hard to figure out what's right, but I also consider myself a critical thinker and I never take anything black and white, and I also don't, I find it really. Interesting or disappointing that so many people like on the right, believe everything, the right says, or on the left believe everything the left says and believe everything against the other side or something like that. I don't believe, I don't a believe. Everything on either side. I have a, my, I don't know. I think I'm more conservative than liberal, but I also have, I also am very supportive of some issues on the left as well, and so when I have some friends that are very, You know, democrat, liberal leftist, that they just start coming at me when I see'em once a year and have dinner with them for whatever reason. They feel like they have to speak up and accuse me of, being anti, anti, anti. And I'm like, I, that's, I don't believe that. Why would you assume, I believe that? Well, you're military, so you're automatically, you know, Republican. So you're, and you're from Texas and I'm. I mean, I do consider myself a Republican, but I don't, everything you just said, I don't believe everything you just said. Well, that's what Republicans believe is like. I don't think all Republicans believe that either. and so I don't know why you assume that. And there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of assuming on both sides, I think assuming the worst if nothing else, and there's a lot of opinions going around without. a lot of science and a lot of facts, and I really, if I have the time, I don't have any like life or death decisions anymore over what's going on in the news for me. So when something comes up, I'm like, let's look at the facts. And this goes to even big things like, the George Floyd incident, the RI written house incident, all these things. Like the first thing on the news is blah. And I'm like, and people are calling me, he's like, did you see this? This is crazy. It's outrageous. And I was like, let's all take a step back. we're not there on the ground. as part of the participants having to make split second decisions. So why can't we just all look at everything that's going on and not make assumptions?

James: 8:36

We're getting a little bit to, first of all, the environment is definitely feels different than a couple of decades ago in the sense that there is, as you mentioned, much more, not just opinions, but people trying to shape others' opinions by virtue of more or less underhanded ways of Yeah. Manipulating you with outrage or subtly trying to influence you without you necessarily always realizing it. So I liked your reference to whether people are used to and able to apply critical thinking to the environments that they're in. For me, a little bit, the situation we're in does come down to basic human psychology, which

Randy: 9:18

is.

James: 9:18

We know thinking is actually hard. It is a big energy drain. You'll use anywhere between 10 and 40% of your daily energy needs in thinking actually, which is a big deal from an evolutionary perspective. If you are in a environment where you need to. Having to spend too much time thinking, first of all takes time and secondly takes energy. And both of those things, uh, don't predispose you to survival. So the ability to make snap decisions and to make quick judgments is really part of humanity's survival mechanism that can easily be hijacked. But the point for this discussion not to get into that is more we're. Predisposed to carefully reflecting and thinking about something and exercising critical judgment. So we don't, and that worked fine. In an era when you had reliable experts with genuine expertise like we were talking about at an earlier episode, who do you get your fitness advice from, right? If you had someone who had genuine expertise that you could trust and rely on, that's a good strategy. I don't need to figure. everything that there is on this topic, because I've got a world renowned expert here to tell me, in a summary fashion, what to think. Now you've got people claiming to be experts, and telling you things that may or may not be true for reasons of their own, that may not be consistent with your reasons. You just wanna be informed to make a good decision. They're actually trying to get you to vote a certain way or donate money to something or buy a product. So lots of people trying to manipulate us and hijacking our tendency to want to rely on the judgment of experts and basically not do the hard work of critical thinking. So probably a lot of it does come down to basic human nature and whether we are able to and can force ourselves to apply critical thinking. That leads to a little bit the mess that we're in right now, I would say. Not to get too far into the topic of critical thinking that's worthy again, of a, a, its own long, longer discussion, but, when you talked about friends coming to meet you and assuming you held certain positions, or just really being firm in their beliefs. One of the simplest hacks that I have found that helps me avoid being passionately wrong about a topic is actually to assume I am. Slightly wrong or probably wrong in the sense that it means I don't hold my opinions as strongly as I used to. I say, yeah, you know, this is what I think, but I could be wrong. And adding those words, but I could be wrong, helps me get out of the trap of assuming I've already got all the facts, or that I know everything I need to know. And it's much more conducive to actually having a discussion with someone or being open to receiving new information. If you say, ah, you know, this is what I think right now, but tell me something and maybe I'll change my mind. And that sort of openness to new information and openness to the idea that you might not know everything that you should know or could know about a topic that helps one progress. And so when it comes to being better informed, ironically, I find assuming that you are not well informed is one of the best ways to make progress. Do you know what I'm trying to say?

Randy: 12:31

No, I agree. And. Also, I think this is a result of the how much money people are making off social media by the views and the clicks. you'll hear something make somebody make a statement in the news or you'll hear about an incident like the unfortunate, shooting in Nashville or something like that. And everyone just assumes the worst. Immediately, everyone just starts putting, no one knows anything about the event, the news event, and everyone just assumes the worst and starts putting out these crazy opinions. that may or may not be right without any, without waiting for what? For any of the, of the re of the results or for any feedback. And the same thing with someone making a speech, whether it's DeSantis, Trump. Biden, whoever they misspeak, which in the past, back in the nineties, someone misspoke. You made a joke about it, you moved on. Now you make a joke. And everyone knows can read that guy's mind and know exactly what he meant. And and then it goes off and in some viral, and then it becomes, and then it becomes, gospel. this is exactly what he thought I know, or what he said. they alter what he said by acc, but by moving a few words around or rearranging his words. And it's just, to me it's the, these opinions and these assumptions. More of these assumptions are not very product.

James: 13:59

No, they aren't. And I suppose, this goes beyond, how do you, um, get information to a little bit the culture and the times that we're living in and how people are both quick to make assumptions about what's going on, but also quick to make assumptions, as you said before about other people and what their thinking and what their motives are. it is relevant because those. The cultural phenomenon, the cultural occurrence and the times we're in do affect the quality of the information that's available to us. we hinted at it, but maybe just to say it out loud, if the news that you hear from the mainstream media in both the TV news and the published news is of. Limited utility, lots and lots of stuff has jumped up to fill the gap, including just. Let's say it, people sitting around in their living room and coming up with crazy conspiracy theories based on nothing more than they had too much to drink last night. So unfounded craziness, which has a way of spreading in a way that it didn't used to, because people can post a YouTube video or they can, publish something on Twitter. But there's a growing group of, I think, Many of them former mainstream media reporters who are producing, I think thoughtful, high quality. News in a different form. They might issue a weekly newsletter or a weekly podcast or a daily one, whatever. The frequency isn't the point, it's just that there are people coming together to create what I think is an alternative news source, which is careful, thoughtful. Well researched often, people who have devoted themselves to making commentary on the public sphere. I'm not gonna go to Barry Weiss to get my news about what's happening in the world, but in terms of, uh, a commentary on how one might think about it and what the implications, might be, I'm finding these people to be very interesting and a potentially useful, additional source of inform. I've probably got three or four people whose podcasts I would listen to. The ones I'm thinking of now write these newsletters. They have a CK newsletter, for example, that they then publish and I just read it in my email. I'm getting. I'm finding it necessary to seek out additional sources of information far more than I used to before. And I haven't settled on what I think are the right ones or the only ones in part because, I know the world is complex and changing and a lot of people have now something to contribute to the discussion. That's also interesting. maybe they weren't a famous reporter at the New York Times who got kicked out for expressing an. Popular opinion or just felt like they could no longer write articles without being censored by the editors. That's the reason for a lot of these people going off on their own, they were getting censored by their publications. What I find really fascinating is there are just random individuals who get interested about a topic. Maybe they get obsessed, like you and I were talking about, could happen with fitness previously. And they really do a deep dive on it. guess what? If that person is smart and they've spent hundreds of hours thinking about a topic, they might actually have a unique contribution that's as good as anyone else's in the entire world. And if I happen to come across their publication because someone says, oh, hey, this person's article was really cool. That is an amazing. Potential addition to the store of humanity's knowledge that we didn't have easily available to us before. But again, the question is how do you differentiate between someone who is really a well-founded, amazingly educated person with a good take, and someone who is obsessed and just ranting about a topic

Randy: 17:30

I think also what adds to. Confusion to this, of this conversation we're having is most of these topics that everyone is, not in agreement about. They're really complicated and the loudest voices are seeing it in black and, and there, there's a lot of gray area in there. And I think, I think also if you were talking about American. Politics and culture that most Americans are more in the gray area. Than the black or white, but they're being forced to make it, to choose black or white Republican or Democrat, whatever. and so because they're being forced into a corner, you see that a lot in the social medias and the statistics. but I think in the long run, Because they're complicated issues and there's a lot of different points to be made for and against that, that it's more gray than most people think it is. And

James: 18:32

I like that addition, Randy, that on complex topics don't be quick to assume there is a, an obvious answer. There almost certainly isn't. Which means we do have to live with the uncertainty of thinking and nuance. what it suggests is that, we need to keep an open mind and then. be alert to people telling us things that we want to hear. And that is a very difficult human tendency to overcome, the, the wishful thinking. there was a headline I understand this week in the New York Post saying, study says exercise has no benefit to longevity or your health. It's like, really Come on. I know that three quarters of Americans are overweight or obese, but do you really need to be telling people that exercise has no benefit to your health? That is so wrong and so misleading, and so obviously improper that. A lot of people are gonna say, oh, I don't need to do Randy's 75 day hard challenge because it doesn't do me any good. It's don't, don't fall prey to believing what you wanna believe because it suits your laziness and your prejudices. the world is more complex and it is more gray. but the human tendency to hear what we wanna hear is very strong.

Randy: 19:45

Yeah. No, I, and also the black and white. sides of the arguments in the United States because social media is, it seems like a lot of the social media, the, in English at least, is originating from the United States. It spreads over to Europe and the rest of the world. And people are like, what are they doing over there? It's crazy. And I think, I don't wanna get too far into the politics, but one of the things that are discussed a lot over here is the Roess Wade, overturned and the abortion, thing. And the prob, I have to explain. I'm like, Hey. The reason it's yes. Or because I think most of Europe, there's a couple countries still in Europe that don't allow abortions, like Poland and things like that. But most of Europe is, there is a, they allow abortions up to a certain, weeks. I forget every country's a little bit different. It's 10, 12, whatever, 15 weeks or something like that. But I think from my exp what I've talked to with everyone in the experience is everyone agrees that abortion is killing a baby in Europe. for the most part, that they say, yes, this is, you're killing a baby. How can you not say you're killing a baby? But then the ones against abortion in the United States or the ones for abortion are like, no, it's just sell, it's not a baby. Because they almost are forced to do that because if they agree that they're killing a life, then it's murder and then it gets, banned in the whole country. So they can't ever, they could ever come to this agreement. With the pros and the cons, because as soon as the people who are for abortions say, aha, it is a life, so you're killing it. So therefore we can't do it, so therefore we're gonna ban it in a whole country. That's the fear. I don't know if it'll, that they'll actually interpret that way, but that's the fear, I think. So that's why everyone has to use this terms in a specific way and never come to a common ground. and that's why the rest of the world's like, what are you guys talking about,

James: 21:50

No, and you make a valid and really helpful point, which is people are motivated in their reasoning. They're trying to come to a certain outcome, so they interpret both what's coming in, but also then they, shape the arguments coming out because they've got an objective in mind at the end. That's the difficult thing about these challenging topics where, It's not just, I'm trying to pass on information to you so you can make a good decision. It's I'm trying to achieve a policy objective or achieve a certain outcome, and I want you to, be with me on the Ukraine War or be with me on the, you know, abortion issue. And that definitely complicates the discussion for sure. And so that's, an easy. Point to take away, which is, Hey, look, recognize what kind of information exchange you're in. Are you in one where someone's just trying to tell you what's going on? Or are you in a situation where you are being told what's going on with the purpose or with one of the objectives being to get you to think about it in a certain way? To vote a certain way, or, believe a certain thing about a topic if they're trying to manipulate. To shape, let's say your opinion, be very careful because the likelihood of there being objective information then decreases a lot. I would say we have uncovered a couple of tools to help, one, improve the quality of their information gathering and indirectly their thinking. We said you gotta keep an open mind, uh, keep yourself open to the possibility that you could be wrong. You mentioned, and I like it. Don't be so quick to react to the immediate headline. if it's not life or death situation, just wait and see more information coming in, supporting that point. I would say not just read multiple sources, although you should gather information from multiple sources. Try to gather information from multiple diverse sources, so hearing opinions on this side and on this side. And I'd like to add another one, Randy, which is something I've. I don't see this happen very often, but I think it's a really helpful practice. I listen to the Lex Friedman interview podcast. He does these long form interviews with really interesting people. He started out doing AI researchers and physicists, but has since expanded to various prominent people of all different kinds. And what he often does is when they get to a controversial topic, he'll ask the person to steal man a. That has been made. So the person has a view and Lex asked them to take the opposing view and make the strongest argument. So steelman it make the strongest argument in favor of the opposing view that the person obviously does not hold as a way to have a really good discussion, right? Like, I know you believe X, but now make the best case you can for y. And that is, boy, if you think thinking is hard, thinking and making an argument for a view that is the opposite of what you believe. So you're a violent, pro-life believer and now you have to make a case at favor of abortion. Well, okay, that's a really interesting exercise and I find it actually improves the quality of one's thinking greatly because it makes you question your own assumptions, makes you question what you know about the issue and. What I've also observed listening to Lexi's podcast over many months is most people can't do it. They just immediately zoom by it and say, well, okay. Or they make a, they think they can't do it, and that for me says something that we're so invested in our own opinions, we can't even see the other side, let alone make the argument for the other side. I like it because it's something that lawyers have to do, right? I say, look, I'm just, I'll take either side and I'm happy doing.

Randy: 25:10

I, I thi I find it funny that, I agree with you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start listening to that podcast. I'm gonna add, you've already a, you've already suggested some other ones. I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna add that to my list, but, It's, that's something we did in high school and college, right? It's called debate. Debate, right? You put your, you put yourself in the other guy's shoes to figure out all the things. He's gonna argue against you. So you can come up with counter-arguments, and that's the only way you can have a real debate that a successful debate.

James: 25:36

to your point, Mandy, even if it's just to make your own argument stronger, it's helpful to get into the other side's shoes to understand what their best arguments are so you can counter them. I think it's. A really beneficial practice that somehow we seem to have gotten out of the habit of doing as a society. So I might add that one to our list of, if you'd like to become well-informed, take a chance and make the best argument you can think of on something you really feel deeply about and say, all right, what's the best argument on the other side? You might be surprised by what happens to your thought process as a result. And if nothing else, you'll be a better. I don't wanna say kinder. You'll be a different person to talk to. When your friends come and they ask you questions, you're just having a discussion with them. By the way, if you can argue both sides of an issue, you take yourself out of it. You say it. It's not you and your person and your values that are somehow caught up with defending that position at all costs. It's just, Hey, we're having a discussion about this. I can see it from this side. I can see it from this side. I think that's likely to make you better informed in the long run when you can see more than just one side of an.

Randy: 26:39

Yeah. I think those are really good tools and the only thing I would add and it piggybacks on what we were just talking about, is what I mentioned about don't look at the topics as black or white. Yeah. Realize that there's a lot of layers of gray in there. and I think most people, I think most people who look at if they stop looking at it like this is the. And there's nothing else but the truth. If they look at it as in there's these other layers in there, you might find they might, they could move more towards the center a little bit, if not at the center, but at least towards the center and kind of understand where people are coming from.

James: 27:17

I believe listening to you talk, I like that idea. I wonder if, we could apply, one could apply something that I otherwise apply all over in my life, which is the power of continuous improvement. Just make incremental changes over time or incremental effort over time, maybe. In the information gathering sphere or, thinking sphere or believing sphere. Well, how do I form my opinions about the world? Rather than saying, this is what I believe and now I'm gonna harden my opinion. You could say, this is what I believe at this moment. And with each new bit of information I gather I'm gonna allow myre, belief to evolve or change, or get better informed. And so maybe viewing Your thoughts about the world as being a function of every day you have the potential to learn something new and you'll allow that to shift the course you're on. I'm just talking out loud here with you, and I just had this thought real time as we were talking. I might think about what it means to apply continuous improvement principles to thinking and beliefs as well, because that might help you avoid being so committed to a belief that you. in the absence of, or in the face of contrary evidence and new information, we should adapt our thinking to new information. No, I like that. Okay. Hopefully we've, not made your task harder today in the sense that although we're asking you to think, we've given you a few tools for applying thinking, we're gonna come back to what it means to critically think because we think we learned how to do it when we were younger. I probably could use some refreshers on what it means, but I think it's a helpful way to avoid being dangerously wrong in a world where there's a lot of people who are. Deliberately trying to get you to think things that you wouldn't otherwise think. So thanks for listening, everybody. We look forward to hearing you or having you hear us again next time. Yep. Thanks.

Randy: 29:02

See you next time. We'd love to hear what you think, so please comment on the show with your thoughts. We read all of your comments.

James: 29:08

Thanks for joining us, and thanks for subscribing. See you next time.