Healthy skepticism: a how-to guide.

The world is complex and people often lie. How then, can we understand the world?

Today’s article will focus on separating the wheat from the chaff with regard to truth and fiction in the news and social media. But first I want to let you know to be on the lookout around 2pm Eastern, Saturday May 17, on X and YouTube for a livestream episode of Haman Nature. Much fun will be had, including responding to listener questions!

A while back, I wrote a brief “poker player’s guide” to evaluating truth claims in this confusing world we live in. Who’s lying? Who’s telling the truth? How can you tell? After all, it’s hard to know how to navigate this world if you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.

Apparently, my advice didn’t “take”. I’m still seeing many of the people I know (including those who read this Substack!) falling for incredible nonsense when they really should know better — or at least be highly skeptical.

The most important truth claims to your daily life come from the people closest to you: family, romantic partners, workplace associates, neighbors, etc. I’ll put those aside for the moment, because individuals can be tricky. Not all “tells” work for all people and I’d hate to give some bad advice that breaks up a marriage or something awful like that.

So let’s stick to the truth claims you’ll see on the “news” or social media. I use the scare quotes because some people just believe news reports as if they must be true. I mean, isn’t that what “news” means? True things about the broader world brought to us by trusted sources?

Hardly.

Most headlines, articles, claims, studies, and analysis brought to you by “news” sources are not truths. Instead, they are narratives that these entities want to promote to the population. They are stories they hope they can get people to believe. They do this to influence your behavior or shift your opinion about some person or topic they are invested in.

Knowing that, why would you just automatically believe the claim?

Instead, be judicious. Be conservative with your belief system. Tend to it carefully. Try not to let lies in. Let a healthy skepticism guide you. More specifically, you can use these handy rules of thumb:

Healthy skepticism: A how-to guide.

• Wait, wait, and wait some more: A basic principle of healthy skepticism is to just be patient. Don’t assume the study or headline or talking point that seems novel is true until a week or two (at least) has gone by and you have looked for confirmation or debunks. One headline should just be a placeholder for a truth-claim. That’s all. Once you start looking for it, you’ll see how many headlined claims just… fade away into obscurity. They were never real.

• They don’t always lie: First of all, there is a category of “news” that’s likely to be accurate. If someone reports a fire or a tornado or a train derailment, some actual obvious “thing that occurred”, it’s usually true on it’s face. Just don’t necessarily believe it when they try to tell you the cause(s) or the effects on the future from this event. That’s usually where spin and narrative start creeping in.

• Beware the solitary anonymous source: One marker for a lie is when all the information is leaked from an anonymous source, especially when there’s just one. Such claims could be true, but often aren’t. Many damning political lies are told with this pattern.

• Beware the “science”: Often we will see a headline like, “Study shows blah, blah blah!”. Ignore such headlines. Or, again, mark a placeholder and wait for confirmation. There is always the possibility that the methodology was flawed in an important way. Worse, in many important and interesting fields, less than half of such studies can be reproduced. Also, as Covid showed us, science can be politicized to control people. Yes, people wearing white lab coats on TV can and will lie to you.

• Be aware of the biases of the sources: Many people and organizations have an obvious bias — often several. To help evaluate their headlines and statements of truth, it helps to know in what direction they will shade the truth, if at all. Knowing their biases, one can often triangulate towards something like the truth by evaluating the spin and narrative various sources put on a topic. One good resource for this is Ground News. They show you what left-right-centrist news outlets are covering — and how they are covering it.

• Know the known liars: Some highly partisan voices lie so much they are famous for it. At the risk of being sued, I won’t give you a list. I’ll just tell you that they are on both the left and the right and they are shameless. Many are in Congress. Keep your eyes open and keep notes. Knowing who is reliably lying (especially when they are lying in unison) is very very useful.

• Beware the audio and video edit: Usually the trick here is to clip somebody saying a wild and provocative thing, but remove a critical segment that gives the full context. Often the meaning of the statement will completely reverse using this trick. It even has a name: the “Rupar edit”. This trick was used often on Donald Trump. Remember the “fine people” hoax?

• Cui bono? Who benefits from the public believing a particular headline or narrative? Sometimes just keeping that concept in mind will help you evaluate things. For example, if Big Pharma advertises heavily on CNN, does that influence what the talking heads on CNN say about their products?

• Can you believe?!?! Start keeping notes on how many of the most wild and provocative headlines and claims you see on social media turn out to be false. It’s so consistent that it’s a very useful rule of thumb. Can you believe space aliens are flying over New Jersey? Can you believe the president called neo-Nazis fine people? Can you believe how awesome that “Ghost of Ukraine” fighter pilot was? Can you believe there is a black supremacist serial killer who murdered 19 white women and carved “Black Lives Matter” on their bodies? No, don’t believe. All these (and thousands more) are claims that went viral online and were trumpeted as “news”. None are credible. Do some searching of your own and see for yourself. The key: If you “can’t believe it!”, you usually shouldn’t. Again, wait for confirmation.

• Beware your own biases: Physician, heal thyself! One of the best ways to ensure your epistemic hygiene is to know your own biases and watch against them. Beware headlines and claims you see that fit too perfectly into your own world-view. Beware claims that are to “on the nose”. Just because sources are on “your team” doesn’t mean they aren’t lying. Your side does it too.

• The first shall be last: My first bullet point is so important, I’m going to repeat it at the end. Don’t just rush to believe a headline or a news report or an online claim the second you see it. Pause. Reflect. Consider how and why it might be wrong. And then — and this is key — wait. Wait to see if more evidence piles up in support of this claim or if evidence comes out to debunk it. You’ll quickly start seeing how many claims of this type just fizzle away into nothingness — because that’s all they were.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of tools and techniques to stay sane in this bewildering and complex world of truths and lies, but it’s enough to get you started. Once you start flexing your skepticism muscle, it’ll get easier and easier to put claims into the right bucket: “True”, “False”, (and this one is the biggest), “Eh… maybe, but we’ll see”.

Naturally,

Adam

PS: Don’t forget to tune-in on X or YouTube for our livestream Haman Nature episode on Saturday, May 17 around 2pm Eastern. It’ll be fun, and we’ll take some listener questions!