Tag Archives: Truth

Certainty Versus Evidence

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We are living through an epidemic of certainly at the expense of evidence.

Selectively chosen facts are sprinkled on emboldened ideas that sit like concrete, embedded deep in the minds of people who are certain they are right. Contrary evidence is tossed aside. If it doesn’t fit my truth or my world view then, it’s wrong, it’s misinterpreted, it’s fake news.

When scientists discover galaxies that are too large for the age that they are, considering when they were born, early in the development of the universe… it makes them ponder the theories they hold. Scientists are excited by this puzzle. What’s at play here? Is it a challenge of our evidence collection or are there other theories that may be better? This is the thrill of being at the forefront of science. It’s the idea that we continue to learn and reformulate our theories and make them better.

But to certainty focused, evidence lacking, non-scientific ‘experts’ (in their own minds), this new data is a chance to mock scientists; To emphasize that ‘they don’t know anything’ about the universe. This new evidence isn’t scientific evidence but rather proof that all science is wrong. These new galaxies are evidence of a higher power, or worse, a flat world.

We have people selling water bottles that make hydrogen water that’s somehow supposed to be better than just drinking water. Every commercial for supplements or diets or exercise plans tell you how the evidence is clear and this is the product that will transform your life.

I recently saw this fascinating video about a bug that shoots acid from its butt as a defensive mechanism. It was a totally interesting and engaging video for over 2 minutes, then it started into an unexpected conclusion of Intelligent Design and became an anti-evolution propaganda video that I had to stop watching. But I did wonder how many people bought into this, and I peeked at the comments which were filled with comments like, ‘God is amazing’.

‘Follow your own Truth’, with a capital ‘T’. Cherry pick your evidence and strengthen your certainty. That’s what it seems more and more people are doing these days. The certainty epidemic is growing and it’s getting harder and harder to sift through the BS, and actually know what evidence to follow.

The only anecdote is to stay curious and ask questions. Seek out wise people who are smart enough to be humble, and uncertain, and as curious as you are… And don’t let yourself get stuck in concrete thinking.

Same memories different stories

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An interesting fact about the stories we tell over and over again is that with each telling we change the memory. Some stories change very little, either because we have told it so often we remember the recent telling of it as if it was just yesterday. Others may change little because the memory induces such strong emotions that we feel like we are re-living the experience as we tell it. But other stories change quite a bit.

You might ask a friend or family member the question, “Do you remember the time when…?” They do, and when they share their version, that version partially becomes your version as well. “Was it me or you that noticed it first?” A simple question, and then your friend responds and their answer becomes yours… whether or not their memory was correct.

I’m always fascinated to hear a shared story told by two different people, each filling in gaps for the other, each taking turns correcting the other. What does one person consider important that the other doesn’t? What subtle contradictions are there? What is a core memory for both?

One memory, two slightly different stories… two truths, and no lies, even when the stories don’t match. That’s the interesting thing about our memories, they tell us the truth we remember, they tell us ‘our’ truth. And the reality is that the very next time we tell the same story, that truth might just change a little bit.

The task of education today

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This quote was shared with us in our Principals meeting yesterday:

“This is the task of education today: to confront the almost unimaginable design challenge of building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition. This challenge brings us face to face with the importance of education for humanity and the basic questions that structure education as a human endeavor.” ~Zachary Stein

One of our Assistant Superintendent’s added, “We are trying to build a utopian society in triage conditions.”

There is no doubt that it is much harder to be an educator today than it was when I started my career over 25 years ago. And as we navigate ‘building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition,’ we are bound to struggle a bit. How do we mark assignments that are written or co-written by AI? What skills are going to be needed for the top jobs of 2030? How different will that be for 2040?

Ultimately we want to support the education of students who will become kind, contributing citizens. But how do we do this in a world where Truth seems arbitrary to the sources you get it from, and politicians, religion, and corporations are all pushing conflicting information and agendas? I think this goes beyond just working on competencies like critical thinking. It requires mental gymnastics that most adults struggle with.

Meanwhile, the majority of school schedules still put students into blocks of time based on the subjects they are learning. “Let’s think critically, and do challenging problems, but only in this one narrow field of study.” We aren’t meeting the design challenges we face today if that’s what we continue to do.

More than ever students, future citizens, need to understand complex issues from multiple perspectives. They need to understand nuance, and navigate when to defend an idea, when to compromise, and when to avoid engagement altogether. They need to be prepared to say “I don’t know,” and then do the hard work of finding out, when the accuracy of information is incomplete or even suspect. They need to be prepared to say, “I was wrong,” and “I am sorry,” and also be prepared to stick to their convictions and defend ideas that aren’t always the accepted norm.

That’s not the future I prepared students for 25 years ago. It is indeed an ‘almost unimaginable design challenge‘, and as we navigate new challenges we have to recognize that mistakes will be made… but not changing is far scarier than trying.

Untruth and Truth Bombs

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Here it comes. It didn’t take long. The unrest in the Middle East has already led to a flood of fake news, videos, and photos. Video of past battles are showing up as if they are current. Clips from video games are being passed off as current battles. And AI generated or modified videos and photos are being passed off as real.

Waves of untruths, fake news, and misinformation are being spewed out and shared virally. There isn’t a video clip, news heading, or photograph you can take for face value as being a truthful account of events that actually happened.

Except that some of it is real. Some of it is too real. Before it can be edited or censored, there will be some very graphic videos and images that will be spread across social media. Even respectable media sources will over-share overly violent clips, but on these sights there will be a pre-warning of what’s to come and some of the video will be blurred out to protect the audience or the victims, or both.

Warning or not, truth or untruth, we’ve entered an era where we, and our kids, are likely going to see things that never would have been shown just a few short years ago. No matter what social media you use, you’ll likely be exposed to graphic images too real to stomach, even if they are actually fake.

I don’t know what to worry about more, graphic images or fake images? What’s the worst bomb dropped, the truth bomb or the untruth bomb? Neither are good, and both are headed to a social media platform near you. In fact, they are already there.

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Update: Great article from Forbes on the topic of deepfakes spreading virally, “In A New Era Of Deepfakes, AI Makes Real News Anchors Report Fake Stories“.

Understanding orange

Today is orange shirt day.

4 years ago I shared this 3 minute and 43 second video on Facebook:

I’m thankful for TJ, teaching me and allowing me to share his story. I’m thankful to Inquiry Hub student Madison for sharing her ‘Every Child Matters’ artwork with our school and community.

I am thankful that as more Truths come out about Residential Schools, the stories have inspired us to recognize that there are two parts of Truth and Reconciliation… there is the truth of what happened, and the reconciliation that is beginning to happen.

It would be easy to see Truth and Reconciliation Day as just another holiday from school, It’s harder to understand why it matters. Harder to see that reconciliation work is something to foster beyond the day off from school, and well into the future of our communities and our country.

Every child matters. Wear orange today and share your support.

Humanity – versus – Reality

I saw a video a few days ago of hundreds of unmasked protesters, packed together in a square in the United Kingdom, singing ‘Stick your poison vaccines up your ass’ to the tune of ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’. I wanted to write about it sooner, but I could only come from an angle of anger and disgust. It would have been a good rant, that would probably have made me feel better, but I’m done ranting with the purpose of making myself feel better. I’ve been seeking out joy, determination, fun facts, and when dealing with our current situation, humour, as sort of coping mechanisms for dealing with the discord that seems to be pervasive right now.

There is an epic battle going on. It is a battle on many battle grounds. It is a battle happening across the world. It is a battle that pits humanity against reality. Here are six of the battlegrounds:

  1. The Covid-19 Pandemic: Many people are dying – versus – Protests against the preventions and lockdowns to prevent the spread.
  2. Vaccines: They save lives – versus – They are dangerous (or they will be used to monitor and track us).
  3. Climate change: It’s the greatest threat we face as a species – versus – It’s a hoax.
  4. Science: Seeking objective facts – versus – un-objective and agenda-driven propaganda.
  5. Freedom: Government are here to serve and protect us – versus – Governments are corrupt and stripping away our freedoms in an attempt to control us.
  6. Civil liberties: Issues like racism, gender identity, pro-choice, freedom of expression – versus – Religious values, as well as both right-wing (QAnon) and left-wing (Antifa extremists) using hateful tactics to argue their points.

I purposely didn’t use the word ‘Truth’ before now. I believe that we are living in a post-Truth era (with an intentional capital ‘T’).  I’ll leave you with Stuart McMillan’s webcomic about Neil Postman’s book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. I recently listened to both 1984 and Brave New World back-to-back. I was struck by the contrast between a world run based on fear – versus – one run based on pleasure. I think that things are so messed up right now that we are stuck in a dystopian novel where both worlds exist simultaneously. Many people live in constant fear based on ‘facts’ that are cherry-picked, on half-truths, and even made up completely. Many more are living in a social media based alternate reality where their truths are based on a ‘news’ feed designed to entertain with a confusing mix of facts and fiction.

I don’t know how so many people could be naive enough to believe that the world is flat and other ridiculous conspiracies; That vaccines will be used to monitor you; That so many people can confuse mask use with being a sheep; Or that so many people can believe one group’s fight for rights undermines their own rights? Yet, across the globe, millions of people are so sure they are right, that protests and propaganda based on ignorance are now commonplace.

We are living in an era where humanity has no grasp on reality. Fiction and fact are interchangeable. ‘T’ruth is subjective. And a common, collective plan for peace and prosperity seems further away than any worlds that Huxley or Orwell could fabricate.

Easy lies and the hard truth

This is a brilliant comic by Shencomix.com.

Lies are soft and squishy. They can be whatever shape you want. They are convenient. [They fit into any world view.] The Truth is hard and spiky. Hard to embrace. Worth embracing.

I’m absolutely amazed at how many (smart, educated) people are sucked into conspiracy theories and exaggerated (and clearly misrepresented) statistics that fit their world view… even when the theories are debunked.

Example : A US educator that I know shared this October 25, 2019 Joe Biden Tweet, which was a response to another tweet from a Washington Post article on pandemic preparedness:


This is the top reply which has been retweeted 71 times and liked 359 times at the time of me sharing this:


It’s absolutely ridiculous that someone with such influence can spread a conspiracy theory that the pandemic was planned. But it’s convenient. It fits her world view.

The problem is that is so much easier to cherry pick lies and convenient half-truths than it is to actually embrace and meaningfully interpret facts that don’t match biased opinions.

Sometimes lies are easy and the truth is hard… it’s spiky… But we want to live in a society where the hard truth is embraced, even if it isn’t something we want to hear.

Some more related posts:

Trying to find the Truth

I enjoy seeing funny quotes attributed to the wrong people. Like these two examples:

Abe Lincoln fake internte quote

Use-the-Force-Harry-Gandalf

The second one is an assault to the senses of fiction and science fiction fans. When the joke is obvious, there is comedy in the creation of these fake attributions. However, we are living in an era where Truth seems more and more subjective.

What’s scary about this is that I consider myself fairly objective, but I’m finding it harder and harder to know what to believe. What I do know is that newspapers today come with tremendous bias, and something as simple as this chart from two years ago is even more exaggerated now, with papers moving further towards the extremes:

News-Bias-MarketWatch

Here is an example of something that I know little about, and feel that the more I read, the further I am from having a clear understanding of where to put a value on what’s true: Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.

The first article I read was from the Washing Post (dated May 17th, 2020): The results are in. Trump’s miracle drug is useless.

Excerpt: THE HYPE over the drug hydroxychloroquine was fueled by President Trump and Fox News, whose hosts touted it repeatedly on air. The president’s claims were not backed by scientific evidence, but he was enthusiastic. “What do you have to lose?” he has asked. In desperation, the public snapped up pills and the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization on March 28 for the drug to be given to hospitalized patients. On Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “So we have had some great response, in terms of doctors writing letters and people calling on the hydroxychloroquine.”

Now comes the evidence. Two large studies of hospitalized patients in New York City have found the drug was essentially useless against the virus.

Next I read an Article from the Washington Times (Dated April 2nd, 2020 – about 6 weeks before the article above): Hydroxychloroquine rated ‘most effective therapy’ by doctors for coronavirus: Global survey.

Excerpt: Drug known for treating malaria used by U.S. doctors mostly for high-risk COVID-19 patients.

An international poll of more than 6,000 doctors released Thursday found that the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was the most highly rated treatment for the novel coronavirus.

The survey conducted by Sermo, a global health care polling company, of 6,227 physicians in 30 countries found that 37% of those treating COVID-19 patients rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy” from a list of 15 options.

Of the physicians surveyed, 3,308 said they had either ordered a COVID-19 test or been involved in caring for a coronavirus patient, and 2,171 of those responded to the question asking which medications were most effective.

So, the ‘evidence’ presented in the second article came well before the the first article was printed. Which article holds more ‘Truth’?

First, if you had to guess, which of these newspapers is more Left-of-Centre – Liberal and which of these papers is more Right-of-Centre – Conservative?

Let’s have a look at the sources on MEDIA BIAS/FACT Check. (Full disclosure, I have not checked the reliability of this website.)

Here is the bias of the Washington Post:

Washington Post MediaBiasFactCheck

Compared to the bias of the Washington Times:

Washington Times MediaBiasFactCheck

Take a moment to read the final, bolded comments that I clipped from this fact check website about each paper. They would suggest the Post being more reliable than the Times because of a lack of fact checking at the Times. That said, the source for the survey linked to in the Times article checked out when I looked into it. The same source, Sermo, is now toting Remdesivir use more than Hydroxychloroquine, and even then stating that, “Remdesivir Seen as Only Moderately Effective”.

I don’t have the time or mental energy to go fact-checking every article I read, but I do find myself evaluating the source of the information a lot more. However, quite honestly, even when I do that it has now become blatantly easy to read the bias of the reporter woven into almost every news article that’s based on a ‘hot’ topic. How can you look to the news for objectivity when that objectivity is blatantly disregarded?

I’ve now started reading headlines with the following ‘BS Filter’ as a lens: “Does this article headline anger me, or try to anger me? If the answer is ‘yes’, I either ignore the article, or I open it with my ‘BS detectors’ fully engaged. Click bait articles tend not to be focused on sharing any kind of ‘Truth’.

In this day and age of abundant information, I thought Truth would rise above the BS, but that hasn’t been the case. Neil Postman said,

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

It seems that there is an information war on both our capacities to think, and our capacities to seek the Truth.

3 sides to every story

It was my sister many years ago who said this to me the first time, but I’ve heard it many times since. There are 3 sides to every story: The first person’s perspective, the second person’s perspective, and somewhere in between there is the Truth.

We all want to feel that our experience is the Truth, but in reality we can’t always see where the other person is coming from. Relationships often have perceived truths that limit us from seeing the full Truth that lies in the middle. Our bias doesn’t have to come from malice, it can come from innocent ignorance. But when we see the bigger Truth, when we are reflecting back on a conversation, we can sometimes see our own flaws in perspective if we are honest with ourselves.

When this happens, we need to decide if it is more important to come back with the new Truth (or at least our perspective of it), or is it more important to concede that our truth was wrong, and think about how holding on to that truth affected the other person? Because even at this new juncture there might still be 3 sides to the story. Pause and reflect again. Maybe the relationship is more important than the Truth?