Episode 260: How do we know what we think we know is true? with Jim Agresti

In this age of fake news, disinformation, shadow banning and government agencies like CISA aiming to manipulate what it calls our “cognitive infrastructure” it is hard to answer this question. 

To explore how we can go about finding what’s true and what is not,  Jim Agresti, the founder of Just Facts, returns to help clarify our thinking. 

Just Facts is an institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills using exacting Standards of Credibility to determine what constitutes a fact and what does not. The vision of Just Facts is to equip people with facts “to make truly informed decisions. This means facts that accurately and fully convey reality—not pseudo-facts, half-truths, or talking points.”

“Do you have the information you need to make quality decisions in your life and in the voting booth? You can rarely get the full picture of what something is about from an 800-word news article or commentary. You have to dig much deeper,” explains Jim.

In this episode we talk about Just Facts exacting Standards of Credibility that is uses to produce research that is accurate and truly informative. Here’s a summary:

• Comprehensiveness: It’s a simple thing to distort reality by selecting only facts that align with partisan views while ignoring others. Half the truth can amount to a total lie.

• Primary Sources means identifying credible primary sources instead of secondary ones that often reflect an “interpretation” of the facts instead of the actual facts. 

• Rigorous Documentation means documenting facts far more thoroughly than academic standards require, footnoting every fact with creditable sources, and citing quotations or data exactly. Harvard’s Claudine Gay should have consulted with Jim. 

• Raw Data presents data in its rawest comprehensible form to safeguard against data corrupted by errors, rhetorical mischaracterizations, or statistical manipulation. 

• Verification uses different sources, methodologies, and calculations to double-check verifiable facts. If they’d done this, NASA wouldn’t have lost a Mars Climate Orbiter because they mixed up metric and English units when coding the mission software.

• Clarity means using language that is precise and unambiguous in order to minimize the potential for misinterpretation. 

• Balance: In this age of raging partisanship, almost no one does comprehensive accuracy or tries to balance views. Instead, sound bites are laced with rhetoric and misinformation, and opposing views given short shrift. 

Of course, not everyone is interested in a disinterested discussion rooted in a dispassionate comparison of facts. 

Vladimir Lenin - and most all on the Left who have followed him - said that “moral and factual considerations are irrelevant when it comes to how to sway the public most effectively. Our morality is entirely subordinated to our interest of advancing communism.”

So the question we have to ask is: even if we know what’s factual and true does it matter in today’s world of raw power politics? 

Listen in to decide for yourself.