A few days ago I was perusing Facebook and noticed a photo of two bears on a road through a beautiful forest. It was a nice photo, and, judging by the reactions, a lot of people appreciated it. A couple days went by, and I noticed what looked like the same photo, but there were four, five, or even a half dozen bears standing or lounging on the road. I was suspicious because bears can be a bit turfy, and it is unusual to see very many bears willingly stay that close to each other. Time went by, and a new photo turned up on Facebook. It was the same view, but this time there were at least 20 bears on the road! That confirmed my suspicion of a faked photo, but the artist was not done. A day or two went by, and the photo below turned up on Facebook:
So if you saw a series of photos like I described, at what point would you realize that the photos are fake? At what point would they lose their credibility? And how would you know?
In the case of bears, we know that cubs stay with their mothers until old enough to strike out on their own, but otherwise it is unusual to see very many bears together in one place. I have seen as many as seven grizzly bears at a time eating in a farmer’s field, but they all kept their distance from each other. And you have probably seen photos of bears fishing for salmon in Alaska, but they fight for the best fishing spots, and they are certainly not relaxed and lounging next to each other. So our understanding of bear behavior tells us when a photo of bears starts to reach the edge of credibility and when is is clearly a fake.
We need to bring the same sense of reality and experiential understanding into play when we read or hear the news. Sadly, much of the journalism in the US has been moving past the edge of credibility for years. As an editorial by Gerard Baker in the March 3 Wall Street Journal describes it, most of the media has become like a cult religion, saying whatever their customer base wants to believe, and without much regard for objective truth (my paraphrase). I detect this when I see the media asserting things that I can see with my own eyes, or know from personal experience, are not true. You have eyes and experience, so you can detect it, too.
One of our presidents once said, “trust but verify.” Good advice. We really need an honest, objective press, but in these times we need to verify what we read and hear now more than ever. Time to sharpen up our critical thinking skills, ask good questions, check multiple sources, and measure what we hear against what we know. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking, “who can know?” It may take time, but, as they say, the truth will out. Otherwise, if we give up on the truth, we may foolishly believe things as incredible as a hundred bears lounging on a highway.
That is an impressive picture. Your comments remind me of two things. One is a book that we read in high school titled “How to live with statistics.“ just knowing that there is a book with that title should be fair warning.
The other thing is something I’ve learned of much more recently that you might call “editorial by interview.“. it consists of carefully selecting the people who are interviewed on a topic of interest so that the resulting opinions that are expressed are the opinions that are agreeable to the interviewer.
Thank you Jesse! This was a great reminder to pay better attention. With all of the new AI and other technologies out there, we need to be more focused.