True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society

Thanks to Farhad Manjoo for the effort that went into this book. I began reading Manjoo's technical writings in Salon Magazine a while back, and thoroughly enjoy his writing style. Although he's employed primarily as a writer for technology developments, Mr. Manjoo displays a genuine awareness of the elements of human nature that shape our decision-making processes. There are now several books that address "why we think the way we think" but this one focuses on the role that the media and technology contribute to our understanding of "fact" or "truth." He begins his adventure describing the word "truthiness" that originated from Stephen Colbert's show, and lays out examples of how, tongue-in-cheek, the concept is completely relevant. Salon (where he's employed) is a left-leaning magazine, but I would encourage readers to put that aside for the duration of the read. He has criticisms and analysis for both sides of the political debate, but doesn't limit the discussion to politics. I appreciate the reviewer's prior criticism regarding "why should we believe Manjoo's version of truth?"--that comment captures the essence of the premise of his book. Within the reading, the question becomes "where shall I gather my information, and to what extent do I bestow my trust to that source?" Technology and modern media have made those sources immediate, abundant, and highly personalized; the era of Walter Cronkite is gone forever. Thanks to the prior reviewers for detailed descriptions of this book--I'd add one more comment: in contrast to the reviewer who found the book slowing down somewhere after the mid-sections, I found the later parts of the book most intriguing. Regarding ideas about trust, and specifically about the perception that we as a society don't trust one another like we did in the days of "Father Knows Best" or "Andy Griffith," Manjoo describes the concept of "particularized trust." This is the human-nature tendency to surround ourselves by like-minded people; it comes at a cost of losing "generalized trust," which is that trust we would put toward "outsiders" or those immediately outside of our circle of friends. Manjoo isn't wholly pessimistic, but does relay his concern that technology and personalized news have a real potential to further polarize our society. The "information superhighway" hasn't bred a more universal approach to what can be documented--it seems instead to have bred effective and inexpensive methods to generate different versions of the events. My own hope is that this same technology can come to the rescue in a sense: as "controversial" as Wiki is, there is at least a requirement for documentation of source material, and an agreed-upon method for disagreeing or criticizing or adding to the information. Anyone may be able to "hack" it, but equally anyone can dispute and claim higher ground by sourcing and documenting the reasons for the dispute--we then at least have the chance for dialogue, and people have th

I really really like this book and highly recommend it to everyone. The book describes various cognitive biases that are built into all of us -- things called, such as, selective perception, selective exposure, "experts", particularized trust -- and how these interact with the sudden change in the huge number of news sources brought about by the internet and other information technology changes -- to give us a world where "objective" reality disappears and different people live in their own versions of "reality". You may disagree with the author's beliefs about the particular examples he uses to illustrate these ideas -- Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, 9/11 conspiracy theories, the Iraq war, global warming, and so on. But his opinion on these things are not really the point of the book. The point of the book is how different people see these things in different ways, and how this difference persists in the face of more news, more information, more photos, more videos, more blogs, etc -- instead of more information getting us closer to the truth, it instead takes us farther away from the truth and further into our own echo chambers. And describing how this process works -- and how certain people, such as savvy public relations firms, try to manipulate the process to get certain ideas and belief out into the public -- is the real point of the book. So, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the authors point of view on any particular examples, I guarantee, after reading this book, you will never look at the "news" the same way again.

I've been noticing -- for quite some time now -- that there is a breakdown of trust in authorities in our society. Or rather a reshifting from those whose authority was widely accepted to those who authority is either self-proclaimed or of dubious worth. A religious person with a masters in theology, I once participated in one of those internet discussion areas about religion. There, my more-or-less educated voice had exactly the same worth as the noisiest and most ignorant participant. More often than not, my reasoned, fact-based opinions were dismissed in favor of those held by people who the poster already agreed with . Farhad Manjoo's book both describes this phenomenon and attempts to get beneath its surface. He cites examples from both sides of the aisle -- the attack of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam heroism as well as the claim of certain Democrats that George W. Bush had stolen the 2004 election in Ohio and Florida. Manjoo exposes the personal vendettas (Swift Boaters) and the mistaken calculations (Dems) that started the ball rolling. He then shows the steps by which the groups attracted public's attention, twisting facts into alternate realities that finally made their way into the partisan echo chambers where their tiny, tinny voices boomed loud and strong. Manjoo also introduces the reader to the psycho-perceptual processes by which human beings in a information-drenched world make decisions. In line with other recent books (such as "Kluge" by Gary Marcus) Manjoo unveils the heuristics, the shortcuts, through which humans beings evaluate reality. Too busy to research car brands? Let a consumer magazine (or your favorite local TV anchor; or your intimidating brother in law) make the decision for you. A fascinating study showed foreign students outperforming US students on questions about the relative sizes of American cities. But this was not because they the foreigners knew *more* about America than the hapless Yanks; it was because they knew *less* -- the foreigners heuristically reasoning that cities they had heard of must be bigger than cities they had not. "True Enough" is filled with this sort of fascinating and illuminating detail. Political partisans probably ought to know that Farhad's results favor the left side of the aisle. Republicans, he shows, are more likely than Democrats to limit their media intake to sources they already agree with, a phenomenon called selective exposure. And Reps are more likely to see a story as interesting (even when not related to politics!) when branded with a logo of their favorite conservative media outlet. But both sides are as eager to give credence to experts whose credentials sounds impressive (another heuristic shortcut) even when they don't relate to the matter under study. Depending on your position, these results will either seem legitimate or biased. They rang true to me -- "ringing true" being another heuristic, by the way, that predisposes us to a

Stephen Colbert isn't really a right-wing nutcase; he just plays one on TV. We can be reasonably sure that when he promoted the term 'truthiness' to denote a claim that feels right, even if there is no factual evidence to support it, he was making fun of certain right-wingers whose fact-checking is mostly internal; who will accept as true a story that fits with their worldview, regardless of the facts. Of course this is a universal human tendency, to which left-wingers are not immune, but Manjoo cites scientific studies that indicate that right-wingers are more susceptible to it (see below). Manjoo tells the story of the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,' who created an almost entirely fictional story of John Kerry's service in Vietnam to discredit his record as a war hero, because they were deeply offended by his declaration of opposition to the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he returned from Vietnam. The SBV version was first presented publicly on numerous radio talk programs, with conservative hosts and audiences, to whom that version was truthy because they already held a low opinion of Democrats in general and a high opinion of George W. Bush. It felt right to them, and they accepted it as true, an opinion many hold to this day, despite conclusive evidence that Kerry did, in fact, genuinely earn his medals, and was truly a war hero. This accords well with the observation of cognitive scientists that when the facts don't fit a person's frame, the frame stays and the facts are ignored or denied. (see Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think, by George Lakoff.) Manjoo tells about a study by Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar and Richard Morin of the Washington Post, in which they obtained a list of headlines in six categories: politics, Iraq war, race, travel, crime, and sports, and randomly placed beside each headline one of four logos: BBC, CNN, Fox, and NPR. Democrats somewhat preferred CNN and NPR, and Republicans very strongly preferred Fox. The Fox logo tripled the interest of Republicans in stories about politics and Iraq, and even increased Republicans' interest and decreased Democrats' interest in headlines about travel and sports. Professor Iyengar says that people "have generalized their preference for politically consonant news to nonpolitical domains." But why was the Republicans' bias so much stronger than the Democrats' bias? Democrats might be tempted to explain it as evidence that Democrats are smarter, but that explanation is questionable at best. I think the correct explanation lies in the correlation between two dimensions of personality characteristics: Progressive vs. Conservative and Liberal vs. Dogmatic. Liberals tend to be progressive, so much so that the political spectrum is often cited as Liberal vs. Conservative, which is not correct. There are dogmatic progressives and liberal conservatives, but they are relatively rare. Dogmatics especially tend to be hostile t

Farhad Manjoo, a writer for Salon.com, has written an innovative book about the intersection of today's media and the truth. Manjoo chooses particular popular ideas, such as 9/11 conspiracy theories, that run contrary to the generally-accepted truth, and explores how these ideas have gained momentum through the rise of what he calls "splintering" media. He posits that with the increased number and variety of news sources, we are able to pick and choose the news and truths that most agree with our already held beliefs, thus blurring the idea of what is considered "true". For example, he talks about how the rise of conservative radio and the Internet supported the growth of the Swift Boat campaign, an anti-Kerry campaign based largely on conjecture without proof. Before the Internet and niche media such as conservative radio existed, extremist right-wing ideas would likely have been limited to just a few believers. But with today's media options and the plethora of right-wing radio and Web sites, the Swift Boat campaign was able to gain plenty of supporters nationwide and lots of donations, until the campaign was able to run anti-John Kerry ads during the 2004 election, which many think significantly damaged Kerry's campaign. Some of the other, quite diverse, topics covered in the book include news stories that are actually paid ads (which I found fascinating), the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, and why Apple enthusiasts aren't able to stomach criticism about their beloved products. But what I really liked about this book was how he discusses the psychological and sociological underpinnings about why we believe what we believe, and how we unwittingly pick and choose our own media sources often to confirm our pre-held beliefs. He unearths study after study that explains how our biases unconsciously play into how we interpret the truth in politics, news, and even football games. Manjoo has a straightforward and clear writing style, making political details, as well as the complexities of social science research, easy to understand. I came away from this book realizing that in a world where news is often designed for the viewer, and where we are often unaware of how or why we choose to believe what we believe, the truth can indeed be a slippery thing.