Post-factual my ass: the age of 1000 untrustworthy sources!

Ten years ago, when I went home to my parents and we were discussing some topic such as a vote or something similar, there was often a point in the discussion where we were missing a piece of relevant information. We would speculate for a moment about whether it was one way or another and then change the subject. Things are different today.

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Internet, always and everywhere with you

Today, the world looks different in such discussions. Today, if we are missing a piece of relevant information, we don’t speculate, but one of the participants in the discussion googles the information. And we continue the discussion. At a different level of information.

That’s a blessing in disguise. It makes conversations more intense, more interesting and longer. But it is also a curse. Because whereas it used to be possible to end a heated discussion peacefully with a compromise, i.e. that we didn’t know what to do next, today the battle continues to the bitter end with every scrap of information available. And some people cannot leave the battlefield of discussion without losing face. This only reinforces the doggedness of some participants in the discussion.

True, untrue, manipulated, false

The tricky thing about this quick information gathering is that the piece of information being googled can be true, untrue, manipulated or just plain wrong. To make it even more complicated, it can be a little bit of everything.

Not surprisingly

It is incredibly difficult to check the veracity of information today. And above all, it is time-consuming. Many people make the (logical) mistake of increasingly denying that today’s Western society has the will to behave in a fact-oriented manner. I maintain that this is not fundamentally the case.

Increasing number of sources

I think it has more to do with the amount of information available. The big difference compared to, say, the 1980s is that there is more than a thousand times as much information available to citizens on practically every topic. This means that the effort required to obtain proper information on a topic increases exorbitantly.

Take any topic of your choice as an example: in 1980, you might have had a reference book on the subject, the media and possibly training in that very topic. If you were lucky, one or at most two sources were immediately accessible. There were so few that you didn’t even begin to research complex topics. And the research itself took so much time that you couldn’t just walk away from the discussion table and come back two hours later with a result. The discussion was guaranteed to be over by then. It was as if you didn’t do any research at all.

Today it is different. The number of sources you can find on the topic of your example is usually in the thousands. Google your example briefly and see for yourself. The time you would have to invest to get through your example as objectively as possible is even higher than in the scenario of the 1980s. Quite simply because the number of sources to be considered is many times higher.

Precisely because we have so many sources immediately available, we get the impression that we can get clean information practically immediately. The opposite is actually the case. We would need a lot more time for this.

Topics are becoming more complex

This isn’t exactly getting any easier because the factual issues, or political issues in particular, have become much more complex. For example, to have all the facts about the nuclear phase-out on the table in a reasonably reliable way, you need around 2-3 full days of research. In many cases, information is not wrong or right, but must be seen in a certain context. Fathoming this context and then putting the information into perspective is something that is not easy for most people in terms of intellectual capacity alone.

What’s more, who wants to invest so much time in a particular topic these days? Almost nobody. But that was no different in the good old “factual” days.

In fact, the number of sources was much smaller. You read the newspaper and another one and that was that. You discussed things with friends and that was that. You had an opinion.

Theoretical risk of manipulation decreases, practical risk increases

People had no opportunity to scrutinize the information they received from the media. Honest journalists were committed to objective journalism and could probably afford it better than today, yes. But in journalism, today as then, it’s a case of whose bread I eat, whose song I sing. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t see this as a conspiracy or anything, I think it’s just normal human nature. I believe that this trend has been significantly reinforced by the crisis in the media industry, which has now lasted for decades.

Simple, pragmatic recipes

In this environment, people long for simple, pragmatic recipes, clear culprits and clear saviors. They always have, I would argue. But it used to be possible to arrive at a supposedly fact-based opinion by spending a certain amount of time. With the same amount of time that I used to be able to consider 100% of all sources, I can now cover a maximum of 1 to 3 percent as a citizen. I therefore believe that people have not fundamentally changed and have not become “post-factual”. They just live in an age of “1000 untrustworthy sources”.

Social currency no. 1: Attention

In such a constellation, attention is one of the most important social currencies. And since we take our smartphone with us everywhere, to every place, to the most intimate corner, it is also possible to attract attention anytime and anywhere.

As a protagonist in politics or as another public person or institution, I don’t do this by being as balanced and objectively correct as possible. No, I do it by being as loud and shrill as possible. And the cadence of attention points, i.e. the short period of time in which I have people’s attention, must be as high as possible.

The Donald – the Magic Johnson of (social) media

Donald Trump is the true grand master and godfather of this social media and media game. Consciously or unconsciously, he has it down perfectly. And yes, of course he made a mockery of the entire debate during the election campaign. But what was much more important was that he constantly had our attention. On social media and if we blocked him everywhere, then via the traditional media. There was no escape for anyone.

You only have to say once that all Mexicans are criminals and you have 3 days of full attention. And he played this game very skillfully, as he had something for everyone: for the alt-right, the evil Mexicans, for people like me the idea of freeing Washington from lobbying and seeking good relations with Russia rather than sanctions.

That doesn’t make me a Trump fan. But many people who don’t want to invest time, who love quick and easy recipes, do. And that’s why there were so many “leaners” – people who leaned over to you (“lean-in”) and only expressed their support for Trump behind closed doors.

Not words but deeds count, fortunately…

What Trump apparently, and reassuringly, also knows is that it is good form to make statements during an election campaign that no longer have much to do with the actual policies that follow. This is certainly nothing new, especially in American politics. Just remember the “read my lips” debacle of Bush Senior. Promising something and then having it turn out differently is part and parcel of politics all over the world.

Tailoring the great post-factual age out of all this now, I think, is another quick fix, another simple recipe for a problematic situation. A situation that is incredibly complex. In a world in which we increasingly no longer know what is right or wrong. Not because we have too little information, but because we have a lot more information. I would argue that it is not values that have been lost, but the belief in facts per se.

Education

However, it is not unlikely that this will not happen after all. Future generations will grow up in this world of “attention day trading”. And may suddenly find ignorance cool. They are the real future losers, because they will be inferior in every respect to their factually oriented fellow citizens. We can prevent this by making education, and by that I mean modern, reformed education, a top priority in the western world.

For example, by building an independent information repository that compares information from thousands of sources and tries to relieve us of the tedious research work. Which in turn brings with it unforeseen new risks. We won’t get out of this dilemma that quickly. Meanwhile, the number of sources is growing rapidly.