Nobody's Fool

[00:00:00] Who Do You Trust?

[00:00:05] It was one of the more popular TV shows back in the 1950s.

[00:00:09] Who do you trust?

[00:00:10] Who do you trust?

[00:00:14] The host, by the way, was a young man named Johnny Carson.

[00:00:17] It was based on a series of questions that a couple was asked and, if they trusted,

[00:00:23] what their spouse or friend was telling them.

[00:00:26] It's an interesting premise and one that holds relevance today.

[00:00:31] We get a great deal of information today from those who are closest to us, friends, relatives,

[00:00:37] coworkers.

[00:00:38] We're inclined to believe what they share.

[00:00:40] It's healthy.

[00:00:41] It's also necessary.

[00:00:43] As the late educator Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,

[00:00:49] put it, trust is the highest form of human motivation.

[00:00:53] He was right.

[00:00:54] Disinclination is called our truth bias.

[00:00:57] But sometimes what others share with us, perhaps inadvertently, might not be accurate.

[00:01:03] It could be misinformation or it could be disinformation.

[00:01:13] I'm Paul Brandus and that's the name of this award-winning podcast series, Disinformation,

[00:01:18] a co-production of Evergreen and Emergent Risk International, or ERI, a global risk advisory

[00:01:25] firm.

[00:01:26] As usual, I'll be joined by ERI's Chief Executive Officer, Meredith Wilson, in a few minutes.

[00:01:33] The issue of truth and trust is one subject of a fascinating book.

[00:01:38] It's called Nobody's Fool, Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It.

[00:01:44] I spoke with the co-authors, Daniel Simons, a psychology professor at the University of

[00:01:49] Illinois and cognitive scientist Christopher Chabrie, he's a professor with the Geisinger

[00:01:55] Research Institute in Pennsylvania.

[00:01:58] The discussion began with their explanation of so-called truth bias.

[00:02:03] The first voice here is Chris.

[00:02:06] So truth bias is simply put a default assumption that we all make that whatever we're being

[00:02:13] told or what we're seeing or information that's being conveyed to us is true, as opposed

[00:02:18] to just automatically assuming everything is false or for that matter not even assigning

[00:02:24] a truth value, either true or false to information but just remaining uncertain about it.

[00:02:30] So our habit of thinking that things are true sort of automatically is the first thing

[00:02:36] that makes us susceptible to misinformation, disinformation, other kinds of deception.

[00:02:41] And it's not a dumb thing to have a truth bias because if you didn't have a truth bias

[00:02:46] and you stopped and checked every little bit of information that was coming at you from

[00:02:49] all channels all day long and so on, you'd never get anywhere in life.

[00:02:53] But people can exploit the truth bias to sort of get in information perhaps before

[00:02:58] you've had a chance to check it or be skeptical about it or to question it deeply.

[00:03:03] I mean, if somebody tells me for example, if I say well what time is it?

[00:03:07] When they say it's two o'clock, I'm inclined to believe them.

[00:03:11] I'm not going to necessarily challenge that.

[00:03:15] At what level though do should we begin to challenge or be skeptical about something

[00:03:21] that someone says?

[00:03:23] I think there are a couple of times.

[00:03:25] One is when we know the consequences to be big.

[00:03:28] So you're making a big investment or you're making some decision about who you're

[00:03:32] going to vote for or things that have direct and large consequences potentially for you.

[00:03:39] Those are times when you should check a bit more.

[00:03:42] But another time you should check is when you're passing the long information.

[00:03:47] So one of the things we tend to do is when we get something say on social media,

[00:03:52] a friend of ours on Facebook or on Instagram or someplace post something

[00:03:56] that sounds interesting to us and sounds right to us,

[00:03:58] we tend to not think as critically about it.

[00:04:01] We tend to accept it as true and we don't stop to ask,

[00:04:04] wait, is that really true before passing it along?

[00:04:07] And that's often how unintentionally we spread misinformation.

[00:04:12] Are we simply too trusting?

[00:04:15] Well, it really depends on the situation.

[00:04:18] Like I think overall we are probably not too trusting.

[00:04:21] Probably on average, we're probably trusting about the right amount.

[00:04:23] And one reason I say that as a species, we've kind of gotten this far

[00:04:27] with some kind of truth bias and we're still here.

[00:04:29] So it can't be too far off, but it does make us in certain situations too trusting.

[00:04:35] And it does make people who are aware of our truth bias

[00:04:38] whether explicitly because they've looked up the concept

[00:04:40] or just because implicitly they've learned that they've learned about

[00:04:44] and they've learned what they can get away with and what they can't.

[00:04:46] It does make us vulnerable to those people.

[00:04:51] The real trick I think is calibrating your amount of distrust

[00:04:55] and the amount of effort you put into checking things.

[00:04:58] You just mentioned talking to Leon Panetta.

[00:05:02] There's a great example in all the accounts of the raid

[00:05:07] that killed Osama bin Laden of being vulnerable to overconfidence

[00:05:12] and truth bias and believing what you want to believe,

[00:05:15] but beforehand actually checking it

[00:05:18] and having a red team look into how alternative scenarios.

[00:05:22] So one of the ways to fight truth bias is sort of generate alternatives,

[00:05:26] generate questions, estimate your uncertainty

[00:05:28] as opposed to just believing or not believing.

[00:05:30] A lot of people there said, well,

[00:05:31] we think there's a 70% chance that he'll be there when we go

[00:05:34] or we think there's only a 40% chance.

[00:05:36] All of those techniques are just not things we do in our everyday life.

[00:05:39] Like we don't stop engaging all that stuff before we make every decision,

[00:05:42] but we should for the important ones, right?

[00:05:45] Well, that's a difficult distinction though

[00:05:49] when things move so quickly.

[00:05:51] You mentioned that we need to calibrate our thinking

[00:05:54] where the way we evaluate things from time to time.

[00:05:59] To me, that does not seem like an exact science.

[00:06:02] I mean, it's just very amorphous.

[00:06:04] I mean, how do you do that?

[00:06:05] What have you learned about how and when we should do that?

[00:06:09] Well, there's sometimes when it's really obvious

[00:06:11] that it's not worth their time.

[00:06:13] So for example, you go to the grocery store

[00:06:16] and there's a sign that says organic apples.

[00:06:19] And you're probably best off just believing

[00:06:22] that those actually are organic apples.

[00:06:24] You're probably not going to go out to the orchard

[00:06:25] and watch them to make sure that they only use organic fertilizers

[00:06:28] for the last 10 years, right?

[00:06:30] That's just not something you can do.

[00:06:32] So there are times when it just doesn't matter.

[00:06:34] Or for example, you go to the grocery store

[00:06:36] and it's possible that the grocery store

[00:06:38] is adding pennies to every item when you check out.

[00:06:41] So is it worth checking every item

[00:06:44] against its price on the receipt

[00:06:46] to the price on the shelf?

[00:06:48] Probably not unless you're really in financially dire straits

[00:06:51] and you have to count every penny.

[00:06:53] Probably not worth your while

[00:06:54] because the consequences aren't that big.

[00:06:56] So some cases when it's obvious

[00:06:58] that you probably don't want to spend a lot of time

[00:07:00] and effort being cynical.

[00:07:02] What's obvious is a objective thing to each individual.

[00:07:06] Exactly, yeah.

[00:07:07] People may vary in this, right?

[00:07:08] Some people will want to be very careful

[00:07:10] to make sure that they don't get taken

[00:07:12] for even small amounts of money

[00:07:13] and other people are going to be calibrated

[00:07:15] the other way and say, well, you know

[00:07:16] if I lose a little bit, okay.

[00:07:17] The end points, the extremes are really pretty easy.

[00:07:20] And if you're investing, you're buying a house,

[00:07:23] you want to make sure that you're not buying a bad house.

[00:07:26] It's a lot of money for everybody.

[00:07:28] If you're buying groceries and it's pennies,

[00:07:31] probably not worth your time.

[00:07:33] But it's the intermediate cases

[00:07:34] where you don't quite see the consequences from the start

[00:07:38] and that it can ramp up

[00:07:40] and become much more consequential

[00:07:42] that we sometimes,

[00:07:43] that's where it becomes a more challenging problem

[00:07:45] to calibrate well.

[00:07:46] Part of the rum like you mentioned

[00:07:48] is speed and distraction, right?

[00:07:50] Like those two things may get hard

[00:07:52] for us to actually evaluate

[00:07:54] how important it is to get this right.

[00:07:56] How likely is it that someone might be misleading me

[00:07:59] or have a desire to mislead me, right?

[00:08:02] When we're just scrolling through social media

[00:08:04] we don't necessarily think

[00:08:06] what are the odds that someone's trying to deceive me

[00:08:08] by posting this

[00:08:09] or by making sure it gets into my feed

[00:08:10] or something like that.

[00:08:13] There's no panacea, but you know, slowing down

[00:08:17] and I think consciously thinking about the idea

[00:08:19] that it's okay to be uncertain

[00:08:21] about whether something is true or not.

[00:08:22] You don't have to have a belief in everything, right?

[00:08:24] You don't have to put a truth value in everything.

[00:08:26] You could just say, I don't know

[00:08:27] or maybe or whatever

[00:08:29] and people have done studies where they

[00:08:32] generally conclude that people do want

[00:08:35] to pass on true information.

[00:08:36] People don't wanna pass on false information.

[00:08:38] People don't want to be taken in by false information.

[00:08:40] I think a lot of the time though

[00:08:41] they just don't spend the time or effort

[00:08:44] for valid reasons, you know

[00:08:46] to actually think about that

[00:08:48] or just to stay uncertain

[00:08:49] and not pass along stuff that they're not sure is true.

[00:08:54] On that point, Chris, that's an interesting observation.

[00:08:58] It's no secret that for example

[00:09:01] on social media, Facebook,

[00:09:03] I'm not singling them out

[00:09:04] but Facebook and other platforms

[00:09:07] where people share things

[00:09:09] and the phenomenon is if you get something

[00:09:12] from branded work or relative

[00:09:15] somebody you know tend to trust

[00:09:19] you're more likely to believe

[00:09:23] place a greater value in whatever it is

[00:09:25] that they are sending you

[00:09:28] and not necessarily give it any additional thought.

[00:09:32] Tell me about that phenomenon

[00:09:34] and maybe it's a subset of that.

[00:09:37] Is that sort of an environment

[00:09:39] that sort of scammers to use a lack of a better word

[00:09:44] can take advantage of?

[00:09:45] Is it taking advantage of the inherent trust we have

[00:09:47] and those who are closest to us?

[00:09:50] Yeah, in fact it's what we call a hook.

[00:09:52] It's a kind of information that we find

[00:09:54] particularly appealing

[00:09:56] that people looking to fool us will use

[00:09:58] but it can lead to

[00:09:59] in this sense spreading of misinformation as well.

[00:10:02] So that's the hook we call familiarity

[00:10:05] which makes a lot of sense.

[00:10:07] Again, in most of our daily lives

[00:10:09] we should be more trusting

[00:10:10] with people we're really familiar with

[00:10:12] people we've known for a long time

[00:10:14] if they deceived us all the time

[00:10:16] they probably wouldn't be people we hung out with anymore.

[00:10:18] So we should have good trust

[00:10:21] of people who are highly familiar to us.

[00:10:23] One of the challenges with social media

[00:10:25] is that we have a lot of friends in scare quotes

[00:10:28] who we might not know all that well.

[00:10:31] We might have a huge following

[00:10:33] number of followers in social media

[00:10:34] or a number of friends in social media

[00:10:36] who pass stuff along

[00:10:37] and we see their content all the time

[00:10:39] but we don't necessarily know

[00:10:40] how well calibrated they are

[00:10:43] and we have this tendency

[00:10:45] when we have a friend who provides information to trust it

[00:10:48] which is a reasonable thing

[00:10:49] to have developed over time to do

[00:10:53] but we tend to do that maybe when it's not merited.

[00:10:55] It's the whole basis of using celebrities

[00:10:57] and advertisements, right?

[00:10:58] These are people who are familiar

[00:10:59] we're used to seeing all the time

[00:11:01] and we maybe trust them more than we should

[00:11:03] but in social media that's amplified

[00:11:05] because people are sharing information

[00:11:07] that they think you would like

[00:11:08] and be interested in

[00:11:09] and we kind of take it as true

[00:11:12] more when it comes from somebody we know.

[00:11:15] Again, my guest, Daniel Simon

[00:11:17] a psychology professor at the University of Illinois

[00:11:20] and cognitive scientist Christopher Chabry

[00:11:23] he's a professor with the Geisinger Research Institute

[00:11:26] in Pennsylvania.

[00:11:28] Their book is called Nobody's Fool

[00:11:30] Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It.

[00:11:34] In their book they wrote about how

[00:11:36] and again this is a very human thing

[00:11:39] very understandable

[00:11:40] how we tend to focus on things

[00:11:42] that are directly in front of us.

[00:11:45] That means though that we can often overlook

[00:11:48] additional data or context

[00:11:51] that can help convey a richer

[00:11:53] more accurate understanding of something.

[00:11:55] If those things are peripheral

[00:11:58] again not directly in front of us

[00:12:00] how can we notice it?

[00:12:02] Chris answered this one first.

[00:12:04] We call this problem the problem of focus

[00:12:06] and of course focus is a good thing

[00:12:07] because when we focus on something

[00:12:09] we're able to do a lot more with it

[00:12:10] we can understand it better

[00:12:11] we can process it more deeply

[00:12:13] we can think more detailed thoughts about it

[00:12:15] but when we're focusing on one thing

[00:12:17] or a set of things

[00:12:19] other things might get no thought at all

[00:12:21] no attention at all

[00:12:22] might not enter our consideration at all.

[00:12:25] And of course marketers and sales people

[00:12:27] and influencers will often be aware of this

[00:12:30] and use it to direct our attention

[00:12:31] towards let's say only their success stories

[00:12:34] and their success stories

[00:12:35] if we pay too much attention to them

[00:12:37] we won't even think about

[00:12:37] well how often did they fail?

[00:12:39] What did their worst customer engagements look like?

[00:12:42] What are those people saying?

[00:12:44] Or stock picks, anything like that

[00:12:48] it's I think a general problem of disinformation

[00:12:50] by the way also that you can disinform people

[00:12:53] by telling them only true things.

[00:12:56] So if someone fact checks

[00:12:59] a bunch of true stories about

[00:13:01] let's say immigrants who committed crimes

[00:13:03] all those stories could be true

[00:13:05] but if no one tells you any stories

[00:13:06] about crimes that not committed by immigrants

[00:13:08] or about immigrants who didn't commit crimes

[00:13:10] or about non-immigrants who didn't commit crimes

[00:13:14] you're missing almost all of the relevant data

[00:13:16] to evaluate the meaning of what you've been shown

[00:13:19] and then you could be massively disinformed

[00:13:21] by completely true but unrepresentative information

[00:13:24] because that's all you paid attention to.

[00:13:26] But taking something just completely out of context.

[00:13:28] Yeah, we're just giving you a partial view

[00:13:30] which of course is what happens in any

[00:13:33] in a negotiation where one side has more information

[00:13:35] or any sort of performance where a magician

[00:13:38] will not tell you everything that they're going to do.

[00:13:41] And con artists of course present exactly what you want to see

[00:13:43] and not all of the information they don't want you to see.

[00:13:47] So that happens a lot even in completely innocent ways.

[00:13:51] People will pass along the examples

[00:13:53] that you see on your social media feed

[00:13:54] are probably the things that you agree with

[00:13:56] and you're not seeing the counter examples

[00:13:58] because nobody's sharing those.

[00:13:59] You mentioned advertising a minute ago.

[00:14:03] Advertising is often crafted in a way

[00:14:08] that appeals to our desires, their expectations,

[00:14:11] makes us want to go out and try a new product

[00:14:14] or go to some destination or something.

[00:14:17] That is a very powerful thing.

[00:14:20] We want to believe that these products are better

[00:14:26] or that this restaurant is better than something else

[00:14:28] it makes us want to, you know, tell me about that.

[00:14:31] You want to believe the message

[00:14:32] that we're being exposed to, don't we?

[00:14:36] Well, often as you mentioned expectations, advertisers

[00:14:40] and many other communicators are well aware

[00:14:43] of people's expectations.

[00:14:45] And if you receive a message that you were expecting

[00:14:49] to get, you're more likely to believe that it's true.

[00:14:52] So sometimes advertising and other communications

[00:14:55] can work well on a principle of surprise.

[00:14:57] And often those are the ones that, you know,

[00:14:59] sort of maybe like get the awards for a clever

[00:15:00] as Super Bowl ad because something really surprising happened.

[00:15:02] But that's an ad for aesthetics,

[00:15:04] not necessarily for success in sales, right?

[00:15:07] You know, like that's an artistic achievement in a way.

[00:15:09] Even outside of advertising, let's say in science

[00:15:14] which is our field, sadly there's fraud in science.

[00:15:17] There are scientists who don't really deserve the name

[00:15:20] who actually just sort of create, you know,

[00:15:24] fraudulent data, fraudulent papers and so on.

[00:15:26] But they don't create fraudulent papers

[00:15:28] that claim to have discovered, you know,

[00:15:30] a new planet orbiting like right next to Earth

[00:15:33] or something like that.

[00:15:34] They create discoveries, they fabricate discoveries

[00:15:36] which are sort of exactly the next thing

[00:15:38] that people in their field would expect to be discovered

[00:15:40] or would expect to be shown true

[00:15:42] or supports a theory that everyone already believes

[00:15:44] or something like that.

[00:15:45] They satisfy their audience's expectations

[00:15:48] in much the same way that advertisers,

[00:15:50] politicians and other communicators do

[00:15:52] by understanding sort of what people are predicting

[00:15:55] is gonna happen and then showing them,

[00:15:56] hey, that's exactly what happened.

[00:15:59] Not a new planet orbiting right next to Earth

[00:16:01] but something, you know, more modest than that

[00:16:03] but of value to them to convince us of.

[00:16:06] It's just a slightly newer and fresher product,

[00:16:09] slightly better than what was there before

[00:16:10] and that's enough to make them say,

[00:16:12] oh yeah, maybe that's right.

[00:16:17] Let's take a short break when we come back out chat

[00:16:19] with Meredith Wilson of Emergent Risk International.

[00:16:24] This series on disinformation is a co-production

[00:16:26] of Evergreen Podcasts and Emergent Risk International,

[00:16:30] a global risk advisory firm.

[00:16:32] Emergent Risk International.

[00:16:33] We build intelligent solutions

[00:16:35] that find opportunities in a world of risk.

[00:16:46] Coming up on 5 Minute News, I'm Anthony Davis.

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[00:18:08] Welcome back, let's bring in Meredith Wilson now.

[00:18:10] She's Chief Executive Officer

[00:18:12] of Emergent Risk International.

[00:18:14] I asked her about the so-called truth bias

[00:18:17] that Daniel and Chris wrote about in their book,

[00:18:20] the thesis being that we're inclined

[00:18:22] and this is healthy to believe what others tell us.

[00:18:26] Oh, I think that's absolutely true.

[00:18:28] You know, you think about particularly

[00:18:30] if we're just speaking about Americans

[00:18:33] and we can talk about other countries too

[00:18:36] but when you think about the US

[00:18:39] and you think about how many of our systems

[00:18:44] and even our economic system, our government,

[00:18:49] so much of that is based on trust

[00:18:51] and in order for it to work, you have to trust people

[00:18:55] and over the past six, eight decades,

[00:19:01] we got pretty good at trusting each other

[00:19:04] which is one of the reasons that things work

[00:19:06] and back in the day, we used to trust the media

[00:19:11] for the same reasons.

[00:19:13] The double-edged sword there

[00:19:14] is if you are constantly questioning everything,

[00:19:17] you tend not to trust people.

[00:19:19] So yeah, I think there is a truth bias

[00:19:22] and I think that there is a real dilemma

[00:19:27] in terms of how to manage that effectively

[00:19:31] when you want a society that trusts people,

[00:19:35] you want people to trust people

[00:19:38] but if you become too trusting

[00:19:40] particularly in the current environment,

[00:19:42] how much are you missing?

[00:19:44] So skepticism is warranted

[00:19:47] but the question is, if I ask you what time it is

[00:19:51] and you say, well, it's two o'clock,

[00:19:53] I'm inclined to believe you.

[00:19:56] I'm not gonna presume that you're lying about the time.

[00:20:00] The question then is at sort of at what point,

[00:20:03] how serious does the issue have to be

[00:20:05] before we do become skeptical about what we're being told?

[00:20:10] Have you told me the time, okay, I believe that

[00:20:12] but farther down the line as the issues get more serious

[00:20:16] when do we start to become more skeptical

[00:20:19] or when should we become more skeptical

[00:20:21] about what we're exposed to?

[00:20:23] The good question.

[00:20:25] I think again, if you look internationally

[00:20:29] and you look at some of the countries

[00:20:31] where corruption runs rampant

[00:20:34] where people are far more likely to enrich themselves

[00:20:38] and their families, also more likely

[00:20:40] to hire family members, a lot of that is due

[00:20:45] to those societies having very, very weak trust

[00:20:48] in each other.

[00:20:51] And so healthy skepticism is important

[00:20:56] and critical thinking is important.

[00:20:59] And when we talk about disinformation,

[00:21:02] a lot of what we really need to see in people

[00:21:05] is a certain level of skepticism

[00:21:07] in the information that is presented to them

[00:21:11] and a good process for determining what is true

[00:21:17] and what is not true.

[00:21:18] And if I had the exact answer to how to fix that,

[00:21:22] I'd be a very rich person right now

[00:21:24] but there has to be a balance, right?

[00:21:27] You have to be able to trust that the person

[00:21:30] that's coming up to the traffic light across from you

[00:21:33] is gonna stop.

[00:21:34] Otherwise, you would sit there all day long.

[00:21:37] You have to be able to trust that,

[00:21:39] when you ask somebody for directions

[00:21:41] that they're gonna give you decent directions

[00:21:44] or you'll never ask anybody anything.

[00:21:46] I guess the directions thing isn't important now

[00:21:49] but just we have GPS but it's a hard question answer.

[00:21:55] They also talk about something called familiarity.

[00:21:59] I don't think this is exactly new

[00:22:02] but it's a very powerful concept in terms of media

[00:22:07] and how we read and see and hear things today.

[00:22:10] And basically that is that if someone we know

[00:22:15] and trust and like a coworker or relative

[00:22:18] or someone like that, share something with us

[00:22:22] send something to us, we are more inclined to believe it

[00:22:27] because of our views toward that person.

[00:22:31] In other words, we can drop our guard

[00:22:34] which can make us more susceptible to false narratives.

[00:22:37] A very human instinct, very understandable

[00:22:40] but it also makes us potentially vulnerable.

[00:22:44] How serious an issue is that?

[00:22:46] And if you think it is a serious issue

[00:22:48] how can we overcome it?

[00:22:50] The concept of familiarity is definitely not new

[00:22:53] and it's something that as a society

[00:22:58] we've definitely learned how to capitalize on.

[00:23:00] So whether it's advertisements and public figures

[00:23:06] and endorsements, we definitely know how to capitalize on that.

[00:23:11] And there is definitely an aspect of disinformation

[00:23:14] where that's exactly what's happening.

[00:23:17] If you look at sort of information warfare 101

[00:23:21] involving people who are familiar to the people

[00:23:25] that you're targeting is very much a methodology

[00:23:30] that's in use today

[00:23:31] but has been in use for a long, long time.

[00:23:33] How to overcome it is a harder question.

[00:23:37] And I think probably the beginning of that

[00:23:41] is educating people and helping them understand

[00:23:46] how that happens and how that works.

[00:23:48] But can we overcome it completely?

[00:23:52] I don't know.

[00:23:53] It's a one issue that they mentioned here

[00:23:56] is the sort of the peripheral issue

[00:23:59] and what they mean by that is we tend to focus on

[00:24:03] things that are directly in front of us

[00:24:06] and doing so when we look at things that are right

[00:24:09] in front of us, we can overlook say additional data

[00:24:12] or context that's on the periphery

[00:24:15] that can help convey a richer,

[00:24:17] more accurate understanding of something.

[00:24:19] But again, if they're not right in front of us

[00:24:21] we might not notice it.

[00:24:24] So we kind of cheat ourselves out of a fuller understanding.

[00:24:28] How can we notice things if they're not in front of us?

[00:24:31] Well, one tool that we have in the analytic field

[00:24:34] because this is analytic bias too

[00:24:37] where you tend to look for confirming information for things

[00:24:41] but oftentimes fail to look for disconfirming information.

[00:24:45] So when you are researching a topic,

[00:24:50] people will find those little details

[00:24:54] that very succinctly support their case

[00:24:58] and analysts are trained to do that.

[00:25:02] But as you said, if you don't very specifically

[00:25:06] look for the information

[00:25:08] that might tell a different story

[00:25:10] there's a very good chance you will not see it

[00:25:12] because you're not looking for it.

[00:25:13] So having that sort of gut check,

[00:25:17] is there something out there that discontorms my theory?

[00:25:20] Is there something out there that is counter

[00:25:25] to what I think is accurate?

[00:25:29] Is a good methodology.

[00:25:32] Whether or not people who are supporting

[00:25:36] a particular politician or supporting

[00:25:38] a particular policy are interested

[00:25:41] in finding that information is a whole other question

[00:25:44] with a whole other answer.

[00:25:47] Yeah, well that's the issue.

[00:25:48] Dan and Chris say, look, people should take the time

[00:25:53] to explore more, to ask more questions

[00:25:55] but that knowledge will accumulate nature as such

[00:25:57] that not calling people lazy

[00:26:00] but people aren't gonna take the time necessarily

[00:26:02] to do that they're just gonna eat up

[00:26:04] what's in front of them

[00:26:05] and that's part of the problem.

[00:26:07] It depends on if they're incentivized to do so

[00:26:10] and or if it speaks to their own interests.

[00:26:15] But it also when you look at the way

[00:26:17] that we consume information now

[00:26:19] in this sort of scrolling, small bites of information

[00:26:23] that are just kind of running past us.

[00:26:26] It's also a question of whether they are cognitively aware

[00:26:30] of that they're taking in that information

[00:26:32] and actually thinking it through

[00:26:35] because we're all prone to do things now

[00:26:37] like watching TV and reading on our phones at the same time.

[00:26:41] And so part of it too is that the focus

[00:26:45] that we put on that information sometimes

[00:26:47] is not enough for us to be putting enough brain power

[00:26:50] behind whether or not it's something

[00:26:53] we should believe or not.

[00:26:54] Does that make sense?

[00:26:55] Yes, it does.

[00:27:00] Thanks to Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabry,

[00:27:03] their book highly recommended.

[00:27:05] Nobody's full why we get taken in

[00:27:08] and what we can do about it.

[00:27:10] Our sound designer and editor Noah Fouts,

[00:27:13] audio engineer Nathan Corson,

[00:27:15] executive producers Michael Dale-Loya

[00:27:18] and Gerardo Orlando.

[00:27:20] And on behalf of Meredith Wilson,

[00:27:22] I'm Paul Brandis.

[00:27:23] Thanks so much for listening.

[00:27:25] Music

[00:27:34] Faith in the news media has been challenged,

[00:27:37] making it even harder to get stories told.

[00:27:40] The Friday Reporter Podcast was created

[00:27:42] to help audiences better understand the media

[00:27:46] by hosting journalists who will answer the questions

[00:27:48] to which we need answers.

[00:27:50] Join me every Friday to hear more.