Do you have time to read this article?
dialog
That’s a question you have to ask yourself (consciously or not) every time a potential source of information, a possible learning opportunity, presents itself to you – anything that could influence your habitual way of interacting with the world. It could be a song, a film, a book, a news broadcast, a conversation with a friend, a webpage or blog. Do you have time for it? Learning opportunities are virtually unlimited, if you have the means of engaging with them – but your time and attention have definite limits. This is the challenge of the information economy: How do you decide where to invest your attention?
When you are looking for specific information for a specific purpose, that question is relatively easy to answer, if it comes up at all. For instance, if you wanted to make a bomb out of fertilizer and common household chemicals, and you knew how to search the internet for that kind of information, you could find it easily enough. A certain Norwegian man apparently did just that in July 2011. But he also had a purpose for making the bomb, which he made public on a website just before using it: he intended to punish Norwegian liberals for allowing Muslims to carry out their program of world domination. How did he arrive at that intention?
Like all purposes that guide human behavior, this one was based on a particular view of the world – that is, a ‘map’ of the world which enables us to see (or imagine) how the world works, even though the real world is always much more complex than anything we can imagine. This particular map could be roughly described as a xenophobic Christian fundamentalist view. All human purposes are informed by some kind of map; but this is a much deeper kind of information than the kind you might need in order to accomplish a specific purpose such as building a bomb. It’s deeper because any specific intentions you have must be based on the way your inner map is organized. How do you know that your map of the world is based on reliable information?
To ask that kind of question requires faith, humility and hope. You have to believe that truth and reality are independent of anyone’s belief; that beliefs can truly represent or misrepresent reality; that actual experience can reveal discrepancies between belief and reality; and that honest recognition of those discrepancies can enable a belief system to correct itself. Lacking that faith, humility and hope, a believer can only defend his or her belief system against any facts, opinions or experiences that appear to challenge it. That kind of self-defense is really self-defeating rather than self-correcting, because it prevents the believer from learning anything deeper than the information that’s useful for some limited purpose.
The context of all your conscious intentions and purposes is your internalized map of the world. Whatever informs your map of the world, or makes a difference to the form of that map, will affect your specific intentions. And this is where the deeper challenge of the information economy lies. It’s deeper because facing it honestly requires us to challenge our own belief systems instead of wrapping ourselves up in them like a suit of armor.
I am referring to ‘our belief systems’ as if each of us had one of his own, but we typically underestimate how much of anyone’s belief system is simply taken over from the collective belief system of the surrounding culture. Human belief systems are largely based on learning from experience (rather than being ‘innate’ or ‘hard-wired’), but very little of what you consciously believe is actually based on your personal experience; most of it is picked up, consciously or not, from other people. We routinely accept the testimony of other people unless we have some reason for questioning its accuracy or honesty. To test this, just look at any map of the world (i mean a ‘literal’ map this time): you probably believe that all the places labelled on that map really are where the map says they are. But how many of them have you actually been to?
It only makes sense that your personal experience accounts for so little of your ‘personal’ belief system; after all, your personal experience is extremely limited. Hence it also makes sense to broaden your information sources, and to deepen your map of the world by entering into dialogue with others. But that means selecting your sources and your dialogue partners, since you can’t attend to everything and everyone. That’s where the information economy comes in. And the point i’m trying to make about it here is that the most fruitful dialogue arises from the differences between you and your dialogue partner (provided of course that you have some common ground).
Our internalized maps of the world determine our purposes by shaping our habitual views and belief systems. These belief systems are necessarily simplified, but some are more distorted than others. We can detect the distortion, if we are honestly looking for it, by paying attention to facts, which are actual experiences made public. Facts are not imaginary, although they must be imaginable: anything in the public domain, any information we can have in common, must have some form which we recognize in every actual experience embodying that form. Thanks to that shared perception, we can tell when there’s a clash between the facts and our maps of the world. Thus the validity or truth of a belief system is not entirely a matter of opinion. Some beliefs really are better than others, because they are more consistent with the factual truth.
It’s also true, however, that we often form opinions of other people’s belief systems based on our own values rather than facts. For instance, it’s my opinion that any belief system strongly motivated by hatred is a bad one. It’s also my opinion that it’s bad to kill people just because you disapprove of them. But i believe that most normal people share these opinions, because i can see that most people act accordingly – which is the real test of what people believe – and people’s actual, observable behavior is a matter of fact, not opinion. It’s also a fact that this particular Norwegian killed about 70 people, a fact based on the testimony of many witnesses (as well as his own). And it’s a fact that this same person, just before going on that killing spree, expressed on a website the beliefs which motivated him to do so. So i would say that his actions were based on a highly distorted belief system, and more generally, that any belief system based on hatred is bound to be distorted. Those are opinions, not facts, but they are based on inferences from the facts cited above (along with many others). Opinions can be based on fact, by means of reasoning, but facts cannot be based on opinions. Recognizing the difference (and the connections) between fact and opinion is crucial to the maintenance of a healthy belief system. This makes it a basic principle of the information economy.
Accordingly, my point in stating my opinions above is not that my belief system is better than that Norwegian’s. The point is twofold: (1) that all belief systems are prone to distortion because they are highly simplified representations of the real world; and (2) that we can minimize the distortion, and keep our belief systems healthy, by checking them against factual information based on actual experience. It can also be helpful to check them against other people’s opinions too, especially when those opinions are based on reasoning which respects the facts. Likewise, we often have to rely on other people’s testimony for factual information, because our personal experience is so limited. The information economy is just as public as the energy economy, or the money economy.
The health of our collective belief system and our information economy depends crucially on the honesty of those who contribute information to it. If we are honest with ourselves, we recognize that we are capable of self-deception, especially when we are more strongly attached to our own intuitive beliefs than we are to the quest for truth. Even if nobody was trying to deceive others, the health of our belief systems would still be undermined by self-deception – and those who are in the business of deceiving others are all the more effective at it if they can deceive themselves first.
The difference between the honest inquirer and the dishonest one is really very simple. The honest investigator is aware that her beliefs could be wrong, and actively searches for factual information or honest opinion that would challenge distortions in her own belief system. The dishonest investigator does the opposite: he is so strongly attached to his own values, beliefs and emotional reactions that he ignores or avoids any facts or inferences that would challenge his beliefs, and devotes his time entirely to attacking other people’s views and defending his own against challenging facts or opinions.
When he does this in public, on some issue of public policy, his dishonesty is evident in the way he will throw together facts, speculations, rumors, unverifiable testimony, and even pure inventions, all in support of his prejudice. He will claim that anyone who disagrees with him is an unreliable source. If he makes use of research reported to be ‘scientific’, he will not investigate how the study was done (i.e. what direct experience or observation the study was based on); nor will he consider critically the reasoning that led to its conclusions – unless those conclusions are contrary to his belief. He will question the motives of those who disagree with him, but never his own motives or those of anyone ‘on his side’ of the issue. In short, he stretches or cuts the information to fit his belief, while the honest inquirer actively seeks out information that will challenge her belief. Show the honest inquirer that he’s wrong, and he will thank you, because you’ve contributed to the self-correction of his belief system. Show the dishonest one that she’s wrong, and she will defend her belief against you – and defend it all the more desperately when it is clearly contrary to the facts – instead of hoping to correct it.
Naturally, this account is oversimplified. None of us is totally honest (or totally dishonest), and we all have our habits that tend to resist change whether it’s needed or not. This series will look into some of those habits and how they affect the information economy; but i simply had to start by showing how deeply information affects our everyday lives. I hope that someone who shares my faith in the reality of truth, and my hope that we can get closer to it, will find the time to follow the rest of the series – and perhaps to point out its errors, so i can correct them.