I was recently attacked via e-mail for a letter to the editor I wrote challenging those who agree with the “poisoning the blood” comment by the former occupant of the White House. My response was to fact-check her false claims (some in all caps and boldface type) about immigration (fentanyl, crime rates, “open border,” etc.). I expected a harsh reply, but received a thank you and a promise to read the corrective links I sent her (including one from the Cato Institute). A few days later, I’ve yet to hear anything further, but I hold out hope that I will. Perhaps fact-checking is a necessary place to start, if it’s framed as a response rather than a reaction, and then curiosity will follow. I hope I encouraged some curiosity on her part, which I hadn’t intended but after reading your post, maybe that’s where it will lead. Thank you for your perspective and level-headed approach.
You have a great temperament for those kinds of things, Jim, I'm sure we can do both: fact check AND encourage curiosity with the right kind of approach. Thanks, as always.
Thank you. It’s taken me more than 60 years to (sometimes) be calm and rational enough to give the benefit of the doubt to folks. When I described the woman’s email to my partner Michelle, her reaction was that the woman sounds terrified. I agree, and the sources of her fear are a major cause of our divisions.
"Misinformation is a heart problem, not a head problem."
There you go. Often I find myself in the worse arguments not with people who are "uninformed" or even "misinformed" but persons who just don't want to open their hearts and minds to other possibilities. They're happy living life with blinders on, as it were. They don't want their beliefs challenged, questioned or even thought on more than once. Until we can nurture folks to grow in spirit as well as intellect, we will continue to run into these sorts of problems.
I wrote you enthusiastically a few minutes back with some thoughts about the implications of your great post on curiosity as an antidote to misinformation. Much of my educational background is in philosophy of science so I would go on to add that it may be useful (but perhaps not so interesting to some of your readers) to stress how curiosity is actually part of scientific progress--framing empirically testable hypotheses, designing research that will fairly reliably test those hypotheses, disconfirming the mistaken ones, and pursuing those that seem promising to gain even more detailed and precise understanding of what's going on. As I follow scientific progress in molecular biology (not my specialty but an abiding interest) I'd note that the simpler explanations that I pretty easily digested decades back as a college student are increasingly more complex. I think that many, even those who are inherently oriented toward finding accurate information and sound analyses, find the complexity of a lot of analyses daunting.
I was recently attacked via e-mail for a letter to the editor I wrote challenging those who agree with the “poisoning the blood” comment by the former occupant of the White House. My response was to fact-check her false claims (some in all caps and boldface type) about immigration (fentanyl, crime rates, “open border,” etc.). I expected a harsh reply, but received a thank you and a promise to read the corrective links I sent her (including one from the Cato Institute). A few days later, I’ve yet to hear anything further, but I hold out hope that I will. Perhaps fact-checking is a necessary place to start, if it’s framed as a response rather than a reaction, and then curiosity will follow. I hope I encouraged some curiosity on her part, which I hadn’t intended but after reading your post, maybe that’s where it will lead. Thank you for your perspective and level-headed approach.
You have a great temperament for those kinds of things, Jim, I'm sure we can do both: fact check AND encourage curiosity with the right kind of approach. Thanks, as always.
Thank you. It’s taken me more than 60 years to (sometimes) be calm and rational enough to give the benefit of the doubt to folks. When I described the woman’s email to my partner Michelle, her reaction was that the woman sounds terrified. I agree, and the sources of her fear are a major cause of our divisions.
"Misinformation is a heart problem, not a head problem."
There you go. Often I find myself in the worse arguments not with people who are "uninformed" or even "misinformed" but persons who just don't want to open their hearts and minds to other possibilities. They're happy living life with blinders on, as it were. They don't want their beliefs challenged, questioned or even thought on more than once. Until we can nurture folks to grow in spirit as well as intellect, we will continue to run into these sorts of problems.
Congrats on the 200th posting, too!
Thanks so much, TRC. I just wish I knew the best way to encourage people to love growth.
I wrote you enthusiastically a few minutes back with some thoughts about the implications of your great post on curiosity as an antidote to misinformation. Much of my educational background is in philosophy of science so I would go on to add that it may be useful (but perhaps not so interesting to some of your readers) to stress how curiosity is actually part of scientific progress--framing empirically testable hypotheses, designing research that will fairly reliably test those hypotheses, disconfirming the mistaken ones, and pursuing those that seem promising to gain even more detailed and precise understanding of what's going on. As I follow scientific progress in molecular biology (not my specialty but an abiding interest) I'd note that the simpler explanations that I pretty easily digested decades back as a college student are increasingly more complex. I think that many, even those who are inherently oriented toward finding accurate information and sound analyses, find the complexity of a lot of analyses daunting.