Jennifer Kavanagh was a guest on C-Span the other day and provided an educational view of the condition in which we live today regarding influential but misleading information to which we are exposed. Click this video link to watch it.
Ms. Kavanagh is a co-author of Rand Corporation's study titled Truth Decay. Here's the study's definition of the title phrase:
Truth Decay is defined as a set of four related trends: increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.
The causes are the old and new information systems in existence today, the educational system, the polarization that seems to have divided us into our own tribes, and our own biases.
There's no easy cure -- the authors recommend more research, and maybe that will reveal a solution. But for those of out here in the audience, we would do well to remain skeptical yet be willing to take in new ideas while we endeavor to use critical thinking skills to the fullest.
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1:57 PM 5/19/2019
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