Truth vs. Focus?

Almost five years ago I was honored to be hired by MoJo CEO and Executive Editor Gwyn Lurie. “What is Truth?” was her recommendation for my first article.

Neuroscientist/podcaster Sam Harris raised a related point: “There are an infinite number of facts one could choose to focus on. And the act of focusing changes how certain of those facts appear, and it changes whether or how they will affect our politics.”

The “availability bias” is a cognitive bias discovered by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman received the Nobel Prize for this work; Tversky died before he could receive it.

The availability bias is a mental shortcut. We assume if something is easily remembered, it must be important. We are driven by stories rather than facts or statistics. Our modern world corrupts this to advantage. Advertising is all about making you aware of problems you never knew you had. And distracting you from real problems.

Corporate media and social media also hijack the availability bias for their profit. At the end of the 1890s, William Randolph Hearst was in a “media war” with Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst coined the phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads.” The resulting sensationalist reporting inflamed U.S. sentiment against Spain – and sold more newspapers. 

These journalistic practices and Hearst’s broad readership helped precipitate U.S. involvement in what became the Spanish-American War. 

Social media does the same, by emphasizing news feed items that keep user “eyeballs” on the page, rather than what is important or helpful.

Parents believe that abduction of children by a stranger is a real and even rising danger. In fact it is increasingly rare and in statistical decline. Rarer than being hit by lightning. But the fear of abduction does real harm: children never being allowed to explore their world and be children. The psychological and physical harm of being driven everywhere by their parents is real.

Terrorist attacks are rare, yet the availability bias makes them salient. I often travel to underdeveloped places that require vaccinations. One time I was getting these from my travel doctor. As I left, he noted that disease was not the main risk. What is? “The same top two risks that exist at home: Cars and dogs.”

In fact, according to the Insurance Information Institute, dog bites make up approximately one-third of homeowners insurance claims. But people are more afraid of snakes.

I am writing this in the run-up to the election. Elections usually involve debates. Much focus is directed at how the candidates conduct themselves and whether they answer the questions or evade them. But some questions deserve evasion. The issue may be unimportant. Or it may be too complex to answer in a two-minute sound bite.

The moderator can never be neutral. It is always a judgment call what issues to raise.

There has been a lot of talk about fact checking in the debates. Again, this often misses the point. Someone can say something that is true, yet utterly misleading. The most common technique is to tell a story of something that really happened, yet is an exceedingly rare event. Think of Bush Senior and his infamous Willie Horton ad.

Surveys ask people their top concerns. Right now people are saying things like illegal immigration, crime, and inflation – even though crime and inflation are actually low now and continuing to decline. And how many people’s lives are actually negatively affected by undocumented immigrants?

Health care is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. Maybe that is more important?

Americans do not get enough sleep; a quality of life and safety issue bigger than drunk driving. Americans’ habit of working long hours has not improved in the past half century. Has a presidential debate ever discussed changing the 40-hour work week? Or mandating paid vacations, as civilized countries do?

How about the enormous amount of time we spend in transit, because we have no good high speed rail or good regional public transit? Has this ever been raised in a debate?

What about mass incarceration in the U.S.? Corporate welfare? Modernizing our education system? Global freshwater scarcity? Mass extinctions?

And the climate crisis is the perennial issue that never gets proper in-depth attention for real solutions. Perhaps truth without proper focus is not truth at all?