Show notes
In this episode, we discuss…
Show Intro [0:03]
Introductions—Truths [0:14]
Start of the Podcast [0:48]
Managing Pandemic Life [1:35]
Relevance of a Heavy Topic [3:05]
Daring to Know [3:59]
What is Relativism? [4:27]
Setting the Stage [6:19]
The Truth Condition [8:06]
Difficulty of Finding Objective Truth [9:54]
The World is at Your Fingertips [10:57]
Observing How People Receive Information [11:51]
The Importance of Fact Checking [14:02]
Confirmation Bias [15:23]
Getting a Well-Rounded Picture [16:27]
The Need to Hear Both Sides [18:12]
Share and Touch Base with Us! [18:57]
Making a Well-Informed Decision [19:20]
Flat Earth’s “Truth” [22:50]
Negative Consequences of False Information [24:24]
Rationalizing Our Own Biases [26:20]
Admitting When You Are Wrong [27:14]
Improving Your World View [28:58]
Daring to Know [32:02]
Willing to Risk [32:41]
Being Open to Facts [33:50]
Lookout for More and More Facts [34:58]
Try This at Home! [35:41]
Closing Thoughts [36:42]
Outro [38:30]
Episode Notes:
How do we determine what is true and what is not? It’s not always as black and white like one may imagine Leslyn begins. Leslie adds that it is relevant in the time that we are living in to look at truth, especially as interesting information is being shared on social media nonstop these days. Starting out with a clip on daring to know, you learn you have to risk the possibility of being wrong. What you want and what is true are two very different things. This is where the saying “Your truth is your truth and my truth is mine” comes into play.
Relativism. The idea that truth is relative to your experience and your experience only. Leslie shares an example that on has been on social media recently with the pandemic. We are not all in the same boat. People originally had the belief that we were all in the same boat with this crisis. We all are experiencing the same global crisis, that is a truth. Relativism comes in when you add that we are not all in the same boat because all of our circumstances are different.
The goal is to objectively be seeking what is true. To do that, Leslie and Leslyn turn to TedTalk with Michael Patrick Lynch titled, “How to see past your own perspective and find truth.”. They also pull from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s, “The Analysis of Knowledge” which can help describe the truth condition. Truth to most is seen based on a belief condition where you only know what you believe.
Leslie continues the discussion by sharing Oxford Dictionaries word of the year in 2016: post-truth. A post-truth is defined as relating or denoting to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. These days the world is at our fingertips and easily accessible. Leslyn shares this is where you should key into the idea of objective truth. What are the facts and what do they look like before you add in your opinions and beliefs?
Leslie shares that it has been interesting to observe how people receive information mostly through social media. The idea of what is being presented usually before even opening the article you can tell which way it leans. Leslie shares an example of a trailer that has been going around on her feed that was almost all information that was easily fact-checkable, but nobody seemed to fact check before posting the trailer.
In reality, many people do not take the time to fact check and it can become easy to feed into your own biases. Facebook actually banks on this as the algorithms are designed to feed us what we want to see. By feeding your biases you are straying farther away from the subjective truth that is prevalent in our culture. When you do this, you are not getting a well-rounded picture. It’s incredibly important to be open to both sides to make a well-informed decision.
Leslie and Leslyn continue by sharing another clip on the skepticism of truth that can be tempting as it allows us to rationalize our own biases. Being right all the time feels good and admitting when you are wrong can be hard. Leslyn explains, when we hear the truth and we are skeptical of it we have to be open to the possibility of what we want being wrong. You have to be willing to make that risk.
Leslie and Leslyn want to leave with the point that we all must be open to facts. A fact is a reality that cannot be logically disputed or rejected. If the fact doesn’t fit into your worldview you cannot just ignore it. Instead, it should actually be the driver to finding more and more facts. This week’s try this at home is to check news sources that you normally would not watch. Try to find three different angles of the same news items and look for other perspectives and reflect on how that changes how you are interpreting that information.
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Links to Look At:
TedTalk | How to See Past Your Own Perspectives and Find Truth- Michael Patrick Lynch
[https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_patrick_lynch_how_to_see_past_your_own_perspective_and_find_truth/up-next?language=en]
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | The Analysis of Knowledge
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/]
Snopes | Independent Fact-Checking Site
[https://www.snopes.com/]
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[Show Notes by Abbie Brooks -- https://www.fiverr.com/abjbrook]
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