by Joe Martino, The Pulse:
Experts often don’t agree, we’re drowning in information, and censorship is a very real thing – here’s how to not get lost and confused navigating information.
I wanted to present a quick collection of ideas, thoughts, and reflections that can act as tools for navigating the information landscape. It can be confusing out there, hopefully these tools make things easier.
I want to point out that we have the potential to live in a world where we would not have to have this level of discernment. It would be possible if we were less blinded by political ideologies, emotions, social media algorithms and censorship. But given this is the landscape we find ourselves in today, knowing how to weather the storm is essential.
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1. Stay Present
This is first and foremost to me. Navigating our world and information has become purely cognitive. But we are not purely cognitive beings. We have gut and heart intelligence on top of our mental capacity, so why not bring it on board and master it?
Further, how we feel about something can give us insight into the beliefs, resistances, and emotions that may be shaping our perspectives.
How do we become aware of how we feel and activate our other forms of intelligence? By staying present and connected to our body.
Solution: Use the “Set Your Pulse” reminder we have above. It’s a fancy way of saying “take a breath and be human! You may have gotten lost in pure cognition. Come back to your body, to presence, and expand your consciousness a bit.”
It also won’t hurt to have some sort of practice that regularly teaches interoception, the ability to track your internal experience, sensations and emotions. Conscious breathing, somatic movement, yoga, and martial arts all build our interoception muscle. It’s a crucial aspect to exploring our world with clarity.
2. The Streetlight Effect
We can sometimes look for answers where it’s most convenient to, even if it’s a terrible place to look.
This one can be best summed up in a parable featuring the Seljuk Sufi mystic Nasrudin Hodja. The Indologist Wendy Doniger quotes this parable in her book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.
Someone saw Nasrudin searching for something on the ground. “What have you lost, Mulla?” he asked. “My key,” said the Mulla. So they both went down on their knees and looked for it. After a time the other man asked: “Where exactly did you drop it?” “In my own house.” “Then why are you looking here?” “There is more light here than inside my own house.”‘
It’s funny, but what’s even funnier is how true this is today. People tend to search for answers where it is easiest to look. Whether it’s from the 1 or 2 news sources they follow, a 15 second reel, or a 2 minute clip that their friend sends to them that lacks important context.
Whatever is simple and easy can often be how opinion is shaped. Social media trends, best selling books, what the ‘experts’ are saying are a few of many examples. But just because it’s easy and it’s where everyone is looking doesn’t mean it’s the best approach.
Solution: Our world is complex. Be willing to read full articles, even multiple at times. Watch more than just reels, 15 second clips and shorts – you’re likely not going to learn much from these.
3. Epistemic Humility
Instead of trying to be right, try to be less wrong.
As Jose Medina writes,
“When not taken to the extreme, attentiveness to one’s cognitive limitations does not undermine one’s confidence and erode one’s character (that is, when it does not become pathological), epistemic humility can afford great benefits. Having a humble and self-questioning attitude toward one’s cognitive repertoire can lead to many epistemic achievements and advantages.”
The key here is, you don’t have to obsess over your own thoughts and cognition. After all, we are beings with gut and heart intelligence as well, but we should not neglect our thinking in favour of other intelligences.
It’s common for people to believe they can derive all they need to know from intuition alone – I don’t align with this idea. Intuition is incredibly important, but we have a brain, cognition, and complex thinking for a reason. We use it everyday, why not master it along with heart and gut intelligence?
Solution: Keep an eye on your desire to become certain about something. Be comfortable with being uncertain. Often times it is hard to know an absolute truth. It is better to understand how to be less wrong than trying to be absolutely right.
4. Be Aware of “Experts”
No, I’m not saying people can’t be experts. In fact, I think we need highly skilled and focused people like experts. But to me there are two reasons to think critically about what experts say:
- For every PhD that is out there, there is another PhD that was granted proving the opposite thesis. This simply means experts can present conclusions that are the complete opposite to one another, and it’s not uncommon for experts to completely disagree.
- People are people, yet it’s easy to forget that. When certain individuals have some letters after their name and rise up in the ranks of fame, we tend to not think as critically about what they have to say as we can become mesmerized by their ‘social proof.’
These people all poo and wipe their butt. This, of course, is a way of saying, they are human just like you and me. They are fallible and prone to having shortsighted views at times – especially as they get busier and busier in the unrealistic schedule that’s demanded of them in order to keep up with all of their fame. (And this is only one potential source of bias.)
