The Minutiae
It is in the minutiae that we find the flow of history.
It is in the minutiae that we find the flow of history.
November 2024
The age of endless information has left many of us with the mentality of a Game of Thrones character; we know nothing and trust no one. Major news corporations obfuscate, mislead, and push agendas, politicians are corrupt, and academia is tainted with ideological bias. This leaves the rest of us drowning in a deluge of meaningless information. Our challenge now is to learn to swim in post-truth waters.
By walking through several fallacies and manipulation tactics, this guide will help you navigate common information pitfalls. Once you learn to recognize a few red flags, prejudicial information will disappear and a picture of the normative truth will develop. Though this may take time, effort, and discomfort, as a citizen in this world you must try. Surrendering to epistemic nihilism is to surrender to injustice and tyranny.
Current events are often traumatic and can be emotional. The problem is when the media makes eliciting an emotional response the priority and informing its audience secondary, if at all. This is so common we often mistake being emotional about a topic as being informed about it. It is an understandable position; consuming emotionally provocative material is draining and satisfying, leaving the viewer “full” of the topic. Balanced media rarely makes one strongly emotional, nor will it leave you decided on an issue. A good informative piece should leave you curious about the topic.
This is not to say all emotional appeals are bad or inaccurate. They can be an important aspect of context, but they should not be mistaken for news.
It can be difficult to tell the difference between being emotionally provocative and conveying information that provokes emotion. This is in part because there are hundreds of ways to manipulate information and get a reaction. The rest of the red flags in this guide highlight common ways in which stories get twisted and how consumers can avoid being manipulated.
If you are reacting to a hypothetical then you should get a second, third, and fourth opinion before you take the information too seriously. Even the best sources get future threats wrong, and the worst sources are happy to use fear as a motivator.
This presentation of ‘if A then B will (or won’t) happen,’ is a common trope in the news landscape with good reason. For one, it attracts views—everyone loves to get worked up over a good doomsday prediction. Two, it is difficult to present information without getting caught up in the implications. Especially if it is the potential outcomes that make a story relevant. This is particularly true for stories about environmental issues, judicial rulings, and legislation.
In the 90’s slippery slope arguments were made about legalizing weed and gay marriage. The common objection was weed is a ‘gateway’ drug. If weed was legalized, kids would start smoking weed and end up on the streets addicted to heroin. Similarly, it was argued if gay marriage was legalized it would destroy ‘the family.’
More recently, slippery slope arguments were made about mask mandates. If the government can force us to wear masks they will force us in other ways and we will lose our liberties. Being required to wear a mask was not the real issue, the future erosion of rights was the crisis.
On the eve of the American presidential election 2024, every side of the media engaged in slippery slope arguments. They all claimed, or implyed, that the outcome of the election will be the end of democracy in the United States.
Climate change, abortion, gun control, transgender, and every other contentious issue are often presented as slippery slope arguments. This is not without reason. None of these fear-evoking predictions were created in a vacuum. However, neither do they represent inevitable outcomes. They represent a theory, often exaggerated, of what might happen. When presented with these ‘if A then B’ arguments, take a second to separate the reality from the hypothetical and be proactive.
Paying attention to the potential outcomes of elections, new legislation, and judicial rulings is an important practice for a healthy society. As citizens, we all have a responsibility to participate in protecting and pushing for our rights. This makes it all the more important to respond to legitimate threats in legitimate ways and not fall for red herrings in the form of slippery slope arguments.
If you watched a clip or heard a summary of an opposing opinion and it made you think the opposition was insane, stupid, or evil, you were probably fed a fringe opinion or a strawman argument.
A strawman is when one side of the argument is presented in such a way that it is easy to counter. Here is an example of a strawman argument:
‘The US is sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, to defend democracy.’ This sets up easy counterarguments, such as; ‘Ukraine is full of corruption and not a real democracy.’ Or, ‘If the US cared about altruism, it would spend those billions on domestic problems instead of sending it abroad.’
While many people do speak of supporting Ukraine in moralistic terms, there are a plethora of practical and strategic reasons for US support of Ukraine. Presenting only the weakest point of the position is manipulative. Characterizing US aid as sending dollars to Ukraine is also misleading. The image of pallets of 100-dollar bills being shipped abroad rightfully infuriates Americans. However, this is not happening and there is plenty of transparency on the form aid takes. You can read the 2024 bill here.
Fring opinions are the most extreme opinions held by a small minority of people within a movement or organization. As a way to discredit the group, fringe opinions are presented as if they are the group’s motto. A few timeless examples are:
Despite the clips of progressives crying on Tiktok or YouTube shorts of moronic Trump supporters, most people are mostly reasonable. The first check on not falling for a strawman or a fringe position is to use reason. Unless you are a genius, if an opinion or position sounds ridiculously stupid to you, chances are it will sound stupid to most people.
As it turns out most people hold centrist views on most core issues. Extreme opinions are the minority, even if they are a loud minority. Here are a few articles to support this: American Political Science Review’s ‘Moderates,’ AP’s American Core Values, and CBS’s 50 Things Americans agree on. Sorry for the American centrism.
Not only are the majority of feminists not ‘anti-men,’ but a majority openly express concern for how sexism has negatively affected men and many have fought for men’s rights. In the United States, it was feminists who pushed to redefine rape to acknowledge male victims and feminists called to reform drinking laws that discriminated against men.
Far from calling for open borders, according to Pew, Democrats mostly view the situation on the Mexican border as a problem. With (44%) calling it a major problem and (26%) calling it a minor one. Very few Democrats (7%) say it is not a problem.
ILO Polling shows the majority of men and women worldwide are in favor of women having paid jobs. This is especially true in predominantly conservative countries such as Arab states, where women do not have as many opportunities. This Politico article runs through multiple bi-partisan legislative acts supporting women in the workplace.
This is not to say there are not groups that think and pursue abhorrent or stupid things, Nazis are real and tankies exist. When leaders say they are going to invade countries, consolidate power, or work to destroy institutions, we should take them seriously. When their supporters cheer for them and compare them to deities, we should pay attention.
Before you demonize, you need to understand your opposition or you will waste your moral outrage on ghosts while genuine threats go unopposed.
The type of language used can be a major indicator of the source’s intent and quality. Every team and in-group has triggering language, words that produce an automatic positive or negative association. Typically the meaning of these words are ambiguous, misrepresented, or completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. They are employed as a means of manipulating the audience’s opinion without having to make an actual argument. When you react strongly to a news piece, there is a chance you are reacting to words you have been preconditioned to feel a particular way about and not the actual story.
These words do not belong in serious news. While they are historically important, there is little understanding or consensus of their meaning today. They are most often used as popular placeholders for, ‘something I don’t like.’ When a news piece relies on these words to describe a new policy, a group of people, an idea, or anything except the Chinese Communist Party, it is not a news piece, it is an opinion piece.
Strip the story of all commentary, adjectives, and visuals. Retell the bare bones of the story to yourself or a friend and see if you can explain the issue without relying on these words. If the issue is problematic, you will not need to use rhetorical language to make it scary.
Another important step in making yourself immune from the effects of this language is to learn what these words mean. Do a deep dive into the theory and history of communism, fascism, socialism, and so on. Having an understanding of these words will reduce their emotive power and help you recognize when they are being used for propaganda.
Photos and videos are powerful tools for conveying a narrative. As the saying goes, ‘Seeing is believing.’ An interesting thing happens when we see pictures or videos: our doubt and skepticism are put on hold and we accept what we see as truth. However, visuals cannot convey the whole truth. As philosopher Susan Sontag pointed out in On Photography, for everything shown in a picture, there is something obscured.
In the last few years, probably in the last few minutes, there have been some great examples of pictures and videos misrepresenting a situation and biasing audiences.
Remember the one where a woman was trying to take out a city rental bike and several black men accused her of stealing their bike? Here is NBC’s coverage of the video, NYC Hospital Worker’s Fight With Teens Over Citi Bike Goes Viral | NBC New York
After this video went viral, the condemnation of this woman was intense. People called her racist and a Karen and called for her to be fired. The hospital where she worked opened an investigation into the incident and countless commentators weighed in on what they thought happened.
Later, the woman’s lawyer released receipts showing it was her bike in the first place and she was the one being harassed. The video had been filmed and released by the men involved and the audience was primed to see middle-aged white women as racist and generally nasty. You can read the full story here or google it for yourself.
This picture was spread around France on Social Media.
In the picture, all of these “foreign” women are standing in front of the Family Benefits Office in France. The picture was followed by a caption that read, “Keep on working, they need you!” You can find the full article here.
In reality, the picture had been cropped to give this impression and inspire anti-immigration sentiment. The women were in London and standing near a police station.
The fact that almost anyone can mislead people with well-timed videos and cropped images is problematic enough, but it is nothing compared to AI. Issues such as; Ukraine, Gaza, and the US elections have all been swamped with AI-generated pictures intended to misguide and confuse people.
One way to avoid being misled by visuals is to not give them a disproportionate amount of weight. Their impact on your perception should be equal to the confidence you have in the accuracy of the visual and your understanding of the context. Ask the questions listed above and look for corroborating sources.
If there is a video or picture that conveys important evidence, there should be other sources of evidence such as other videos/pictures, witnesses, and corresponding outcomes. Lacking other evidence, wait for open-source analysts to verify the pictures or videos before you make any conclusions.
