A Fact Based Existence

As you may recall, recently I had an argument with my uncle regarding the responsibility of wealthy people to maintain opinions of the highest integrity.

The argument goes like this: Wealthy people, and anyone in an elite sphere of influence, must make a greater effort to substantiate their opinions.  Merely offering a single article from a periodical is never enough evidence to make a claim.   People of great influence have a responsibility to cultivate truthful opinions because the impact of their ideas is so much greater.

I don’t think it was such a perceptive point. My uncle is wealthy and that is why I came at the topic from that angle.

But a question occurred to me in the weeks that followed:  do I hold myself in that same standard?

Since then, I have increasingly used the Sheridan Library at Johns Hopkins to review and fact check mine and other people’s claims.

Regarding the topic of Patriotism, I found it very useful to research decision making in a journal called Psychological Science.  Upon hearing a comment about poverty and homicide, I checked the reference in the Canadian Journal of Criminology.  And in that letter to my uncle, I made use of two economic journals through ProQuest.

One realization I discovered is that 1) people make a hell of a lot of claims and checking them all is difficult 2) I am not sure I know more than I did.  After all, merely reading one journal article is not a basis for certitude. Still, I tried.

I am eager to live a fact-based existence. And what I mean by that is something akin to the old Socratic notion that “I am wise because I know that I do not know.”  Except, instead of leaving at the point of pure skepticism, I take a few timid steps into some field of knowledge that is alien to me.

In the age of information, why are we increasingly pretending to know what we do not know?  Why are we having a crisis of fake news?  Why are elementary truths under debate?

More importantly:  Has our character caught up to our technological capabilities?