Trust, Truth, and the Knowledge Crisis

[Music] foreign [Music] Ty Forum I'd like to add my own welcome to you to join us for today's online conversation with Bonnie Christian on trust truth and the knowledge crisis I'd also like to thank our sponsors which Molly mentioned American Values Coalition and Baker publishing group for their support they really appreciate it and Delilah that so many of you are joining us today I believe we have around 1200 registrants from at least 16 different countries that we know of so hello from across the miles to all of you joining us from Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada France India Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Slovenia South Africa and the UK If you are joining us from overseas it did not hear your country mentioned just now let us know where you're joining us from in the chat box we are always excited to welcome people from across the miles and time zones I'd also like to send a special thank you and welcome to the first time uh registrants joining us today we believe there's over a hundred of you and are just really glad that you found your way to us if you are one of those new registrants or otherwise new to the Trinity Forum we seek to provide a space to engage the big questions of life and the context of faith and to offer programs like this online conversation to do so and to come to better know the author of the answers our discussion today will focus on one of those big questions namely how do we discern and know what is trustworthy and true it's a simple question but a tall order we are Awash in misinformation conspiracy thinking partisan outrage and alternative facts and while conspiracy theories and conspiracy thinking are themselves nothing new the power of our increasingly personalized highly politicized outrage inducing and unrelenting social media channels is the resulting Echo chamber amplification of misinformation has left us not only more confused in our thinking but also certain in our judgments disinclined to consider Divergent data or New Perspectives and distrustful of those who disagree the result is what our guest today has called a knowledge crisis one that is in her words breaking our brains polluting our politics and corrupting Christian Community so how do we learn to think well to discern what is true amidst conflict and chaos and to respond to confusion with both wisdom and charity joining me today to discuss that very question is Bonnie Christian Bonnie is a seasoned journalist a frequent contributor to reason magazine a columnist at Christianity Today a fellow at defense priorities and previously serve as the editor of the Week Magazine her work has been featured in numerous Outlets including the New York Times the Los Angeles Times The Daily Beast CNN and Politico and she's also the author of a flexible Faith as well as her new release untrustworthy the knowledge crisis breaking our brains polluting our politics and corrupting Christian Community which we've invited her here today to discuss Bonnie welcome hi thank you so much for having me it's great to have you here so as we start off let's start at the very beginning with what is the knowledge crisis and how is it breaking our brains and corrupting our communities well the knowledge crisis I think is that very unfortunately familiar sense of unease or uncertainty that a lot of us feel these days as we attempt to engage in uh especially online media social media not exclusively though and especially but again not exclusively political media it's that sense of wading into this onslaught of information and Truth claims and not being certain what you can trust what voice is a reliable what fact claims you should take seriously and I think you know it's easy to say oh well that's sort of like a intellectual thing it's something that's happening just in our minds but in practice this has very real relational effects um both at an interpersonal level where we're having these very frustrating conversations with friends and loved ones where it doesn't even feel like you're looking at the same reality and then also you know has a very corrosive effect on community life be that in a political sense where all of the the trends that you hear talked about all the time of negative partisanship and polarization that's all very much tied into this because it's so concerned with at any discussion we're having you know knowledge is going to be at the basis of that and it's also coming into Church Life to congregations um the the this is I think a matter of discipleship and it's something that I've heard from a lot of pastors is something that they are increasingly focused on and and that in many cases sort of caught them by surprise because it all happened pretty quickly and if you went to Seminary 10 or 15 years ago this isn't what you heard about but now it's it's very much here and affecting so many of us you know one thing that you mentioned in your book which um it was discouraging to read as you know and think about um a lack of information as sort of fueling our mistaken Notions so ignorance being at the the basis of a lot of misinformation but one of the things she pointed out in your book that all it was actually often the more time people spent being informed uh by different you know media sources the more likely they were to be misinformed uh as opposed to to well-informed what's going on there that's a um a counter-intuitive link yeah that particular piece came from a 2019 study called the perception Gap and what they found was as you said people who were very up on politics people would consider themselves news junkies who were quite well informed the most distorted perceptions particularly of their political opponents and frequently the way that they those perceptions were distorted was they thought that other people over more extreme and more antagonistic than they actually are and I think a lot of that has to do with the way that our media media ecosystem functions right now where there's this intense competition for viewers because you know you have to get eyeballs on there to be able to just pay the bills and that encourages a high output of content and encourages sensationalism you know the more exciting headline is going to get more clicks and it also in the social media context you know outrageous things tend to travel farther there's some evidence that uh false claims will go viral farther and more quickly than true claims will and I think that's a lot of that is just because there's a there's a sort of a perverse Freedom if you don't have a regard for the truth you can say whatever you want you can exactly play into people's outrage and their fears and someone who is you know trying to be more ethical and actually tell the truth tell the the factual story has constraints um and and isn't so easily able to whip people up and get those eyeballs and uh yeah that's a it's a widespread problem I think I have a we would might like to think well that's that's the other side's problem you know the people that I oppose they're the ones who are are doing that but I think it's it's very much across the political Spectrum Yeah Yeah you mentioned just how um how misinformation spread so quickly on social media and there have been certainly a lot of studies that have shown that I think there was one study that showed that um misinformation actually spread six times as quickly um social media is um um as that which was like which was true and which was accurate uh and another thing you point out in your book is that not surprisingly our our Trust in Media is down but our viewership and our consumption is way up um and of course the people who are spreading misinformation on on social media that's not an outside institution that that's us um doing it it nor can it be just attributed just to to bots so what is going on here and why have we come to love and consume more and more from Outlets that we distrust some of it I think is a sort of tribalism and you know people will say well I don't trust the media but the stuff that I listen to is good and so you know people think that they they've become an exception and they've found the true voices which may or may not be correct and some of it is that as you said we sort of all are invited to play pundit now and so there's that incentive when everyone is constantly being encouraged to share their opinion you got to have you got to have an opinion to share you've got to have you gotta take stuff in to be able to put stuff out a lot of it I think though is we we like to tell ourselves that we're consuming this political media because we're going to be good citizens and we're going to be well informed and have you know very rational opinions and all sorts of flattering things like that but in practice what our Behavior suggests is that that's not actually why we're consuming this media we're consuming it because of how it affects us emotionally and how it makes us feel better about ourselves than other people how it excites us how it it sort of inflames us and so you know in in that light it makes sense that we would still be consuming more of media that we know in some sense isn't worth our time because we're not really there to become better informed we're there to be entertained for the most part [Music] you know in addition to the uh counter-intuitive finding that your book talks about uh whereas the more we consume the more likely it would be missing informed uh there's another sort of inversion of one what one might expect which is you know while our trust in different institutions uh and media even in the information we we receive has gone down that hasn't led to a greater discernment um or that kind of skepticism hasn't necessarily always been applied in um in Wise ways towards concentrations of power or the like but is actually instead the the more distrustful we are strangely the more gullible we have become in terms of believing even stranger things I would love to kind of hear you talk a little bit about that phenomenon and why that might be yeah so I you know I'm I'm a Libertarian as anyone who googles me will find out and I'm certainly not anti-septicism I think skepticism is one of the the healthiest habits of American politics and one of our our better inclinations problem that we have now is that it's not a healthy skepticism in many cases it's much more cynical it's much more reflexive it's not really informed by anything so much as just a knee-jerk reaction when I was uh writing on that subject I quoted from the philosophical philosopher excuse me Hana aren't and she talks about a combination of gullibility and cynicism in which you think and I believe that the quote is uh that anything is possible and nothing is true I may be butchering that or reversing it or something but anything is possible nothing is true it's gullibility and cynicism at once and and so the way it works is it's a very it's a very convenient posture to take I think and it's very conducive to motivated reasoning where if someone presents you with you know a truth claimer or a story that you don't want to be true you can simply dismiss it right because well you can't trust those people that doesn't make any sense like you know why would why would you believe that the media it's fake news but if there's some outlandish claim um or you know not outlandish but in many cases some outlandish claim that you know makes sense to you that paints people you oppose in a bad light that you you want it to be true well then you can sort of take a posture of you know you can't prove it you can't prove it's not true you you weren't there you didn't see this not happen it's possible um and so it's uh it's when we have such a deluge of information coming at us all the time I think it's easy to fall into that sort of pick and choose mindset where you just sort of Select things not based on any real um careful assessment that you've done because in many cases you can't there's just too much to assess and so you default into that more convenient approach of being cynical and overly skeptical about things you don't want to be true and then being you know very trusting in a sense and then to the point of gullibility about things you do want to be true one of the things you point out is just how closely um trust and Truth are related and um yeah and of course there are good reasons why um some institutions as well as some immediate Outlets have have earned the mistrust that they receive and there have been conspiracy true theories that that were true um conspiracies that have happened one things of Watergate and and others and so of course the big question becomes how does one distinguish who whom to trust um and would be curious like how does one Choose Wisely whom to trust not only on a personal relationship or a personal level but we're on an Institutional level that's a huge question and not sure one that I not sure it's one I can answer very succinctly I think a lot of it has to do uh with developing sort of a feel for truth um an analogy I like to use is when you're browsing in the store can you sort of feel the difference between cotton and polyester um it's it's something you get right away and that it might be sort of difficult to if someone sat you down and said okay explain to me what feels different here you might have trouble verbalizing it but you feel it and I so I think developing that feel for truth and also for untruth is really important and that's something that takes time um and takes a context of of good habits and good Community uh and and other wiser voices um sort of you know to to build upon and to guide us and so something I think that is really useful in that regard can be finding finding voices that you that you trust from maybe outside of our own time where it's not so wrapped up in the current debates right because it's someone who didn't live during the current debates um and and when we when we're looking at or reading or listening or what have you um something someone who's not speaking about the fights that we are so wrapped up in I think that can help make it easier to sort of figure out is this is this truthful does this make sense is this person reliable and trustworthy and then to be you know begin from there that's a good place where it's it's not so high stakes it's not so immediate it's not about anything that you need to do something about right now start there and start developing that feel for truth and do that hopefully in the context of the community and then you know as you have that sense maybe move out into more contemporary situations where it's a little bit more urgent yeah you've talked about the knowledge crisis or the epistemic crisis that we are in as we so often think of it as a intellectual um problem primarily or a political problem but you've also argued that it is both an emotional and a spiritual problem um how so I think it's an emotional problem in the sense that uh you know I've mentioned we like to think of ourselves as very rational um we sort of just thought things through and we're all little Sherlock Holmes and informing our political opinions right but in practice that's not how humans are and there's not that very tidy dividing line between emotion and reason and so a lot of times when we're dealing with especially relational conflicts related to this crisis we have this idea that we're going to argue someone out of their wrong beliefs and we're just gonna you know we're gonna sit down and we're gonna have this this reason conversation and they're going to say I see now that I was wrong and you're right and I now believe what you believe um that doesn't work in the vast majority of cases because that's not how those beliefs were formed you know it's much more about inclinations and instincts and what do your friends believe and what do people you dislike believe and so when we try to separate those things out uh number one we're deluding ourselves like about our own behavior but we're also setting ourselves up for more conflict and more frustration uh and more difficulty in you know understanding why other people behave the way they do and I think that in turn you know when someone does something that you think is just unintelligible like that's frightening um to to not to just not be able to Fathom why someone behave the way they would and so then that you know it becomes a very vicious cycle of we can't understand one another we can't understand why someone else doesn't think the way they do and that encourages our fear and anger and it goes on and on I oh go ahead as far as a spiritual crisis uh I mean you know as Christians it concerns truth we think of ourselves as people of Truth uh and yet here we are having these often very intense debates even within congregations uh you know there are stories of churches splitting over this stuff or of pastors leaving or being ousted over disagreements about this sort of thing um it's I don't think that we can separate uh truth and and love you know scripture connects those very frequently truth and love as as things that uh interact with one another and that how we're pursuing truth will uh affect how we are loving one another and so uh it is I think very much a a spiritual crisis and a matter of discipleship and a matter of discipleship that is quite new and that wasn't on our radar relatively recently and that intensifies the problem because it's it's just not something that most of us anticipated you know needing to address in search context it's um it's a fresh problem that previous generations didn't didn't have the same technological context and it's it's pretty rare that there's a discipleship problem that that previous generations didn't already struggle through um but but here we do have something I think legitimately new yeah you mentioned fear and anger and the anger part is is quite obvious but um you know fear often seems to be the the source of a lot of conspiracy theories and um there are a lot of studies out there showing that um you know kind of Americans in the aggregate have remarkably elevated fear levels um around their fellow citizens um you know if one looks at polls just of political partisans more than 80 percent of partisans on either side believe that the other side is brainwashed and evil um and out to get them um and you know of course I'm sure there are folks out there with ill intent but um you know presumably it's not half of the country out to get the other half and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much difference in in Christian it's versus the the larger populace at least by the polls why are we so convinced that our fellow citizens our intent Upon Our Own destruction I think a lot of it is that that inability to sort of fathom how the other side could come to the conclusions that they have reached um there's this concept in uh in Psychology called theory of mind and it's basically it an a normal adult human brain you should be able to sort of game out how someone reached their conclusions and understand even if it's not the conclusion that you would reach or the decision you would make that they have you know different inputs different experiences different beliefs different wants Etc little kids don't have this all the way and it can be very funny to watch them try to you know figure out like why why would you do that um and I think in in politics we are have sort of sort of losing that capacity in a lot of ways where we just truly can't understand how the other side could come to the conclusion they've come to and you know you think in like foreign policy we'll talk about like is Kim Jong-un a Madman right um because that's that's frightening that sense of we can't parse out what we can't anticipate what he's going to do next um and I think it's where we sort of see ourselves see each other with the same that same mystification and I think a lot of that is exacerbated by just the loss of sort of normal community life especially in institutional context where you would see each other every week at church you would see each other at some sort of like neighborhood club or um you know volunteer Association or bowling to reference the the famous book um something where you didn't have to have you know a multi-day text thread to coordinate everyone's schedules and losing that sort of regular access to other people uh really you know you might have been having conversations where that you would you they could explain their thinking to you and now we're just not having that um and so it's uh you know it becomes self-perpetuating right like if you're afraid of these people you don't want to hang out with them if you're not hanging out with them you become more afraid of them so what does one do then just in terms of relating with the friend or the relative who does seem to have gone down a conspiracy Rabbit Hole um you know where they talk of of little else but one wants to keep the relationship alive how does how does one approach that you know it's it's never going to be easy um but I think the the single biggest thing and you mentioned they talk of little else is to not talk about that um you know I argue for a living I want to be able to argue someone out of something like that but in practice uh that I don't think those arguments 99 of the time I don't think those arguments succeed and that's for a lot of reasons some of it is just you know if you're spending an hour a week with someone and you try to argue with them for 45 minutes of it there's not much of a relationship there and you know no one is going to enjoy that they're not going to have much reason to listen to you some of it a lot of it though is you know the the way that a lot of conspiracy theories work especially now is they're not you know they're not a carefully reasoned thing there's not all these specific pieces of evidence that you could show are false right it's it's just sort of a mindset um and a a posture of that that un that negative skepticism that that very cynical mindset that we've discussed already and so an argument you know maybe maybe you do win the argument about one specific thing it doesn't matter and a new piece will rise up in its place and so far more productive than arguing I think is to have conversations about other things and and the those will function to remind that loved one about all of the the good and indeed better things in the world that exist outside this this framework into which they've gotten entangled so you know talk about your kids your dog your vacation your jobs whatever literally anything is better and the time that you're spending talking about those things and and focusing on better things that are not just you know this sort of like self-consuming uh paranoia all of that is is a win just the fact of the conversation is a win because it's not time that they're spending digging deeper into into this mindset and you know it's a long game it's not I think we we sort of want to have a short timeline on you know maybe I spend a couple months really focused on this and then then it's all better it might be years it might be a lifetime but the more you can spend diverting their attention to other things the better you know you've argued that the the likelihood of systemic reform of this new problem is is relatively small and if it comes it probably won't be all-encompassing which means that we will need to change ourselves rather than waiting for for systems to change um but of course a lot of the problem is ourselves and even those of us who very much want to um think and live wisely and well and um and be Discerning it is so easy to get sucked into um sucked into the echo chamber um with feeds that reinforce all of our biases and confirm you know those who are villains um and of course blind spots are called that because we we are blind to them even if we are are very inquisitive in the towards the end of your book you mentioned different formational habits that help one both resist that mindset uh and be more Discerning what are some of those yeah so the the analogy that I give is if you think about uh a Gothic Cathedral you know it's got beautiful Windows those windows are like the virtues that we need to develop intellectual virtues to be able to engage in this media environment well or in many cases to to disengage to a degree and actually be able to to maintain that but of course the windows don't stand up by themselves you need the stone walls and these are habits and these are things that we can much more uh directly affect and choose to adopt than virtues unfortunately can't just decide I have this virtue now it would be so nice if you could um so a lot of the habits are are very much concerned with uh how we're spending our time where we're putting our attention what voices are we habitually listening to um something that I heard over and over again from pastors even before I started writing this book then also in my research was nearly verbatim you know know I get an hour a week with my congregants but Facebook or Twitter or CNN or Fox News or what have you gets them for 15 20 30 hours and I think a big part of this is to to not let that be be true of us um to notice you know is my phone the first thing that I look at in social media is that the first thing I look at every morning and the last thing every night is that how I'm framing my days uh you know where is is my living room oriented around you know doing the classic to screen right like the television and the phone at the same time is that how the most important room in your family life is physically arranged and so being real I think we need to be really honest and this is very much me as well we need to be really honest in assessing how we are spending our time like this how we have arranged our homes and our schedules and you know what what is shaping you day in and day out because for so many of us the the answer has really become you know the the podcast that I can't do the dishes without or you know the the TV uh show that I watch every night while I fold the laundry um and those those voices are not having a neutral effect on us they're not having a neutral effect on the way we think and on the way that we're able to use our attention um a really good simple question is do you have to pick up your phone every time you get to the end of a chapter in a book uh I think for a lot of us the answer is we do we do read read like that and so just take making that assessment and then beginning to reorient our days in a more purposeful way um so that this does not eat up our lives is I think a very concrete way to begin and something that all of us can and again myself included should do you know in addition to a Time audit or even a habit audit um you also mentioned a need for a more robust would you call epistemology of love and hermeneutic of obedience what does that mean and what does it look like in the context of our tendency towards confusion so the epistemology of Love is a phrase that I have stolen from the Theologian empty right and his argument is that a lot of times when we're trying to acquire knowledge we Veer into sort of like um trying to to reach an impossible objectivity where you just want to sort of be like a blank slate and there's going to be none of your own influence there's going to be you know you're going to be an inhuman robot just picking up facts or on the other hand we sort of go into you know just complete subjectivity saying you know I just you know I want to find out what's true for me what seems right to me and so his idea of an epistemology of Love is that you are striking sort of a virtuous mean between those where you're you're looking for um you know the the thing as it is and and to to enjoy it and respect it um the to enjoy and respect the truth as it actually is not as you want it to be to avoid the subjectivity sign but also um you know not trying to have that that complete detachment where you know you you are trying to to know things as they are and and follow your increasing knowledge to to where it naturally leads not meant to be affected by that and and uh not not try to be a robot that you cannot be and the hermeneutic of obedience is I think closely related to that it's an idea that that I encountered at least in the Mennonite tradition which is I spent I've spent most of my adult life in a Mennonite Church and the idea is that when you're coming to uh scripture though I think this applies more broadly as well when you're coming to scripture you will find it much easier to understand the text when you're prepared to obey it and so for for me for example uh for a long time I I thought you know it's so confusing what Jesus says about like love your enemies and and turn the other cheek you know what did he really mean we've got to really really figure this out um and and having ended up in a midnight star she probably won't surprise you that uh I I now think what he meant was love your enemies and turn the other cheek and that being willing to countenance the possibility that the intended meeting was exactly as as non-violent as much of a rejection of violence as it sounded like made it possible for me to to consider that right like like to the that that willingness to potentially obey brought Clarity to my understanding and I think that's true in a lot of things that we we have to uh that we will struggle to understand the truth if we are not willing to to submit to the truth and so a lot of times what we might experience as confusion is actually an unwillingness for something or an unwillingness to recognize that something is true um well Bonnie thank you so much for that we have a lot of questions from our viewers that are all stacked up and if you're new to us just a reminder that you can not only ask a question but you can also like a question and that helps give us an idea of what some of the most popular questions are so um wow that quite a list a question from an anonymous viewer Alan Jacobs encourages people to allow themselves the luxury of not having an opinion on the latest Scandal until they've had time to consider it is that an approach you'd encourage yeah absolutely I think that's excellent advice in fact I would even extend it and say sometimes you never have to consider it and reach an opinion at all because the world will be exactly no different whether you do or not and because it is not possible for you to know about everything well I think you know even as a journalist there are a lot of really important topics that you will never find me writing on because I have no subject matter expertise I am not in a position to be airing my opinions on these questions and I do this for a living so like how much more is that going to be the case for the average person you just can't know about everything in a in a responsible and in-depth way um and the sense that we have that we need to to always be raising awareness and having awareness and sharing our views I think that's simply not true and so yes absolutely to his his quote and then also you know again I think sometimes you don't you don't need to form an opinion and you certainly don't need to hear it so another question comes from Nathan Harter and Nathan asks Paul Hollander documented intellectuals who fell for bad leaders undermining the sense that they should have been trustworthy Guardians of the truth when in fact they seemed especially vulnerable yet we're often told to trust the experts why is that oh that's a it's a big one um so I think the the society that we live in a society is complex is ours cannot function without expertise I mean all of us every day are relying on expertise of people we have never met we'll never meet we have no way of assessing their credentials you know every time you drive across a bridge you are trusting the expertise of the people who engineered it the people who built it and that was just simply how we have to live so we can't not have experts and I include in experts you know I don't just mean academic experts there's a lot where many of us are experts in in lots of things some of which are not academic so we have to have experts but it is also true that there are dangers in being you know considered an expert and especially an expert in a public sense and part of what's happened with the rise of social media and sort of the broader immediate environment that we have now is that people are much more likely to be asked to be experts in public and that's can be a very tricky position to be in number one communicating in public well is its own expertise and so someone may be quite good in in their actual field in a garbage communicator but they're expected to like be on Twitter or go comment on cable news or something they don't necessarily have both kinds of expertise um and then another thing is that someone who actually is good at communicating they gain a reputation for being so good at talking and then they start to be asked to comment on things outside their actual primary area of expertise and perhaps they do it because it's you know it's very flattering and I think that points to uh some of what's going on in this question that which is that you know I anyone who's who finds themselves in a position of being honored as an expert is going to always have to be on guard against you know an arrogance and inflated sense of their own discernment their own knowledge um it you know it can be I think easy to assume that if you you have expert knowledge in one area that you'll be a good judge in these other areas and that you know Pride goeth before fall right and like that that sets you up to be susceptible in the way that someone who does not consider themselves an expert and has a greater posture of humility you know maybe wouldn't be so confused so a question from Mary Teresa Webb and Mary ask our culture says that quote my truth is different from your truth how do we address this reality well uh going back to not arguing I don't know that you'll you'll argue specific people who believe that out of that perspective um but you know I I would say that that's false that there is objective truth um where we get into trouble if you if you believe objective truth exists is that we can start to think that once we've acknowledged that reality that we know it um and what I would suggest is that objective Truth is Out There we are capable of grasping it but that does not mean that at any given moment I have actually figured it out right on any particular subject and so I think when people talk about you know there's my truth and it's your truth in some sense there's a good impulse there there's an attempt to sort of have that humility and to recognize that that things you know look different from different angles and that we don't all have complete knowledge but I think that we can strike that better balance of saying there is objective truth I don't necessarily have all of it all the time but it does exist out there and so I think for someone who who has that my truth and your truth thinking that relativism uh understanding that you can believe in objective truth without claiming to be you know the the unparalleled possessor of it can be a a useful reframe and a way to make um you know the idea of objective truths more I don't want to say appealing but more um sensible perhaps is the word so there's a number of questions around this General topic and I'll choose one from Larry Bridge Smith and um it's a related topic where you ask I agree we are confronted with a knowledge crisis other than argument and debate which changed no one's mind how do we engage with others with whom we disagree to explore truth mutually I don't know that it changes no one's mind right I think it depends on um the context of the conversation so a lot of times when I'm saying you know don't argue with someone what I'm have in mind is someone who has not invited that conversation um someone who has not said you know let's sit down and talk this out and maybe your mind will end up changed and maybe my mind will end up changed we're going to sort of put it all on the table and see where we land um I mean you know if I thought that argument never worked I couldn't do my job I would primarily write opinion pieces right and so there's a big difference between someone coming to an article I've written coming to it and thinking all right like you know I'm gonna see what she has to say about this maybe I'll agree maybe I won't agree there are definitely circumstances in which argument and you know not in a negative sense but like arguing something through thinking it through together can can work uh and I think a lot of that goes back to a lot of that being possible goes back to what what Manner and what sort of person are you coming to those conversations um not just in terms of your mindset for the immediate conversation because it's you know it's all it's good certainly to come and say you know maybe my mind will be changed but you can't just say that it has to be backed up I think by those better habits and and habits reinforcing intellectual virtues because I mean if we're coming to such a conversation without virtues like intellectual honesty and wisdom and studiousness it's like you know going to the gym and thinking you're gonna do a bunch of weight lifting you don't actually you're not actually prepared for it no matter how much you want to lift those weights um so I think I don't want to suggest that it's never going to be possible for us to have this sort of conversation that you're in this envisioning I think that is possible um but maybe it's not going to happen on social media probably it's almost never going to happen on social media and it also has to be between I think willing participants um a lot of the negative effects that social media has in this area is that it sets us up to think that people want us to just come and like blast our opinions at them and most people don't actually want that it needs to be a mutual thing okay a question from Richard Scurry who asks what is the larger problem misinformation or the growing loss of free speech and our right to be wrong I mean I think these are I would say these are both pieces of sort of this this larger crisis of of our distrust of one another and our um you know lose or declining capacity to talk with one another well and to pursue knowledge with one another one um you hear a lot about misinformation and I I you know the quality of the information we're encountering certainly does matter uh I tend to think the term in some senses gets overused right because if you find something you don't like you can dismiss it as this misinformation um and if we have two uh a disproportionate concern I think for misinformation it can lead us to uh supporting unrealistic and often counterproductive uh moderation or or you could even in some cases say censorship projects uh on the other hand I think if we are misunderstanding the extent to which our Free Speech rights are threatened um and you know I I I understand the case for saying like Twitter moderation is censorship um as a Libertarian I think they're a private company you know they're not bound by the First Amendment um and so uh while I do want strong Free Speech norms the actions of a particular company I think are not identical with that um but when we become we're if we're unrealistically uh worried about loss of free speech rights uh then I think in some cases some people uh their reaction will be to sort of gravitate towards lower quality information as a sort of like a thumb in the eye of the sensors and so I think these are these are related I think there are risks in both directions I don't know if I if I would um rank one or the other is the the greater problem um I think I think they're they're both serious I think uh the the technological aspects mean that both have have really escalated and come to the Forefront in a dramatic way where you know you always had the tabloids at the supermarket saying like Hillary Clinton elope was bad boy like there's always been misinformation and then the way it spreads now is um on a much larger scale and then on the the Free Speech side it is remarkable the extent to which illiberalism and and the declining Norms of free speech have just wildly accelerated in the past decade or so and so I think that's that's difficult to to overstate the the dangers of that though certainly that the overstating does happen I think yeah there's a related question from Richard miles who asked how much of our current predicament is tied to declining standards in journalism reporters who substitute ideological agenda into corroborating sources or verifying data and seeking comments from opposing viewpoints seem to Bear much of the blame so I would say that that perspective is super common we have polling on this actually when you ask Americans what's wrong with the media they overwhelmingly say the problem is people are journalists deliberately lying doing it for a political agenda you know so that their side can win I would push back on that to some degree I if you read untrustworthy you'll find that I am quite critical of the modern day journalism industry in a lot of ways but I think that these sources of the problems that are you know evident tend to be a little bit more mundane and in that regard more difficult to notice and to Stamp Out and so you know you can certainly find cases of journals to deliberately lying often they're exposed by other journalists um but I would Point more to things like how do we make money right so in before the internet uh journalism was a cash cow if you go to local paper you were where people around classifieds right you wanted to sell a car you wanted to hire someone you paid to put it in the classifieds now you do that for free on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or what have you um journalism used to make a lot of money off ads and because there was so much money coming in and there was so little competition right like you might be the only paper you might be one of just three news station national news stations because there was so much money and so little competition that gave The Newsroom a lot of leeway you didn't have to sensationalize if you didn't want to to get eyeballs because there was nowhere else for the eyeballs to go like there's no alternative so now the advertising model is destroyed um there's you know there's a million places you can advertise Google ad networks Facebook ads there's you know you don't need to do classifieds anymore there's also far more competition right and in some cases in some ways this is a very good thing the internet has allowed a lot more voices to come into play but that increases the competition and then and so the quest and the subscription model isn't isn't really working the way it used to right like how many of us have jumped to paywall nobody wants to pay for online content there's this perception that like what if a story is online I am entitled to it by right it must be free to me so there's if this is a very much an open question of where is the money going to come from and competing in that Marketplace having to compete for for just like pennies of AD Revenue means you want to get a huge volume of views in most cases this is what what Outlets are going for and so how do you get that you've got to pump out content constantly so speed is a huge thing and when you're working on such a tight deadline like one day I wrote 18 Short news articles in a day 18. that's not that uncommon especially for a young early career journalist um that's not an outlandish thing and so when you have to just pump out story after story after Story and I was doing you know like more aggregation and Analysis not original reporting but in either case you just you only have so much time to do so many things if you need to interview sources um who who are you going to go to you're going to go to people who you know will be easily reached who's easily reached government officials people from big businesses people who have like a PR office where you can easily find their number you can call them you know they'll answer so that's who you call there's a strong incentive when you're under such a tight deadline to to reach out to those those very familiar voices so speed is a big part of it entertainment is a big part of it if you have a thousand headlines on the same story how do you stand out how do you get the clicks you the the incentivist to sensationalize so that's a big part of it as well um just because of this this need to you know journalists need to have salaries right we need to be able to pay the bills um that's not very that's not very exciting right like that's not as exciting as the political story now I will say I think there are two things that are a little bit more political one is yes we it is well established and you can look at this through campaign donations that's sort of the average journalist does lean left like that's that's very true um something like nine a lot of journalists don't donate to campaigns on principle but of those who do like 90 of donations go to Democrats uh and so that is you know that was sort of the state of the industry there's also um the way that works is many people who are more right-leaning don't even ever consider going into journalism so they're not even available to be to be hired and so what happens is even among very well-intended journalists who are trying to be fair trying to not you know bias their stories for their political side they don't know what they don't know and I think you see this a lot in religion reporting especially where you can have a whole Newsroom of people who nobody nobody was raised in church they're just unfamiliar they're not trying to be malicious they just are clueless um and so that's a big problem and then but it's it is like simple ignorance it's not um and you know it's ignorance that should be noticed and should be rectified and you should be hiring more diverse staff but it's not the same as as political deception and Malice and then finally I would just say there there is an industry internal industry debate going on right now about objectivity and and what what is the best way to tell the truth should you sort of strive for that old standard of neutrality and objectivity and being sort of that blank slate always quoting a Republican and a Democrat together and there there's you know there's a case for that there's a case for objectivity um I tend to think that that is certainly the way you should lean when you're on the reporting side you know I write opinions so that's not me um but there's there's a strong impulse among younger generations of journalists especially to say well you know we we have biases we we think we know what is true why can't we why can't we say what we believe to be true it's like a classic example of this would be somebody makes a a racist comment in the headline do you say you made a racist comment or do you say he made a racialized comment so the older model abuse they call it racialized the younger model says no we know it was racist why can't we say it was racist um and I think you know again I lean a little bit more towards for the reporting side for the the objectivity thing um but I also think that it is true that you know humans are not we're not robots we're not neutral we no one who works whose job is to look at politics all day is going to not have political opinions and I think it often is better to be transparent about that to tell readers what you think to tell readers in fact where your bias is and that is something that sort of the industry at large is trying to figure out how to do that everybody thank you very much in just a moment we're going to give you the last word um but before that a few thoughts for all of you who are joining us immediately after we conclude we'll be sending around an online feedback Forum we'd love to have your thoughts we agreed every one of these uh we really appreciate the input and try to incorporate them to make this program ever more more valuable to you all and as a small incentive for um you to give your feedback we'd like to offer anyone who does so to have will give you a code for the free Trinity Forum reading of your choice uh there's a lot of readings that we have that kind of bear very directly to today's discussion including Brave New World uh selections from Hannah are rents origins of totalitarianism and many others so hope you'll take advantage of that in addition tomorrow we'll be sending around a video link which includes or rather an email with a video linked to this conversation which you can share with your friends we'd love for you to share it with your friends we'll have a whole list of additional resources if you'd like to go further into the conversation including a number of our readings that bear directly on some of the authors that Bonnie has mentioned in her book as well as some of our other online conversations that have tackled this topic from different angles too in addition I'd like to invite everyone who is watching us to join the Trinity Forum society which is the community of people who help Advance the mission of the Trinity Forum to cultivate curate and disseminate the best of Christian thought in the Public Square for the common good there are many advantages to being a member of the Trinity Forum Society including a subscription to our quarterly readings a subscription to our daily what we're reading list of curated reading recommendations and as a special incentive for joining if you join for the first time or with your gift of a hundred dollars or more to support this kind of programming we will send you a signed copy of Bonnie's book untrustworthy so really hope that you will take advantage of that in terms of new events coming up our next online conversation will be on Friday November 4th the Friday before the election where we're going to get to hear from Richard Mal and Paul Miller on the topic how to be a patriotic Christian and for those of you who are in or near the DC area this Monday we're actually going to be hosting an in-person evening conversation at the national Press Club in downtown Washington DC with Andy Crouch and David Bailey on the topic can our culture be remade so we would love for you to join us either for our in-person uh evening conversations or our online conversations and there should be an opportunity to register for both of those in the chat feature coming up right now finally as promised Bonnie the last word is yours all right um so I wanted to share a prayer um written by Saint Thomas Aquinas which I encountered at some point relatively recently but I I started praying it daily while I was working on this book um sort of to to set my my intentions I guess for the day of writing and to think about um you know how what sort of writer did I want to be uh and I think you'll you'll understand why it seems so apt for this project as I read it so this is called the prayer before study creator of all things true source of light and wisdom lofty origin of all being graciously led a ray of your Brilliance penetrate into the darkness of my understanding and take from me the double darkness in which I have been born and obscurity of both sin and ignorance give me a sharp sense of understanding a retentive memory and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm point out the beginning direct the progress and help in completion through Christ Our Lord amen thank you Bonnie thank you thank you to all of you for joining us [Music]

Channel: The Trinity Forum

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Length: 58min 14sec (3494 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022