What is trustworthy?

There has been a lot of talk recently about the spread of so called “fake news”, and how to make sure what you’re reading is accurate. With the election and now possible re-election of Donald Trump, the culture wars have elevated the battle for reliability to the mainstream.

Many cites blatantly post false information as a means to spread their ideas, such as ABCnews.com.co, which is purposely designed to mimic ABC news. In addition, lots of perfectly legitimate news cites (like CNN or Fox) have been branded as fake news simply because some individuals disagree with their politics.

This represents a fundamental problem when attempting to discern what is trustworthy online. Nothing is trustworthy. All authors bring their own bias into news stories, regardless of their best attempts not to.

This isn’t a new problem, but it’s being acknowledged much more in the present day than in the past. This is unnecessary, because humans, as a whole, don’t care. We like weaponizing information to support our opinion, and will therefore ardently support whichever news story or cite most closely aligns with our vision.

That cite will be trustworthy in our eyes and nothing else will be. The question becomes how we can break out of this unfortunate reality.

We can’t. Human psychology dictates that we will always view what we already believe as more trustworthy than an opposing opinion. This is why you will have the same arguments with same people, over and over again, and never change your mind.

What is our hope then, what should we do? Probably something, but I doubt we ever will. As a species we have a very hard time changing something so ingrained in us as “the view you currently have is the correct one”.

Perhaps simply knowing this and acknowledging it is our first step. But probably not for many people. Wherever you are and whatever you believe, enjoy your echo chamber. You won’t escape.