On Race

Writing about race is hard. I am doing it with good intentions. It is to carve out a place for treating all people well while not having other people’s beliefs imposed upon me.

Leftists find a willing accomplice in the well-meaning anti-racist, those who think racism is systemic are too easily persuaded that the way to fix racism is to dismantle the system. All the socialist has to do is whisper “capitalism is racist.” All the anarchist has to do is shout “policing is racist.” All the communist has to say is “democracy is racist.” If they go on to say “science is racist, reason is racist” then, if they get their way, the Enlightenment is over and it is back to superstitions of the Dark Ages. Don’t fall for it. Instead ask, “OK, after we dismantle the system, then what?

Of course black lives matter, lower case. The trouble is woke leftists overran Black Lives Matter, the organization. From the BLM website what-we-believe page: "engage comrades," "dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women," "dismantle the patriarchal practice," "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure." Fortunately that page was removed. But what remains on the site has the same font as communist propaganda. Coincidence? 

Those are concerns about the extreme Left. But even moderate incarnations like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are troubling. And the trouble is including race as a criteria for decision-making, such as hiring, promotions, college acceptance, and supplier selection (I work in purchasing). That’s because race is superficial. It is only skin deep. It is unrelated to merit.

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” ~ MLK from his “I have a dream” speech

At least that's how I was raised. As a result I try and usually succeed in treating everyone respectfully. When I don’t succeed it might not even be related to race, despite what unconscious bias training programs might say. When we strive to be color-blind we exclude race from decision-making, whereas DEI programs seek to bring race into play. When a characteristic unrelated to merit is brought into decision-making, merit can suffer as a trade-off.  Also being challenged are enlightenment values like reason, objectivity, and the scientific method by "other ways of knowing," "indigenous folk science," "lived experience," and "my truth." When merit, science, and truth are undermined, outcomes deteriorate.

Yes, writing about race is hard. Time to give it a rest!

Presumption of Innocence and Woke Cancel Culture

There is a principle in criminal law called the Blackstone Ratio, which says "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." This liberal principle is an expression of the Presumption of Innocence, which is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Article 11.(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. 

Not all people in history have agreed with this sentiment, however. Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh said "Better ten innocent deaths than one enemy survivor." 

These are statements about the perceived costs of false positives (identifying an innocent person as guilty) versus the costs of false negatives (identifying a guilty person as innocent).   On one end we have people valuing freedom on the other those who value purity. Leftism as expressed through woke cancel culture is currently moving towards purity by neglecting false positives. Increasingly it seems the prevailing view is that it's better to accuse 10 innocent people of racism than to miss one. It's better 10 innocent men get wrongly accused and fired than for one sexual predator to not. Better to have 10 innocent shunned than one enemy among our midst. This is moving us to a place where people excessively censor and self-censor, which impairs productive dialogue. This outcome is an inevitable consequence of costless false positives. There is almost no cost to identifying an innocent person as a bigot. Not only can it not be proven wrong, the only time accusations backfire is in the form of lawsuits for libel, defamation, or wrongful dismissal, which are costly and rare.

One way to counter this impulse is to impose social costs on dubious accusations. People should be criticized for accusing innocent people. Innocence here does not have to be proven; it is to be presumed. If someone cannot support their accusation, they are to be countered for inaccurate bigotry detection and for toying with peoples’ reputations. But innocence is not presumed if certain categories of people are said to be inherent oppressors and that systemic racism permeates society. That’s the rub.

The Presumption of Innocence comes into play in other arenas. Consider argumentation. Best practice includes giving your interlocutor the benefit of the doubt. Have a charitable view of her motivations. When summarizing her position, build a steel-man not a straw-man. Do it so even she agrees with your representation of her views. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. To understand is to forgive. In contrast, the calls for justice by social justice activists sometimes sound shrill, more like vengence. Social Vengence!

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Journalist Andrew Sullivan described two steps to get back on track. First, get Trump out to quell extremism on the right. Complete. Second is to pivot and confront the leftist, woke, critical race activists that Biden will enable. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order reinstating critical race theory training for government employees. He also prioritizes ending systemic racism – an inherently elusive goal. Now both chambers of Congress are Democrat majorities, allowing woke infiltration into government, academia, and corporations to continue unabated. It will be interesting to see if pundits Sullivan, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, even Tucker Carlson will have any dampening effect.  Meanwhile Christopher Rufo, who penned Trump’s ban on critical race theory in government training, is forming “a new coalition of law firms and legal foundation with the explicit goal of fighting critical race theory in the courts.” And Helen Pluckrose launched Counterweight to help people resist the imposition of critical social justice on their everyday lives. We will see how it all plays out.

Maybe in another post I will articulate my objections to critical social justice, woke ideology, diversity/equity/inclusion programs, and so on.

Braver Angels

I attended an online workshop put on by Braver Angels (https://braverangels.org), an organization that seeks to depolarize American politics. The workshop is called Depolarizing Within: Becoming a Better Angel in Your Own World. It teaches you how to find your own polarizing speech even when talking with like-minded people. It called out 4 markers of polarization: stereotyping, dismissing, ridiculing, and contempt. That’s when it hit me. Those are also characteristics we warn against as being bigoted. Polarization and bigotry both show a lack of respect for the “other,” for those people, for people who are different.

Overdoing Democracy

In 2011 I completed a Master of Liberal Arts & Science at Vanderbilt University. As an alum I was recently allowed to audit a course in Ethics taught by Robert Talisse. Dr. Talisse has become quite active authoring books, doing podcasts, and in social media. His book Overdoing Democracy (2019) presents the great idea that democracy, if it is to be effective, needs to be kept in its place. That is, politics need not permeate everything. We all need endeavors where politics are beside the point. Examples: raising a family, most jobs and volunteering, sports, music, and art.

Here are excerpts taken from various pages of the book that seem to flow fairly well together:

“Belief polarization besets individuals who talk only or mainly to others who share their fundamental commitments. To be more specific, when individuals talk mainly with others about the matters upon which they agree, discussants tend gradually to embrace a more extreme version of their initial opinion. Belief polarization is the tendency whereby discussion among likeminded people results in the participants shifting to a more extreme version of their pre-discussion belief. 

“So the first step to take toward putting politics in its place is to acknowledge our own vulnerability to the polarization dynamic. We need to work to recognize in ourselves the vulnerability to the same distortions and corruptions that we commonly ascribe only to our political opposition. We should acknowledge that our own views are likely products of belief polarization.  <We should> recognize that the common asymmetry in ascribing the effects of the polarization dynamic is unfounded, and that one’s own view of one’s political opposition is likely the product of polarization. 

“Putting politics in its place involves establishing boundaries within our social environments, and thereby restricting the reach of democracy so that social encounters of other kinds can take place. Hence it is consistent with being a vigilant and conscientious democratic citizen who is fully devoted to justice to simply refuse to use Facebook as a site for political action, for example. And although friends and feeds might contend otherwise, there is no dereliction of one’s political duty in using social media strictly to look at videos of pets. 

“If we are to work on breaking the polarization dynamic, what we need to do is engage in endeavors that satisfy a particular description; namely, they must involve us in cooperative activities with others whose political commitments are not only unknown to us but also beside the point. And although there are certain collective activities that are intrinsically political, whether a collaboration of some other sort counts as nonpolitical in the relevant sense depends largely on what we bring to it. 

“Hence the practical recommendation: after working to rehabilitate your view of your political opponents, try taking up some cooperative project or endeavor that you regard as not having a determinate political valence. If this project is something out of the ordinary for you, all the better. Volunteer to pick up litter in a local park or to teach someone to read at the public library. Sign up with a group that visits the elderly and infirm. Join a bowling team or book club. Register for a cooking class. Participate in a community organization. Begin following a local sports team. Organize a trivia night at a local bar or start up a group that supports local businesses. Audition for a local choir. It ultimately does not matter very much what you choose to try; the important thing is that you do something that you sincerely take not to be an expression of your particular political identity. The idea is that if we can multiply social encounters where citizens collaborate to produce what they regard as a valuable outcome, but in collaborating are unaware of one another’s political allegiances, we will be on our way to breaking the polarization dynamic as well as cultivating civic friendship.”

Talisse summarizes: “I first identified two measures that one can take in order to begin breaking the polarization dynamic and putting politics in its place. The first is to acknowledge one’s own vulnerability to polarization; the second is to take small but nonetheless significant steps to desaturate one’s immediate environment. I then proposed that once these measures are taken, the next step is to involve oneself in social activities that one sincerely judges are not expressions of one’s politics. The overriding objective of these efforts—and the key to breaking the polarization dynamic more generally—is to enable a rehabilitation of one’s conception of one’s political opponents. To acknowledge that our political animosities and divisions are at least partly the result of a debilitating syndrome to which we all are subject is to begin to reestablish the capacity to regard one’s political rivals as one’s equals. Once we recognize that our perception of the depth and severity of our political divisions are due to a dynamic that afflicts us all, and once we follow that recognition with cooperative engagements that reaffirm the humanity and civility of those whose politics are unknown to us, we can begin to admit that our political conflicts are not necessarily the result of our opposition’s depravity and corruption. Hence we will be able to affirm that, despite their being severely misguided, wrong, and ignorant when it comes to the political things that matter most, our political opponents are nonetheless our equals and therefore are entitled to an equal democratic say. 

The point of democracy—and also its good—lies in the nurturing of things beyond politics. The point of democracy is human flourishing. That is what democracy is for. Our flourishing, both individually and collectively, depends also on the realization of goods that cannot be won by politics alone.”

Now let me take it one step further. Not only can we overdo democracy and politics, but we can also overdo government itself. If we feel so strongly about elections, maybe it means government has taken an outsized role in our lives. A limited government safeguarded by our Constitutional checks and balances is what we need. This will allow private enterprise and individual responsibility to take precedence. It is an argument for Libertarianism, if not as final destination, at least as a direction.

The War of Art

I see my last post was June 2018. Wow, 2-1/2 years ago!

Jon Acuff, a motivational speaker who happens to live in my neighborhood, recommends the book The War of Art (2002). In it author Steven Pressfield describes how to overcome resistance by pursuing your creativity like a professional, getting up every morning to just do it.  So here I am before 7am -- writing. I have some things to say. Verbally I sometimes stumble or hesitate to bring up the controversial topics I read and think about.  Like philosophy, religion, politics, science, and culture wars. I am stepping down from two volunteer programs I’ve been supporting for the last 5 years with hopes of creating space for new endeavors. I am stepping down without knowing what those new endeavors might be. We will see. But my first idea is to try writing. I will stop now to poop and watch the CBS morning news for today’s eye opener -- your world in 90 seconds. It is a great way to check on current events without dwelling on them. 

Back now.

The volunteer roles were with two wonderful organizations: Recovering from Religion and SMART Recovery. Recovering from Religion helps people who are struggling with or leaving their faith. I served as a helpline agent taking incoming calls and chats, curating website resource links, interviewing new volunteers, and facilitating support group meetings. SMART Recovery helps people overcome addictive behaviors with a secular, science-based approach. I started the first support group meetings in middle Tennessee and became regional coordinator for the state of Tennessee. Turnover is a problem that can beset any organization, but especially volunteer organizations, when knowledge and experience suddenly walk out the door.  Succession planning is important to me so I have been busy developing my replacements. Almost complete.

Time to get started on my day job, the one I get paid for. Since the pandemic I work 100% from home. All I have to do is slide over to the next desk in my office. When I return I will tell you about my office.

My office is upstairs. It is either a small extra bedroom or a big alcove with sloped ceilings (13’x11’). My work computer sits on my desk, the Apple Mac sits beside on a card table with one of those multi-purpose printer-copier-scanner-fax machines in between. Along the wall with the window are shelves holding knick-knacks, awards, framed photos, diplomas, and certificates. There’s my chess set, dumbbells, metal box with important papers, sofa, Bluetooth speaker, and guitar. By the door is my bookcase with books I’ve read but can’t seem to part with, including The War of Art. And there sits our dog, Cooper, a Jack Russell Terrier and Shih Tzu mix – which makes him a Jack Shits! All this with just enough clutter for that inviting, lived-in look.

Ok let’s get into a topic.

I voted for Libertarian Jo Jorgensen in the 2020 Presidential election. The Republican and Democratic nominees where not appealing to me. I could not vote for Trump because of his lying and bragging. I was concerned about Biden’s age, mental acuity, and the woke illiberal Left flank of the Democratic Party. So I voted for Jo Jorgensen because she is a reasonable person, but also to express my displeasure with the candidates presented by the two-party system and to follow my libertarian instincts.  I almost voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016, but his bizarre comments towards the end of his campaign seemed intended to deliberately shoo away votes. I sensed that the race was getting tight so I changed my mind in the voting booth and voted for Hillary Clinton, never Trump. When you vote 3rd party you have to overcome the valid argument that you are throwing your vote away since there is no chance of winning. But I feel good about it because I expressed my Libertarian leanings: freedom of choice, free trade, free movement across borders, freedom of speech and thought, and limited, non-aggressive government. A friend likes to tell me “Libertarians live in a bad neighborhood, right next to anarchy.”  Let me assure I am no extremist or anarchist. I am a centrist and a moderate who leans toward liberty.

More to follow.

Meaning

Don Quixote. Great novel!  It is the story of a 50-year-old man who goes crazy reading adventure stories about chivalry and knights in shining armor. He decides he will become a knight, gets a make-shift helmet and sword, gets on his old horse and rides around the Spanish countryside with his squire Sancho Panza seeking adventures, righting wrongs, and saving damsels in distress. Everyone knows he is completely crazy – he thinks windmills are giants to be slayed. But then he says the most wonderful things.

Don Quixote got me thinking about what great missions I might accomplish in the rest of my life. It inspired me to start a blog about the fictional adventures of Bijonbo — my childhood nickname — a heroic, fictional version of me!

Then I changed course and started posting my Toastmasters speeches in my blog:

1. Wise-Elder-In-Training -- 9/28/2016

In the first Toastmasters speech – The Icebreaker – I explained that my goal was not only to improve my public speaking skills, but I have a special goal in mind. I want to practice talking about the things I've learned so I can help people. So I can give counsel. So I can become a wise elder someday. But I am not a wise elder yet. I am a wise-elder-in-training.

I wrote all of the next three speeches over Christmas break that year. They cover some interpersonal counseling skills I’ve been learning.

2. Turn Conflict into Creativity -- 1/19/2017

3. Non-Violent Communication -- 2/9/2017

4. Motivational Interviewing -- 4/20/2017

The gist of motivational interviewing is you can’t motivate someone else but you can help them find their own motivation.

5. Investing Lessons -- 7/13/2017

Then I turned to a practical topic – Investing – based on advice I give to my sons. Buy and hold index funds!

6. Wisdom in The Axial Age -- 9/28/2017

Next I explored wisdom from the ancients – Socrates, Confucius, and The Buddha.

7. Vendor Tooling Audit -- 10/26/2017

Then I did a work-related speech as practice for making clear business presentations.

8. Shaky Hands -- 2/8/2018

Next I brought my guitar to show how I overcome shaky hands when performing or public speaking.

9. Truth -- 5/10/2018

I sent a link to this speech about Truth to the authors of the Pro-Truth Pledge and the Baloney Detection Kit. I asked them to share the link in their social media, which they both did. As a result, this blog post got over 1200 views – which is 12X my previous record!

10. Meaning -- 6/7/2018

At long last, this is my 10th and final Toastmasters speech in the Competent Communication manual – and the assignment is to inspire the audience. Now I could give a pre-game pep talk, but it is hard to inspire other people. The enthusiasm doesn’t last. But I can show you, through my examples, how to build and maintain motivation over a life full of meaning. And to see if they same approach will inspire you.

Thinking about what motivates me reminds me of a paper I wrote in 2007 during my first year in Vanderbilt University's masters degree program. The title was “Work Ethic: How to Enjoy Your Job (Even If Your Boss is a Jerk!)” Now please understand that I am not talking about anyone at my current employer! I worked for another employer at the time and the bosses in question are retired and out of the workforce.

Over the years I've developed a secret point of view that motivates me when work gets frustrating or dull or when my boss acts like a jerk. My secret is to view work as my contribution to society. A vital step is to identify exactly how it makes the world a better place. This gives our day-to day tasks more meaning. For some, it’s obvious. I have a friend who was a nurse at a hospital delivery room.  She gets an immediate, first-hand sense of gratification from helping mothers deliver babies.  But in our complex economy, it may not be so easy.  For example, my work in Purchasing is a few steps removed from the end customer. Yet I can see that my work is part of a system that makes products that meet people’s needs. We negotiate lower prices and control costs with suppliers and, in so doing, we work on behalf of our customers who demand a good value when they buy our products. Now if I took the approach that I am negotiating lower prices to make more profit for my company, it would put me at odds with the supplier who seeks profit through higher prices.  But if we both approach the negotiation as together seeking ways to make products at lower cost, then we both win because we are part of a supply chain that meets the needs of more and more customers.

I’m viewing this 10th speech as a capstone project, bringing together themes from all my speeches. It is like my capstone project at Vanderbilt where I wrote my own personal creed. It was a 45-page research paper and I gave an oral defense in front of 3 professors. I won’t cover all the creed statements today except the first and last one: I Value Authenticity – what you see is what you get. And: I believe these statements are provisional and subject to improvement as understanding advances and circumstances change. That’s so I don’t get set in my ways and dogmatic. So far in 7 years I haven’t made any changes … until today!

I’ve learned a few things since then. As Michael Shermer said in his 2015 book The Moral Arc “we can judge actions as right or wrong” by asking “do they increase or decrease the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings?” You see, across the indifferent universe - life is scarce and precious. There may be some bacteria here and there but intelligent life is rare and amazing. We have the ability to ponder our evolutionary origins, our futures, and the meaning of life.  If the survival and flourishing of life is our guide, then the meaning of life is the furthering of life itself. So I am adding that thought to my creed.

We hear a lot about follow your dreams and find your passion. But it always seemed like something was missing -- until I found this chart that pulls it all together.

 

Do what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. At the intersection of these is your IKIGAI – a Japanese idea that translates, roughly, to life purpose, reason for being, or raison d'être in French. Now we all might not be lucky enough for our career to meet all 4 of these categories, so we might consider adding other projects. That’s why singer-songwriters wait tables in Nashville. In my case, I supplement my professional career by playing in a hobby rock-&-roll band (what I love) and I do volunteer work where I help people overcome addictions and irrational beliefs (what the world needs). So I added “IKIGAI” to my creed and now my updated creed looks like this:

My Creed, 2011 – (2018 updates in red)

• I value authenticity.
• I believe in protecting and promoting civil liberties both personal and economic.
• I believe choosing action that furthers the survival, flourishing, and evolution of sentient beings is a useful ethical guideline.
• I believe the evolution of cooperation is the source of morality. 
• I believe tit-for-tat (cooperate, retaliate, and forgive), which in game theory is the winningest strategy in iterative prisoners dilemma, is useful in everyday life. Fool me, once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.  
• I believe in education and life-long learning.
• I believe in the sciences, including physical and social sciences, as our best means of improving the human condition.
• I believe free markets, as emergent complex adaptive systems, are our best means of allocating resources.
• I believe in a limited, transparent government whose only role is to defend civil liberties, protect property rights, and mitigate unwanted market externalities.
• I believe in global free trade in goods, services, and information. To trade is to wage peace.
• I believe in getting into the Flow of life, work, and play, focusing attention on what matters most while staying open to the adjacent possible and connecting the dots.
• I believe in creating art and appreciating beauty.
• I believe in treating others with respect and kindness.
• I believe life’s purpose (IKIGAI) can be found at the intersection of doing what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
• I believe these statements are provisional and subject to improvement as understanding advances and circumstances change.

In conclusion, inspiring you with a motivational speech might not be my strong suit. Instead, you can see how I deliberately built a personal philosophy to maintain motivation and to live a life of purpose over the long haul. You see - the meaning of life is the meaning you make. So instead of a pep-talk for inspiration I leave you with this song inspired by Don Quixote…

The Impossible Dream
To dream ... the impossible dream ...

To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...

To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...

To run ... where the brave dare not go ...

To right ... the unrightable wrong ...

To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...

To try ... when your arms are too weary ...

To reach ... the unreachable star ...

This is my quest, to follow that star ...

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...

To fight for the right, without question or pause ...

To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,

That my heart will lie peaceful and calm,

when I'm laid to my rest ...

And the world will be better for this:

That one man, scorned and covered with scars,

Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,

To reach ... the unreachable star ...

-- from 1964 play and 1972 film: Man of La Mancha (aka Don Quixote)

Truth

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers;
wider freeways but narrower viewpoints;
we spend more but have less;
we buy more but enjoy it less;
we have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences yet less time;
we have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgement;
more experts yet more problems.” And so on.

“Isn’t it amazing that comedian George Carlin could write something so very eloquent… and so very appropriate? His wife had recently died. What a difference a sad event makes in someone’s life.”

The full essay and those comments were posted on websites, shared with chain emails (remember those?), and later made the rounds on social media. I first saw it when a friend posted it on Facebook. Now, I know George Carlin’s humor and it just didn’t sound like something he would say. So I checked into it and sure enough – it’s a hoax. Carlin did not write it. It was written in 1995 by a pastor named Dr. Bob Moorehead. I told my friend it wasn’t Carlin and suggested she take it down, which she did. But a year later, she posted it again – I guess she really liked that essay! I had to remind her that we had been around this block before. Then last year I found the Pro-Truth Pledge. I looked into it, took the pledge, and sent it to my friend. She took the pledge too. Now she makes sure what she posts is true and it has become a discussion topic between us. I will get back to the Pro-Truth Pledge in a minute, but first let’s get our arms around the problem.

A recent study of Twitter data from 2006 to 2017 found that “Falsehood diffused significantly farther and faster than the truth … especially false political news … false news was more novel than true news, so people were more likely to share novel information…. robots spread true and false news at the same rate, so the problem is with humans, not robots. [paraphrased]”

You see, we are all are a bunch of liars. White lies, half-truths, and tall tales are everywhere. When someone asks how we are doing, we say “fine” even when you’re not.  What do you say when your wife asks if her dress makes her look fat? Tell the truth? No way! Has anyone seen Jim Carey’s movie Liar Liar? It shows how everything falls apart when his son makes a wish that his dad, who is a lawyer, cannot lie. Entire episodes of sitcoms are often based on someone covering up a lie.

What is a lie, exactly? To lie is to say something other than what you think is true. It is to know what is true, or at least think you know, and then to intentionally say something different to achieve some goal. We naturally try to avoid telling lies, but sometimes we will lie if we think the benefit of achieving the goal outweighs the cost of the lie.

And then we have bullshit. That’s right, I said it. There really is no better word to describe it. As philosopher Harry Frankfurt explains in his 2005 book titled On Bullshit, "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share." But what is bullshit exactly? To bullshit is to say something without regard for whether it is true or not to achieve a goal that is unrelated to the truth of what you are saying. Bullshit often emerges when we are expected to say more about a subject than we actually know.

What can we, you and me, do about the spread of lies, bullshit, and false news? One step is to take the Pro-Truth Pledge:

Share Truth

• Verify: fact-check information to confirm it is true before accepting and sharing it
• Balance: share the whole truth, even if some aspects do no support my opinion
• Cite: share my sources so that others can verify my information
• Clarify: distinguish between my opinion and the facts

Honor Truth

• Acknowledge when others share true information even when we disagree otherwise
• Reevaluate if my information is challenged, retract it if I cannot verify it
• Defend others when they come under attack for sharing true information, even when we disagree otherwise
• Align my opinions and my actions with true information

Encourage Truth

• Fix: ask people to retract information that reliable sources have disproved even when they are my allies
• Educate: compassionately inform those around me to stop using unreliable sources, even if these sources support my opinion
• Defer: recognize the opinions of experts as more likely to be accurate when the facts are disputed
• Celebrate those who retract incorrect statements and update their beliefs toward the truth

To verify claims and information we can check websites like factchecker.com, truthorfiction.com, hoax-slayer.net, and snopes.com. Or Google it or look it up in Wikipedia.

We can join organizations like The Skeptics Society which promotes scientific skepticism and fights the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. They published a Baloney Detection Kit:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Does verifiable evidence exist?
9. Does the new explanation account for as many phenomena as the old explanation did?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

You can apply the Pro-Truth Pledge and the Baloney Detection Kit at work. A useful phrase is “what evidence justifies your claim?” When in doubt, check it out!

So go online and take the Pro-Truth Pledge. Post it in your office. Use the Baloney Detection Kit. Make sure what you say is true and what you share online is true. Ask for evidence to justify claims. And most of all – set yourself apart – and be a truth-teller.

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Pro-Truth Pledge       https://www.protruthpledge.org/        

The Spread of True and False News Online http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146

FactCheck                   https://www.factcheck.org/ 

TruthOrFiction            http://www.truthorfiction.com/

Hoax-Slayer                 https://www.hoax-slayer.net/ 

Snopes                         https://www.snopes.com/  

The Skeptics Society  https://www.skeptic.com/ 

Baloney Detection Kit - by Michael Shermer, term coined by Carl Sagan
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/03/16/baloney-detection-kit/