In the aftermath of the Polar Vortex that struck the United States this week, several stories have been circulating describing how some people did not believe that the snow that had fallen in their own towns was real. While some level of paranoia has been a constant presence on the web since its inception (and was preceded by paper newsletters), it struck me as odd that whole groups of people could be so skeptical of the world around them that they begin to doubt the evidence of their own senses. But after some thought, I came to the conclusion that skepticism is an integral part of living in our information-saturated age. It should come as no surprise that some people have taken it to extremes.
Let's face it: the majority of the information that is presented to you via the web, on television, or anywhere else is wrong, misleading, biased, or some combination of the three. The legal and moral diligence that once surrounded published media has eroded in the face of both the ease in which content can be published, and the competition that the enormous quantity of content has produced, and it is now up to us, the readers, to evaluate, corroborate, and fact-check almost everything we read, watch or listen to. We make a choice -- on a case-by-case basis -- to believe or reject the media that we are exposed to. Some do this consciously and diligently, and others do it unconsciously, but we all do it.
In the face of this, it isn't really that far of a stretch to simply reject ALL media as a lie of some kind or other. It certainly makes a kind of sense, and some people would rather be knowingly ignorant than unknowingly mis-informed.
Unfortunately for those people, though, our brains don't work that way. We have always looked for patterns in what we see, and in the absence of input, our imaginations make monsters in the dark. With the only accepted truth being "Everyone is lying", it becomes all too easy to connect the dots in sinister patterns. From there, it's a short step to disbelieving the weather report even in the face of three feet of snow in your driveway.
As human beings, we crave information. We want to know what's happening. We want the world to make sense. To stay honest, we cannot take the philosophy of choosing what we most agree with, regardless of its truth. Nor can we reject everything as false, since that way lies madness. Instead, we must choose to accept the information that we think, based on corroboration and fact checking, is MOST correct, regardless of our agreement with it. An open mind and a healthy amount of skepticism is a good thing, but like everything, moderation is the key.
