Infodemic Protection - Be A Skeptic

Infodemic Protection - Be A Skeptic

Don't panic! Here's how: be a skeptic.

Hi! If you are experiencing panic, panic buying, and fear then I can recommend being a skeptic as one way to protect yourself from an infodemic defined as information induced panic.

skeptic, noun: 1) don't believe anything, 2) or take everything with a grain a salt.

Being a skeptic helps remove emotional attachment to information. This emotional attachment is one of the causes of panic and fear in an infodemic. This emotional attachment comes from believing something is true and incorporating that information into our world view. We update our internal working model of reality with the new information.

Don't.

But how does that work and one believe anything in order to go about life? That's what this essay is all about. This essay is about my personal journey in life as a skeptic.

There are many things to take into account when being a skeptic.

1. Assign new information to a source.
2. Ask the question does new information rises to a level of decision making.
3. Assign new information confidence to be balanced against cost and risk of any decisions.
4. Manage information conditioning.


Don't believe anything. This is what I call the default skeptic position. Think of this like your mind is just like a computer reading in a document file. The computer has no reaction to what's in the file.

In addiction to not believing anything is true then I also believe I don't know as the default remedy. Admit what you don't understand. I don't understand Medicare For All. I don't understand the War on Terror. If someone asks me about specific remedies or actions taken I say I don't know. I don't understand the coronavirus. I don't know if self-isolation is the optimal solution to minimizing impact. I do know that's what experts recommend and that's good enough for me to act upon. A skeptic then is not only skeptical of others but themselves. A true skeptic is the first person to admit they don't know and the last person to admit they do.

Remember the source and assign them the truth belief. In other words I don't say, "I believe Medicare For All is valid". I say "Bernie Sanders believes Medicare for All is valid." I also say, "Fox News believes Medicare for all is invalid." Being a skeptic in this fashion has huge benefits in conversation. If someone asks me what I believe then I say, "I don't know, I don't understand it". Which is the truth. I do know that various groups and individuals are pushing for and against the agenda. Source matters even for text books in school because all text books have authors. Anonymous writing provides the least confidence. This is why I don't waste my time on publications like "The Financial Times", or FT. The FT has great articles but because they are all sourced anonymous and then I cannot fit them into my skeptical model other than to say one group, the FT publishers, believe something. That is insufficient so I do not consume the FT.

Believe nothing is all well and good until at some point we are required to take action. Such is the case today with self-isolation and social distancing for coronavirus. Having a skeptical belief of "I don't know" is sufficient until one is required to act. This is when new information rises to the level of decision making. A good skeptic's responsibility at this point is to weigh the costs and risks of such decisions against the information. For example, the cost and risk of self-isolation and social distancing for a few weeks for me personally is nominal. I live alone.  I work remote as a software engineer and have since 2012. Working remote is just a normal day for me. However, I am limiting my outings. Most of my outings are for either food or entertainment. No big deal. There is no one in my house I can infect or can infect me.

Sometimes new information decision  costs and risks outweigh new information confidence. For example if someone told me that the Yellowstone Park caldera was about to erupt and cover half of the United States in a cloud of ash then I'd want strong confirmation from many sources of that information before I moved out of the United States.

So far we've come to understand our axiom to not believe anything to mean the following things. First remember the source of any information and ascribe the belief to them, even in conversations in your own mind and as well as with others. Second admit you know nothing. Admit you do not understand Medicare for All. Just say I don't know. Third ask yourself if some new information rises to the level of decision making before taking any belief position. Finally the last thing so far is when something does require us to act then we weigh the costs and risks against the information confidence. One's reason for not acting on new information as simple truth is the continuous supply of new information. Being a skeptic rejects absolute truth because there is always new information to update confidence, confidence that is used in the balance of making decisions.

What we've covered so far about being a skeptic is mental yoga. We are emotionally distancing ourselves from every belief. Emotional distancing means we avoid emotional attachment of something being believed true.

I find this mental yoga insufficient because we are all prone to conditioning. Advertising works solely on conditioning. Advertising works by repeatedly bombarding you with repetitive information. Being a good skeptic then requires managing conditioning of information belief.

Conditioning will be specific to your brain and your physiology. What I'm detailing here cannot be universally applied with assured success. Rather consider what I've written as suggestions for where you may begin formulating your own plan.

Mybrid's conditioning defenses:

1. Turn off the television. I have not watched television since 1984. Chris Matthews recently retired on air after twenty years on television. I never once watched his show. Am I encouraging ignorance? I am not because I...

2. Read the news. I can read information five times faster than anyone speaks it. Turning off the television for me then is not ignorance but instead far better information management because I can consume more it or spend less time consuming it, my choice. Reading news is conducive to my next defense of...

3. Read competing news. I read both liberal and conservative news. In fact there are many factions of liberal and conservative and I consume many such factions. Isn't that confusing? You would be correct in thinking that reading conflicting world views can be confusing when truths collide. However, remember as a skeptic one of our mental yoga exercises is to assign beliefs to their sources and don't update these views as our own word view. Democrats believe one truth, Republicans believe the opposite. I personally remain ambivalent as most politics do not rise to the level of decision making. Further I remain indifferent if I don't know the topic. I am clueless about Medicare. I have never studied it. It stands to reason then I am clueless about Medicare for All. I have no belief. I can tell you what Republicans and Democrats believe though. I do know the health care system fails me personally. For example, I pay $1,200/mo. with a $6,000 deductible. I have never met the deductible because I'm in good health as far as the need for our existing health care services available. I do have undiagnosed, non-life threatening conditions I'd like to have looked at but the current  services do not exist. I got off on a tangent here but the point is read competing news always. This is one of the reasons why I do not watch television. If a news broadcast takes one hour then how many people will watch another hour of television? None, I imagine. However I can read in five minutes the same amount of information contained in an hour news cast. To whit, I can spend an hour and read multiple competing news sources where someone watching television only consumes one news source.

4. Play devil's advocate. We all have political leanings. One benefit of reading competing news sources is one knows opposing arguments. So make them in real conversations with real people. I find this particular exercise quite satisfying. My favorite method of playing devil's advocate is not by opposition but alignment. For example, I'm a liberal and will often times talk with conservative as if I am a conservative. I try and be more conservative then the conservatives. This method of devil's advocate means there is no adversarial emotions. Everyone is in agreement and leave the conversation happy. One thing about playing devil's advocate is that some people will come to know you are espousing opposing beliefs and accuse one of being a hypocrite. Not true. I play devil's advocate to manage conditioning or what is called today confirmation bias where people only seek out information they already agree with. By playing devil's advocate I am seeking out new information I do not agree with. I am a skeptic exercising my skepticism by listening to opposing view points in non-confrontational conversation. Objectivity is balance and not absence. The power of suggestion and resulting conditioning is one of the most dominant powers of shaping our world view. We are all susceptible because we are all human where even just weekly browsing brands on display  in a supermarket will condition us. There is no objectivity with conditioning. As a skeptic I imagine I may appear more objective than most because I consume competing truths daily and stay calm using a mental yoga focused emotional distancing. But I am not objective because I am human.

5. Meter news intake. Deliberately limit your information intake of say Facebook to a fixed period of once or twice per day.

Skepticism is a protection against infodemics because skeptics practice a mental yoga of emotional distancing. Skepticism is a shield blocking infodemic panic because skeptics take active steps to  limit conditioning. Skeptics then are protected against panic and fear because emotional attachment that is need for incorporating new information into our world view is downplayed and conditioning is managed.

As a skeptic I highly recommend being a skeptic as a way to mange personal health for ongoing infodemics in the future.

What if its too late? What if you are not a currently a skeptic and feel trapped in your panic and fear right now? One remedy that works for me is to start a new project that when completed leaves behind a tangible accomplishment in the real world. Take up knitting and knit yourself a hat to display for all the world to see afterwards! Something like that. This infodemic will end. If you take up a new constructive project then at the end of the current terror you are currently feeling then you will have what you constructed as a reminder that you not only survived a previous infodemic, but also made something new that you still use! This builds self confidence and this new confidence can even be invested in a new things, like a new journey of becoming a skeptic with infodemic defenses.


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