That we’re living in a post-factual world isn’t in serious doubt. What remains to be resolved is the recursive question as to whether evidence that the world is post-factual should be allowed into debates as to whether the world is post-factual.
If you need evidence, (don’t worry — in spite of immense provocation I’m going to make no mention of Donald Trump, on the grounds that hitting the side of a barn does not demonstrate marksmanship) … I say, if you need evidence:
- When “proving” the horrors of authoritarian government, which are you more likely to cite — a list of Joseph Stalin’s atrocities, or George Orwell’s 1984?
- When attempting to demonstrate the nightmarish consequences of a social welfare state, do opponents find a social welfare hellhole to make their point, or do they bring up Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?
- The Republican party’s most influential economic policy wonk, Paul Ryan, has ideas so deeply rooted in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, that for years he gave copies to his interns to get them on board with his thinking.
- While political liberals have no obvious equivalent work of fiction to cite, there is Harry Potter and the Millennials (Anthony Gierzynski and Kathryn Eddy, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). Its authors persuasively demonstrate that J.K. Rowling’s series had a strong liberalizing influence: Her audience embraced her protagonists’ widely tolerant pluralism, skepticism of authority and the press, and aversion to violence and torture as acceptable means to even worthwhile ends … not because of any social theory, but because of how the good guys, bad guys, and bumblers in between behaved in the books.
- Closer to home, it’s pretty clear that Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese has had far more impact on how business executives think about organizational change than any formulation that actually, for example, works.
- And closer yet to home, Gene Kim’s and Kevin Behr’s The Phoenix Project did more to persuade most industry thinkers that DevOps is real, practical, and important than any real-world DevOps projects.
Not that this is a new phenomenon. If you think otherwise, a title: Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Fiction as proof has inestimable value for the persuader. As characters, events, and, in some fantasy and science fiction, the laws of physics must all bow down and behave according to the author’s whims, in fiction it’s possible to “prove” whatever the author wants to prove. As an example: in The Moral Hazard of Lime Daiquiris, Dave Kaiser and I proved that hiring only seriously ugly employees is a winning business strategy. Nothing to it. All we had to do was … oh, wait, maybe if I don’t tell you you’ll buy a copy.
It isn’t that fiction has no valid role to play in shaping opinion. Because of the way we humans go about the business of thinking, fiction is often the best way to illustrate an idea, especially in an era of limited attention spans. But illustration and demonstration are two very different matters. What makes fiction dangerous is how easily it can nudge an unwary reader across the line that separates the two.
Persuasion through fiction is, to be fair, nowhere near as nasty as persuasion through the utterly vicious disregard for decency shown by the trolls, fake news sites, unrepentant and repeated lies, and conspiracy theories amplified and bounced around the Twitter-verse by Tweet ‘bots.
But given what’s been published on the subject of post-factualism, you might think it’s limited to audiences that read this crap and accept it uncritically because, if its members have even heard the phrase “confirmation bias,” they think it’s something that only the idiots who disagree with them are afflicted with.
While that might be what we’re descending into, I don’t think it’s where post-factualism starts. I think it starts with conflating fact and fiction.
And if you think this is just one of Bob’s occasional social commentary rants, it’s worth pointing out that the world of business is far from immune. Google “Comet Ping Pong pizzeria” if you don’t believe me.
Consider: If a pizza joint with ping pong tables can be the target today, your company could just as easily be in the crosshairs tomorrow.
Which leads to a suggestion: If you don’t already have a social media listening post set up, set one up. Make sure it’s set to monitor darker sources and detect darker material than your average “Your product sucks!” Facebook post.
Meanwhile, don’t wait until a bunch of crazed conspiracy theorists start accusing your organization of violating the Don’t Be Creepy rule.
The time to plan is before you need to respond, not when you’re under attack.
Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.
– Leo Rosten
GREAT early morning LOL about marksmanship and the side of a barn!!!
Coincidentally, I recently finished reading The Moral Hazard. It was a fun read, especially seeing how a modest event inspired quite a complex tale!
And your next article needs to address the question you pose at the end – how DO you respond effectively, when the attacks are impervious to facts, and denials are assumed to be part of the cover-up?
Maybe the answer is instead of going after the trolls we need to go after the companies that pay for the click bait. After all money is what drives a lot of this fake news not free speach. Take out the garbage and maybe there is room for honest debate. Call me an optimist!
We run into similar situations when attempting to ferret out information on our network. Managers tend to side with their employees when reporting problems. When the “problems” are mentioned in a group, other people chime in with information that they think is related – and then you wonder how anything works.
We are working on some basic troubleshooting questions to have our IT staff ask whenever some of these issues are repeated. We want to be sure that there is a problem and what the problem is.
We are also learning to not necessarily defend our technology, but ask better questions to determine if the problem is with the technology, settings, monitoring, user, etc.
A Moral Hazard reader! Thank you (yes I am that Dave)!
Well written Bob. The polarization in the US amazes me and it seems to feed the generators of crap. People seek out the view they want to hear whether it is factual or not.
I’m of course over generalizing as I do know a number of fair minded and balanced people who look at all sides and then actually debate the issues in a fair way.
There is another tie in to business. How many of us have worked with people that use “metrics” to promote their point of view, no matter how fictitious or inaccurate they are? When you challenge their “facts” you see the deer in the highlights reaction and are brushed off.
All that said, anyone knows that ping pong and pizza don’t mix. Obvious that something evil must have been going on. (I’m kidding)
David Plotz of the Slate Political Gabfest pointed out recently that the factual world only existed for a brief period. Those bemoaning the post-factual world forget that the factual world only existed in the West, and only briefly. It has never existed in Russia or China, and only existed in the U.S. from mid-20th Century until today. The starting point is hard to pin down, but the HUAC hearings in the 50s were certainly non-factual. I could argue that factualism gradually rose from the end of WW I to mid-century, but non-factualism never completely went away (think Gulf of Tonkin or Reagan’s “Welfare Queen”.
Not all that briefly. I think we can take the entire Enlightenment and view it as the emergence of evidentiary society. This encompasses, among other things, our nations founders, who were very much creatures of the Enlightenment.
Thanks again, Bob.
Back in the late 1990s, you provided food for thought for those like me who were wondering what did not sound completely correct about Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” and Rush Limbaugh’s “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Back then, you did it in the form of pointing me toward the well-known 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin.
Today, you added two phrases that will remain in my vocabulary: “Fiction as proof” and “Persuasion through fiction.” You clarified for me (1) what it is that I don’t like about both Ayn Rand’s and J.K. Rowling’s writings, (2) why I read more non-fiction than fiction, and (3) why Paul Ryan makes me nervous.
Much appreciation here from a fellow Twin Citian.
Post-truthiness is lot more integrated into human experience than you’d think. We humans generally consider the older source to be a more valid knowledge authority. The Bible beats C.S. Lewis; Plato beats Hegel; Aristotle beats Russell.
But if we were going to base our knowledge on fact, we probably should not refer to any “authorities” who pre-date science (1400s) or more directly for philosophy and sociology, they shouldn’t pre-date Darwin.
Popularity is far more preferable than accuracy. Take a look at all those painting of “Jesus” in the churches. I haven’t seen anyone who looks like he was actually born in Bethlehem to natives.
Wait, who you callin’ a “Tweet ‘bot”?
As any good journalist (or prophet) knows, persuasion is through stories. Those stories are never “completely true,” just as a map is never a “complete picture” of what is mapped. But stories can be “fact-driven,” “feelings-driven,” or in the best of worlds, both. What is a bit more prevalent in the “post-factual” world is the tendency to label as fact-driven stories that are in actuality entirely feelings-driven and to put those stories in among those that are more fact-driven. Think fiction labeled as non-fiction; fantasy labeled as fact.
And, as some religious leaders, and all con artists know, humans tend to assume feelings are either facts or more important than facts, and facts contrary to feelings must be fantasy. As Finley Peter Dunne said, our biggest danger is not what we don’t know, but what we know that ain’t so.
When “proving” the horrors of authoritarian government, which are you more likely to cite — a list of Joseph Stalin’s atrocities, or George Orwell’s 1984?
My answer: Stalin (or Hitler, or Mao, or Saddam Hussein, or any number of other real-world examples). I only hear people mention 1984 when they are comparing what Orwell imagined in the future to what we are (factually) experiencing now.
Q: When attempting to demonstrate the nightmarish consequences of a social welfare state, do opponents find a social welfare hellhole to make their point, or do they bring up Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?
My answer: I’ve never heard anyone bring up Brave New World when ranting about social welfare. They usually go on about the horrors of surgical waiting lists in Canada, or high tax rates in Sweden, or some such real-world example.
Regarding Harry Potter and Millenials: There’s nothing about facts or the lack thereof that influences pluralism, non-violence, or skepticism of government and press. Well, maybe the last one, but the first two are much more about empathy and the ability to solve interpersonal problems than about believing in facts vs fiction. This is nothing new: numerous scientific (fact-based!) studies have shown that reading fiction increases empathy. Preference for non-violent problem-solving has been growing in the Western developed world for a century and is a strong element of modern parenting theory and reinforced exclusively in schools (consistently violent problem-solvers are expelled).
Regarding Who Moved My Cheese, when you say “it’s pretty clear”, is that a fact-based statement? Or do you mean it’s “pretty clear” to you, so must be equally obvious to everyone? Also, though I never read the book, I understand it’s a parable. Parables have been used for millenia to explicate and persuade (Plato and the New Testament are examples), so it’s hardly a new phenomenon.
Re The Phoenix Project: when you say it “did more to persuade”, is that based on fact, or is it another “post-factual” assertion?
I don’t need evidence to be seriously concerned that facts play a dangerously small role in decision-making at any level. If I did, this article wouldn’t have provided me with any. Every point you make is either your own personal impression, or one-off anecdotes (Paul Ryan, Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria). The one exception being the HP book, which evidently is based on a scientific study. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know if one of the factors they controlled for is consumption of an equal amount of fiction, but not including Harry Potter.
Now that I’ve written this out, I’m assuming that all this is exactly your point? That this is all tongue-in-cheek, your presentation of a post-factual opinion commentary to demonstrate the nature of most current articles, whether or not they claim to present “evidence” or “facts”?
I think humans have always lived largely in non-factual interpretations of reality. It’s only been since the advent of the Scientific Age that there’s been any consideration that we could actually base our lives on facts. I’m sure it will take more that a few centuries to overcome a hundred thousand years of culture based on tribalism, pattern-seeing (whether those patterns exist in fact or not), warfare, personal and cultural biases, tradition, anecdotes, and other non-factual influences.
So I wouldn’t say we are living in a “post-factual” world. We were never factual to begin with. I’d say we are finally recognizing that we are living in a non-factual world, which is actually, now I think of it, the first step in creating a fact-based culture.
Whether of not we can take further steps, or will head in a fact-based direction, remains to be seen.
We’ve still got a hundred thousand years or so of conditioning to overcome.
You make good points. And yes, for the most part I’m giving my impressions, or, to use a different version, I’m basing my remarks on my personal experience combined with quite a bit of reading on the subject. Experience is evidentiary, although as I’ve pointed out numerous times it does constitute a biased sample.
Interesting, provocative article. Great posts.
My 2 cents is that, as a black man, I’m glad Frederick Douglas made so many anti-slavery speeches, but I’m just as happy Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, as together, they got more people to the top of the abolitionist mountain, than they could have individually. As I see it, speeches are good positions and methods, fiction good for exploring frameworks and their possible experiential consequences.
I think the problem you wrote of was really about a dissociated perspective or even identity, some take after they have responded to life experience by developing a “frustrated state of mind”. We all use facts, but those I believe you are referring to, take real facts, process them using what hypnotists call “trance logic” and produce dysfunctional, but usually self-serving conclusions to justify doing things that no justification in truth, which is what makes facts meaningful.
If someone repeated shows this “frustrated state mind” in their business behavior more than once or twice, I think the company has to eject them, else they will have a dysfunctional effect on the company that will affect the bottom line. I don’t know of any way to manage this, as it is up to the person with the “frustrated state mind” to make different choices, since their experience of frustration likely comes from very deep sources.
Interesting and excellent points. The one area we might not agree is that I don’t think everyone uses facts. In many, and perhaps most cases, we’re dealing with people who choose their sources so as to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.
A non-recent example: In the climate change debate, a number of years ago the energy industry paid a third-tier economist named Ross McKitrick to discredit the scientific consensus on the subject. McKitrick published what his advocates described as a highly sophisticated statistical re-analysis of the data and his critics called a bunch of BS.
With no exceptions, the climate deniers of my acquaintance cited his work as being more reliable than Hanson, Mann, and the other climatologists whose work has contributed to our knowledge of the subject, not because they knew enough about statistics to evaluate his work, but because he was the “authority” who had reached the conclusions that fit their worldview.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” It appears that’s no longer true.
I pray that you are wrong, but I fear that too often you are right.