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Who Told You That? · After the Signal

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is After The Signal.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go a little farther down the road.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's a question I've started asking myself more often.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Who told you that?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I think everyone is lying.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I've suddenly become suspicious of everything I hear.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's almost the opposite.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've become interested in how easily,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: perfectly reasonable people come to believe things without ever really knowing
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: where those beliefs came from.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And often, the statement arrives already finished.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's no uncertainty attached to it, no footnote, no source.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just certainty.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And because the person saying it seems certain, we tend to receive the information the same way.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: I do it too.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's what makes this interesting to me.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: We like to imagine that our beliefs are conclusions.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: That we gather information,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: examine it, consider competing explanations, and eventually decide what we think.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not sure that's how much of human belief actually works.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the time, somebody else gives us the conclusion first.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Then we begin collecting information around it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Think about how quickly this can happen.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Someone you trust tells you something about someone you've never met.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have no reason to doubt your friend.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the information gets stored.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then months later, you finally meet that person.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: They say something slightly awkward, nothing extraordinary.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: But now you have a frame for interpreting it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: There it is.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: That must be what my friend was talking about.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Except maybe it wasn't.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the person was tired.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you misunderstood them.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe your friend misunderstood them.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe your friend heard the story from somebody else.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe two people had an argument 15 years ago and you've just inherited one side of it.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: The possibilities are almost endless.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the first explanation has an enormous advantage.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It got there first.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've been thinking about this while listening to ordinary conversations around me
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: and while observing the way information moves through the world now.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: We live in an extraordinary information environment.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Almost anything can reach us instantly.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: A photograph,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: a quotation,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: a headline,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: a 10 second video,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: a screenshot, someone describing what supposedly happened somewhere else.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And because we can see it with our own eyes, it feels like direct evidence.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes what we're actually seeing is a fragment.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: The photograph may be real.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: The quotation may be accurate.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: The video may show exactly what happened during those 10 seconds.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we can still misunderstand the larger event.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because facts and context aren't the same thing.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: That distinction matters.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine I show you a photograph of a man standing alone outside a building.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fact.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: There he is.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now I tell you he's waiting for someone.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly you have a story.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he is.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: But notice what just happened.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: The photograph didn't tell you that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And once I supplied the explanation,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: it became very difficult for you to look at the photograph without seeing
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: the story I attached to it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's influence,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: not necessarily dishonest influence, not necessarily malicious, just influence.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Human beings interpret things, we have to.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't function if we independently investigated every piece of information we encountered.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Most of what we know has been given to us by somebody else,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: teachers,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: parents, Friends, journalists, experts, books, institutions, people we trust.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And most of the time, that works remarkably well.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Civilization would be impossible otherwise.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to personally reproduce every scientific experiment before accepting its findings.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to visit every country before believing it exists.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Trust is necessary.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: But trust and certainty aren't quite the same thing.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the distinction I've become interested in.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe intellectual humility doesn't require us to doubt everything.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it simply requires us to remember which things we actually know firsthand and
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: which things we have accepted because somebody we trust told us they were true.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing wrong with the second category.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's enormous.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: But perhaps we should know when we're standing in it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there's another layer to this.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes nobody can remember who told us.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: The source disappears.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: The belief remains.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Families are particularly good at this.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Every family has things everybody knows.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Granddad never forgave somebody.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: An uncle made a terrible business decision.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Someone was the responsible sibling.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Someone else was the troublemaker.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: This person caused the argument.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: That person saved the day.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ask where the story came from, and you may discover something fascinating.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: They've simply heard it their entire lives.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: At some point, the story stopped being something somebody said.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: It became family history.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that makes me wonder how many things I believe simply
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: because I encountered them early enough and often enough.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not just about the world, about people, about success, about failure, maybe even about myself.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's where this question gets uncomfortable.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because who told you that isn't really a question about other people's gullibility.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a question about my own certainty.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Where did this belief come from?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Did I witness it?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Did somebody tell me?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did I infer it?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Have I ever examined it?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps the most important question, what would it take for me to change my mind?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: If the answer is nothing, then I'm probably not evaluating evidence anymore.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm protecting a conclusion.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to become someone who distrusts everything.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: That seems just as foolish as believing everything.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I want something more challenging.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: I want to become better at recognizing the difference between what I know,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: what I believe,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: what I've been told,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: and what I've simply heard so many times that I stopped remembering there was ever
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: a difference.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So lately,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: when I encounter something that arrives with absolute certainty,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to develop a small habit.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Before deciding whether it's true, I ask one more question.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Who told you that?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there's a very good answer.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there isn't.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes...
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I discover the person I really need to ask is myself.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Thomas Calder.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is After the Signal.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, strengthen the things that remain.