I Believed These Four Lies

I'm so nervous about this video. It's weird to admit getting duped by something, but there's nothing that scares me more than people who think it never happens to them. Examing why and how it happens...like, what's going on in my own brain, and also in the systems I'm interacting with, is very important in my work. Creating content based on definitely bad / misleading information is one of my big worries.

These are all really weird and complicated examples that I could spend a further hour or two discussing. Like, for example, that (depending on your start date and the data set you use) the relationship between rent and income can be shown to diverge substantially or stay very close together (though, not in 2022 or 2023, where all data sets show them diverging in the US.)

The NOAA data one is the most fascinating to me as I honestly think that the internet's response to the information is a kind of classic misinformation / degradation of trust cycle where an organization says something that is then misinterpreted by people online and then the misinterpretation is assigned to the authority (who never said it) and used to degrade the authority of that organization.

A CHALLENGING INFORMATION LANDSCAPE

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[radishraccoon]

The point about feeling weird only when putting maybe-wrong things into other people's brains resonated a lot. That's usually when I have a moment of "hmm, perhaps I should fact-check this...", when I suddenly find myself relaying some tidbit which didn't feel worth checking when it was 'just' me hearing it.

[lauraelaineallen]

"I was alright with someone putting it in my head, but turns out I was not alright with putting it in someone else's." Good line. Good man

[jorava]

For once, I wish for something to become a bigger trend on the internet. Publicly admitting to having believed in lies and misinterpreting things would do us a lot of good. Thank you for the video!

[dominiquedoeslife]

When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he either ceases being mistaken or ceases being honest. Thank you for being the man who ceases being mistaken!

[TatharNuar]

When I hear "you are not immune to propaganda" I think of stuff like this.

[vlogbrothers]

There's some conversation about the lack of homes being a cause of homelessness, specifically some talk about how there are plenty of vacant homes for people in cities where there are homeless people. The people I've talked to who work in housing or homelessness agree that this is a distraction that stops us from confronting the reality of the obvious and clear connection between limited housing stock and homelessness. When there is less housing available, rents go up. Search for "vacancies are a red herring" if you want to read more on this!

[BanthaWorship]

Touching grass isn't going to cut it for me this year, Hank. I need to be absorbed into a wetland by strange and wonderful algae.

[justinhillard]

"I will run to fact check something I disagree with and I will not do that with stuff that aligns with my previous conception" powerful human nature. I need to fact check my beliefs as much as I need to fact check my doubts.

[SciShow]

....This is why we have fact checkers...

[mccorkleknight]

Not only did you start with humility, but you then went on to educate us about why being wrong is ok as long as we are willing to learn. I can't stress enough that this is what we all need to move forward as a society. Your humor and joy about learning the facts behind the misinformation help to drive it home. Keep it up, we appreciate it!
Being wrong is ok, learning from it is better!

[scottburnett]

I cannot emphasise enough how important I think a video like this is. Over the last few years there’s been a phenomenon of people holding beliefs, being presented information which shows that belief is incorrect and then doubling down hard on that belief anyway. For someone to hold up their hands and say ‘yes I was wrong, and this is why’ is just so important.

Believing something only to realise it wasn’t factual or true isn’t the end of the world, but learning from it and being honest about it crucial. Nicely done!

[BobStrawn]

Thank you for this. My motto is, "I would rather look stupid today, than be stupid tomorrow."

[danieljensen]

That last one is so much of science in popular perception. Almost every time people think scientists as a group are "lying" it's because someone unqualified misinterpreted what scientists said and the people who are mad are just hearing that interpretation second or third hand.

[heatherhorsecat]

Thanks for the transparency and showing how easy it is to get tangled up by misleading info sometimes. 😊

[flookaraz]

To self evaluate something you already believe tobe true and discover is false is very difficult

[BenjaminKibbey]

I just respect you so much doing this. I will say, as a former small town journalist, regarding culpability for Scientific American, thinking two steps ahead of the reader is kind of their job. This was something I would harp on about until my editor wanted to gag me, but any graph, graphic or other standalone element has to be evaluated out of context for how people might take it, because people don't read articles, they cue off visuals.

[patrickskelly]

Two that I see quoted a lot are

"the 15 biggest ships pollute more than all the cars in the world"

and "100 companies are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions"

The first one is not true about carbon emissions, although that's what most everyone thinks of when they hear "pollution". The original paper only says that 15 ships emit more *sulfur dioxide* than all the cars. Sulfur dioxide is not a greenhouse gas, it is bad to breathe, but it only lasts about a day before it gets converted to sulfate, so it's only a local pollutant. The only reason those ships emitted so much is because we let them, because we thought sulfur dioxide didn't matter way out in the ocean. But since then we've changed the laws and the ships hardly emit any SO2 anymore. So the fact is both out of date, and doesn't say the thing most people claim it says.

The second one comes from a paper that counts all downstream emissions as belonging to the fossil fuel mining companies. So if an oil company drills some oil, sells it to a refiner, who sells it to a gas station, who sells it to me, and I burn it in my car, only the oil company counts as having any emissions. People quote this paper and then say "see, me driving my car doesn't matter", but your car *is* part of that 71%, and so is -all- the electricity you use at home. The paper doesn't say that 71% of the blame goes to those companies, because that's so much harder to determine. Whose fault is it when my car emits CO2? The oil company's fault? My fault? My boss's fault for not letting me work remote? My city's fault for not building more transit? The car company's fault for not making it more efficient? Yes, probably all of these.

I wanted to believe both of these because I do think big companies need to be held responsible for climate change, and putting the blame on individual consumers is problematic. But I don't like how the quotes get used to say something they don't actually say (probably not on purpose).

[Delightedly]

Hank is the one who taught me that anything that confirms my bias online is something I should always check data and refine before sharing.

I engage with things that confirm my bias, but dismiss and ignore the extreme ones that seem flawed automatically.

[jgberzerker]

This is probably one of the most important videos you’ve put out. We can’t begin to solve problems effectively without first assessing these problems truthfully.

[rpfree]

My father talked to me about how everyone is prejudiced, including himself, and he was a Superior Court Judge. He said you just have to examine your thoughts to work through that, and make adjustments. That has stayed with me my whole life