Most people enter a new year filled with new resolve and lofty goals. I’m sticking to my resolutions – reading new authors, eating right and running a mile a day, yay! – but I’m also going to think more carefully about what I believe and why I believe it. Partly because understanding bias is my beat, but also because it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to know what’s true.
In the spirit of bias-fighting and resolutions, I want to draw your attention to two items I found over the holidays. First, this piece from the BBC on the long, sad history of how people or companies with a particular vested interest purposefully spread ignorance. Turns out, there’s a word for it.
It starts as a short profile of Robert Proctor, a science historian from Stanford University, who began to study the marketing practices of tobacco companies that were designed to obscure the relationship between smoking and cancer:
“Proctor had found that the cigarette industry did not want consumers to know the harms of its product, and it spent billions obscuring the facts of the health effects of smoking. This search led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology.
It comes from agnosis, the neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or ‘not knowing’, and ontology, the branch of metaphysics which deals with the nature of being. Agnotology is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour.”
“Proctor had found that the cigarette industry did not want consumers to know the harms of its product, and it spent billions obscuring the facts of the health effects of smoking. This search led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology.
It comes from agnosis, the neoclassical Greek word for ignorance or ‘not knowing’, and ontology, the branch of metaphysics which deals with the nature of being. Agnotology is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour.”
Now that it’s clear we’ve become professional agnotologists, I’m thinking I’m going to need those resolutions more than ever. But I’m also thinking that the solution to massive systems of disinformation can come in humbler forms. And that gives me some inspiration.
Here’s another, very different piece, to consider.
Shortly after actress and author Carrie Fisher died, Ben Dreyfuss, the non-famous son of the actor Richard Dreyfuss, posted a short but devastating tribute to her on Medium. Far from the typical celebrity send-off, it was a story about how in the grips of a terrifying mental breakdown, he reached out to the only person he could think of who could help.
“I hadn’t seen her in years. I wasn’t even sure the fucking number would work. It went to voice mail. I left a message that didn’t say much. “Hey Carrie, this is Ben Dreyfuss. Richard’s son. I was hoping you could give me a call when you get a chance.” I might not have said “help me help me” but my cracking-voice probably did. I was crying in the back of a Beverly Hills Cab when she called me back and I let it all pour out and she asked me if I was currently medicated and I confessed I was not and she said “I’ve been there and I get it, but right now you need to be medicated.” And she told me what anti-psychotics she was on and forced me to direct the cab to a therapist.”
“I hadn’t seen her in years. I wasn’t even sure the fucking number would work. It went to voice mail. I left a message that didn’t say much. “Hey Carrie, this is Ben Dreyfuss. Richard’s son. I was hoping you could give me a call when you get a chance.” I might not have said “help me help me” but my cracking-voice probably did. I was crying in the back of a Beverly Hills Cab when she called me back and I let it all pour out and she asked me if I was currently medicated and I confessed I was not and she said “I’ve been there and I get it, but right now you need to be medicated.” And she told me what anti-psychotics she was on and forced me to direct the cab to a therapist.”
Fisher’s legendary candor about her own mental health was a beacon for many, including those who didn’t have her phone number. And her voice broke through the systems of fear, misinformation, and disinformation about mental illness that still stigmatize people to this day.
Ben’s story is powerful in part because he felt strong enough to pay the gift forward so that his candor might be a beacon to others who don’t have him on speed-dial. It reminded me of why small, consistent and personal revelations are so powerful. In the face of systems designed to shield people from unpopular or unprofitable truths, we can find both solace and strength in each other. It’s another benefit of inclusion that I plan to embrace and amplify in 2017.
Now, eat your vegetables and let’s do this.