[Neurons] 2018 Neurons #15 "APRIL FOOLS!" I WAS JUST FAKING

Mon Apr 2 07:53:15 EDT 2018

From: L. Michael Hall

2018 Neurons #15

April 2, 2018

"APRIL FOOLS!"  I WAS JUST FAKING

In many parts of the world April 1 is "April Fools" day.  It's a day to play
practical jokes- to present something that's not real, to fake someone out,
and then to declare, "April's fools!"  Shouting that then exposes the hoax
and, ideally, then everyone gets a good laugh.  There aren't many times or
places where fooling someone, faking something that isn't real, is funny,
fun or playful, but this is one.  Most of the time it misleads, deceives,
and creates significant problems.

This is especially true when it comes to fake news or false information.
And while there has always been fake news, we seem to be in an age of
exaggerated fake news.  In fact, some news companies blantonly and
intentionally set out to manipulate the news for various political agendas.
Long time before President Trump identified CNN as "fake news station," we
talked about the subject of dis-information and mis-information.  It's been
around for a long, long time.

An innocent form that generates fake news is when people simply make
mistakes about information or when people make assumptions and write them as
if they were facts.  That happened to me when I was twenty-one.  While
driving I bumped my car into another car.  We exchanged insurance forms and
went our way.  The next day in the local news paper, it was reported that I
was injured and taken to the hospital.  When some friends asked me about my
injuries and told me of the report in the newspaper, I said, "That's news to
me."

Why or how someone made that report I never found out.  I'm assuming that
someone may have seen the accident and reported that I drove away and when
someone else heard that they may have said, "maybe he had to get to the
hospital," and then another dropped the "maybe."  And by the time the
"information" pass through several people, someone told a report that the
driver of one car was taken to the hospital for injuries and then, without
checking, that's what he wrote.

Mis-information frequently occurs like that.  It is the old child's game of
"telephone" where 10 or 20 people pass on a story and the final story is
usually significantly different from the first story.  Sometimes it happens
like that.  We humans are generally not very skilled in accurate listening
so we "hear" with half an ear, hear through our filters, and contaminate
facts with our perceptions without even being conscious that we are doing
so.  This can becomes disastrous especially when we're passing on "gossip"
about someone and have reasons to speak ill of someone.

Yet that kind of "fake news" is innocent compared to intentionally
generating and inventing "news" in order to sway opinions, beliefs, and
understandings.  Now that the dossier against President Trump has been
exposed, we have a great example of people intentionally inventing so-called
"news" in order to discredit someone and apparently from what we now know
use it to start a special counsel investigation.  It's now known that it was
paid for by the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Party.  Yet
since it is still in process, we won't know the full extent of it until the
special counsel's work is done.

Now the very fact that people can, and do, invent "fake" news and
information puts all of us at risk of operating -not only from inadequate
information-but positively false information.  And fake information occurs
in every field, every discipline, and even in scientific areas.  

Now there is one profession that fully capitalizes on this-that of stage
magicians and illusionists.  They mostly create visual illusions that trick
our eyes and minds.  Using the natural dispositions (biases) regarding sight
and how the brain fills in information, they can trick us into thinking that
something exists or operates in a way that it really does not.  What we
think we see or perceive is fake, and not real.  You can find lots of these
if you google "illusions," or "attention tests."  Look for the invisible
gorilla if you have not seen that illusion.

If we are all at risk from mis-information and fake news or information,
what can we do about it?  What can we do to protect ourselves as we seek to
find the truth about something, the real facts?

The place to begin is with a healthy skepticism that does not naively or
automatically believe whatever someone says or what you read or hear in the
news.  Then, with that healthy skepticism, learn to skillful ask questions,
and for that, there's no better tool than the Meta-Model.  This is a set of
linguistic distinctions and questions.  The linguistic distinction
identifies a place where language is typically and generally weak-
"ill-formed" was the word that Noam Chomsky used. To this weak spot in
mapping things, the Meta-Model provides a set of exploratory questions.  The
design is that by asking the questions, it invites the speaker to provide a
fuller description and so to provide a richer map.

When you use the Meta-Model distinctions and questions in this way, you
learn critical thinking skills.  Now you can think things through more
effectively, gain greater clarity on what someone is attempting to
communicate, and test the validity of words and phrases.  After all, words
are not reliable indicators of truth.  People can and do lie using words.
So we have to test the words to see if they are accurate symbols of the
territory.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

                    Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

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Dr. L. Michael Hall writes a post on "Neurons" each Monday.  For a free
subscription, sign up on www.neurosemantics.com.   On that website you can
click on Meta-Coaching for detailed information and training schedule.   To
find a Meta-Coach see  <http://www.metacoachfoundation.org>
www.metacoachfoundation.org.   For Neuro-Semantic Publications --- clink
Products, there is also a catalog of books that you can download.   

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