I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, I like biking, and my name is Jackson. Which one is the lie?
If you don’t know me, it may be hard knowing if the first or second one is the lie. Of course at some point in the future I may write about either of those things which may be true, which if you’re a regular reader of my blogs you may know. But that requires being in the future, because unless I explicitly tell you which one is true (unless you find out through some other reputable source), you won’t ever know 100% for sure how I feel about biking or if I’ve been to the Grand Canyon.
The anatomy of an opinion
Any time anyone says anything, you’re going to find an opinion or some fact with bias. Because of how our brains come up with the words we say, our personal influence is inevitable. Even a dictionary, one of our primary sources of truth for what a word means, was compiled by people and is subject to corrections.
Does that mean that opinions are factual? Well, if have defined anything as factual, then I would argue yes. More specifically, opinions convey our thought process and what we believe to be true.
I’ve written about this in How to read slowly, but essentially there is something to be learned from everyone’s posts, even if someone says something that you don’t agree with.
If don’t understand someone’s background or preexisting beliefs, then we are missing the context to their opinion. Our assumptions are easy to mistake for someone else’s context, but I believe that to be one of the leading issues in modern discussion.
Finding context
Ultimately, you can’t ever get a full understanding of the context of a piece without a deep conversation with the author. In that conversation you would need to address the parts of the piece that stood out to you and get them to elaborate, or confirm or reject various other hypotheses.
99% of the time, this is unrealistic. With the volume of information we consume, there’s no way we’d have time to discuss with each author, given that they’d even be interested in it. Which brings us back to assumptions.
Learning to assume
Often, we will have to assume some context. The point is not to get a complete understanding of every possible belief of the author, as that could actually open up more avenues of bias. We just want to clarify why they’re saying the things that they’re saying in their piece.
One useful method is just looking back at other pieces they’ve written. What themes do they cover and which “side” do they take? Who do they identify with and what does that group believe? How closely do their personal beliefs match the group’s?
The more you read of both sides the better your understanding will be of why people tend to say certain things, and what assumptions they may be making about the other side.
The online book store
Update: I’ve now published the first piece about this! View it here: Reading people like a book, and books like people
I want to write another post about treating anyone’s post like you picked up a book by them. The main idea I want to communicate is just like a book in a book store is really just a collection of text written by some person you likely haven’t met, so is what you read online. Treat is as such.
You likely don’t know the people behind these posts. You don’t know what their actual passion is, what they really do in their free time. That’s not a bad thing, but don’t make them your source of truth.
If you want to be notified when I release that, feel free to drop your email in the form at the bottom of this article to subscribe to my newsletter.
The lie
The lie is usually pretty easy to spot—the sensationalized part of the post. The sensationalized part may not always actually be a lie, as it tends to revolve around the point of the article, but you need to be very cautious in interpreting it. Remind yourself that this is written to get you to click on the article, to keep reading, to invoke an emotional response in you.
Truth can be extracted from the lie, you just need to understand the context of the piece. Why is this author writing this? Why did they word it that way? How do they feel about this group outside of this piece, and how does that line up with this piece?