A 75 Percent-Foolproof Method For Determining the Truth!

Here’s something I’m 90 percent certain is true: The misinformation crisis continues to get worse and poses a real threat to civilization.

Here’s something I’m 75 percent certain is true: There are several strategies that can help you get closer to the truth, even if they aren’t foolproof.

Here’s something I’m 99 percent certain is true: I’ve always wanted to invent something whose initials spell out a relevant word, like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) or BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code).

That day is here!

I’ve come up with the cleverly named TRUTH system. As I said, it’s not perfect. It won’t end the epistemic crisis caused by, among other things, A.I. slop and a president with a severe allergy to the factual statements.

But I find it helpful and hope you will too.

Here’s how it works:

When I hear or read an alleged fact, I try to put that fact through these five steps in the TRUTH process (no trademark pending, available to all!)

Namely:

T – Turn the statement into a specific, falsifiable claim

R – Rate the likelihood it is true

U – Understand how the fact fits into the bigger picture

T – Take stock of your feelings

H – How should you act in response to this knowledge?

I’ll illustrate the TRUTH system with a hypothetical scenario – but will happily go through other examples in the comments if you want.

Imagine a friend tells you: “There’s a killer shark off the coast of New Jersey!”

T – Turn the statement into a specific, falsifiable claim (or claims).

First, you need to convert any vague phrases and loaded words into testable sentences. Your friend’s killer shark claim is relatively specific, but you could still make it more precise.

You ask your friend for more details of what she heard. With the new info, you refine the statement into this one: “A shark killed a man yesterday off the coast of New Jersey.”

Note that this claim – like perhaps most claims – is actually a bundle of claims. One part can be true and others false. There are several elements that could be falsified. Was it really a shark? Was it really New Jersey? Was the victim a man? Was it really yesterday? These are concrete nuggets that can be investigated.

Turning the shark statement into something more concrete is a relatively straightforward job. But in other cases, it takes a lot of work to turn vague and general statements into something specific. If someone says, “crime is out of control,” that’s hard to assess whether that is true – until you do the hard work of asking what “out of control” means and which crimes we are discussing.

R – Rate the likelihood that the statement is true.

This step is all about figuring out a percentage likelihood that the statement is true. The end goal is to be able to say something such as, “I think there’s probably a 70 percent chance this is true.”

Notice I’m not asking for certainty. Certainty is tempting, but it’s usually unearned and often dangerous. Percentages and probabilities are 100 percent preferable.

In order to determine the truth rating, you can examine evidence (including looking for disconfirming evidence). You can look at sources, incentives, alternative explanations, and prior probability.

In the case of our shark attack, we could start with the sources. How did your friend know about the attack? She heard it from a friend who saw it online. Hmm. Pretty shaky.

So you go on a search engine or AI platform and look for reliable sources that have reported it. In this hypothetical, let’s say a major city newspaper and a public radio station have independently reported pieces on a shark attack. You’ve found these two outlets decently reliable (not perfect) in the past, so you raise your percentage.

But hold on! When you read the articles, it confirms there was a shark attack – yet the articles say the attack happened off Long Island, not New Jersey. So, you need to revise the sentence that you are assessing. The new sentence is: “A shark killed a man yesterday off the coast of Long Island.”

Before giving this revised claim a rating, you could ask about incentives: Are there any strong motivations for your sources to lie? In this case, not really, aside from the lust for clicks.

You can also ask: How extraordinary is the claim? As the great Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Shark attacks are rare, but not extraordinary. If your friend had said that a polka-dotted dragon swooped down from the sky and killed a man, I’d want a lot more evidence than two articles.

For those familiar with Bayesian thinking, this concept of extraordinariness is somewhat akin to the idea of “priors.” How plausible did you think the claim was before seeing this new evidence, and how strongly should the new evidence cause you to update?

So weighing these factors – reliability of evidence and extraordinariness of the claim -- you come up with a rating: there’s a 95 percent chance this new bundle of statements (with Long Island, not New Jersey) is true.

U – Understand the context of the fact, and how it fits into the wider world.

This step is all about seeing the fact from a 30,000-foot view. A fact can be technically accurate in isolation, but misleading in the broader sense. Here, we ask: Why should we care about this fact? How important is it in the grand scheme?

For this step, you look at base rates, trends, comparisons, denominators, and scale. How many fatal shark attacks occur off Long Island every year? And in the U.S. every year?Given the number of swimmers versus attacks, what are your chances of being attacked if you go swimming off Long Island this weekend?

How about shark attacks over time? Are they getting rarer or more common? How many were there last year, 10 years ago, 50 years ago? How many people are killed by shark attacks compared to other deadly animal attacks in the world? Snakes? Dog bites? And what about mosquitoes and malaria?

How common are shark-related deaths compared to other causes of death: Heart attacks, car accidents, tripping over wires in your office, etc.

One big lesson I’ve learned is that you can select true facts to create an accurate but wildly distorted view of reality. For instance, suppose someone utters the inflammatory sentence, “Harriet Tubman drugged children with opium.” That is likely true. Tubman did, according to sources, give babies and young children paregoric, an opium-based medicine. But in isolation, the fact creates a deeply misleading impression. Tubman was guiding enslaved people to freedom at enormous personal risk, and crying children could reveal the group’s location to slave catchers. She apparently used the drug to keep them quiet during these extraordinarily dangerous journeys. It’s the same fact, but once you supply the context, it’s a radically different picture.

T – Take stock of your feelings in reaction to the (perhaps) true fact.

Now it’s time for emotions. I know! Holding off on your emotions is a tall order – and probably impossible. We’re not robots or Vulcans. But still, there are advantages to asking your emotions to be patient.

When you read something on the internet, it’s tempting to react with instant outrage or fear. But it’s quite likely you’re feeling outrage or fear for something that’s not true, distorted, or out of context. So as much as you can, try to hold off on the outrage and other emotions until you have the proper knowledge and context.

How should you feel about this shark attack? There’s no single correct answer, of course. And you’ll likely have multiple feelings.

Perhaps compassion for the man’s friends and family. And fear – but how much fear? When you realize how rare the shark attacks are, maybe this should go pretty far down on your list of daily worries.

What about anger at the shark? Perhaps. But is that a good use of mental energy? As Starbuck tells the whale-obsessed Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, “Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness!”

H – How should you change your behavior or perception of the world?

The final step is to ask yourself what to do with this information. How should it change your behavior or core beliefs, if at all?

Suppose you are going to the Long Island beach this weekend. Knowing that shark attacks are very rare – and that you’re more likely to be killed by a rip current – maybe you’re willing to take the small risk and go swimming if swimming gives you great pleasure. Or maybe you’re risk-averse and this tiny chance of a shark attack is enough to dissuade you.

If you do decide to go swimming, what are the best practices for keeping safe from sharks? Does the minor scrape on your knee meaningfully increase your risk of a shark bite? (Probably not, but you should probably stay out of water with an actively bleeding wound0.

Or else, maybe the information about shark attacks inspires you to act in other ways. Your sources say the warming oceans are pushing some shark species farther north. Does this make you more inclined to give money to an environmental cause

As I said, this is not a perfect system. The TRUTH system will not always lead to the truth. But, I believe, it’s a helpful tool — plus I’m very proud of the initials.

By the way, I’m the first to admit I’m not a perfect user of the TRUTH system. Consider that my opening claim — “the misinformation crisis continues to worsen” — fails my very first test. What exactly counts as misinformation? And what about disinformation? According to which metric is it “worse?” Touche, TRUTH system!

Please let me know your strategies for determining the truth. I’d love to hear them. True fact!