A blog about life as seen by a retired Middle School Science Teacher from California
Author: Bruce Halen
I am a retired Middle School Science Teacher that loves to sing, ride bicycles and write. I am a Unitarian Universalist by religion and thrive on exercise to keep mentally and physically healthy and happy. I am an Ovo-Lacto vegetarian.
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden Social Psychologist University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
I awoke this morning feeling at peace. A place of relaxed and focused calm. I am happy to write from that place this morning. I am free from outside thoughts that would interfere with this time of bliss.
I didn’t do anything special this morning. I stayed up until about midnight last night and had a late night snack. Going to bed on a late night snack is not usually the recipe for a restful sleep or a peaceful mind.
So as I continue in this place this morning, I wish to share it in the hope that you and me will be able to find this place on a more regular and frequent basis. Wherever that place might be for you, go there. Enjoy your time there and when that space is past, embrace it. Nothing lasts forever. It will return. Distracting thoughts will return. Dismiss them as you will. Acknowledge them and let them go. Nothing lasts forever.
You in your precious existence are at peace. Peace is always near to us. Take the rare moments of each day to find it, acknowledge it, revel in it and let it go when it is ready to go. It will return in its fullness.
Some, just enough, of that peace will remain with you through the business of your day. It is always there. Seek it out in your own special way. Let it wash over you and allow you to use it in amongst the daily distraction that is life.
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden Social Psychologist University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
The Roberts Court mission is to undermine the rule of law. Precedent means nothing to the Elitist Six. What is the law without precedent? To take it further…
What is Science without evidence? What is a s’more without a marshmallow? What is a swimming pool without water?
Recent decisions indicate a radical sharp turn to the right. Citizens United (corporations are individuals), Dobbs (overturning of Roe v. Wade), the Harvard case on Affirmative Action.
And what’s with the SCOTUS ruling in favor of a web designer who didn’t want to do websites for gay weddings? One thing that is strange about this ruling is that it was based on an event that hasn’t yet happened. This ruling was based on a hypothetical action. Nothing had occurred in real life for which the plaintiff could have been so damaged as to have legal standing to sue in the first place. With this court, precedent means nothing. If the law doesn’t support what you want to accomplish, just change the law. Or better yet, make up the law and invent your own non-existent precedent.
The jury is still out on how big an impact the Harvard ruling will have on how the playing field of higher education can be leveled for people of color. Saying that race shouldn’t enter into societal efforts to counter the effects of past racial practices in the United States is simply failing to address our national problem with white supremacy culture. We as a people will find a way to do the right thing regardless of right wing elitist efforts to codify this white supremacy culture.
Failure to enact and enforce self imposed ethics standards to avoid justices from being bought off by wealthy political players.
Blocking President Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program. How cynical and protective of elite right wing wealth. What are they thinking? If they are so bent on saving money for current and future billionaires maybe the six right leaning justices should go to Russia where the government is organized to make the rich richer. I guess maybe that’s what we’ve had in America all along… The real revolt is coming from the left to re-order the corporate gravy train and tip some of the wealth down to the 99%. Don’t be fooled by the right. Keep your eyes on the prize and what’s really at stake in the good old U.S. of A.
The highest court in the United States is making a mockery of the law. It seems consistent that the highest court is turning itself into a sham body not deserving of respect. I think the Federalist Society and the radical right are intentionally trying to foment public distrust in the judiciary just as other extremists are attempting to do with the Executive Branch and the Legislative branch.
What else is going on?
The American Economy is doing quite well, thank you very much. If it really is "It's the economy stupid" as Bill Clinton famously called the most important issue in presidential elections, then all of the right wing smoke and mirrors is for naught for 2024.
Is anyone tired of Donald Trump yet? I believe that I can answer and unwavering "Yes" from the Left. Reasonable Republicans, what think you?
Ted Lasso for President. I know he is a made up television character, but if he were real I'd knock on doors for him.
4. "I believe that there is good and evil and I choose the side of good. I acknowledge that there is evil in me, but it is my work to feed the side of goodness." I'm on hold with writing about belief number four as I continue my reading on the topic of good and evil.
The ultra Conservative elites took an ideological symbolic blow with the Wagner Mercenary march on Moscow. Their hero and role model Vlad Putin lost a chunk of his swagger. What does he do in response? Kill innocent Ukrainians at a pizza parlor. The S.O.B. is self destructing.
Hope and optimism win over fear and disinformation. The elaborate right wing effort to preserve rich white oilagarch privilege will collapse under the weight of it's own false premise. The house of cards is starting to fail.
Away with the cynical , negative and racist . Awaken your hearts once again to goodness, righteousness and justice. Turn from the politics of fear and distrust.
The world is a beautiful place. Remember that "Love Wins."
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden Social Psychologist University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
In our struggle to restore decency and good back into the American psyche, it is important that we restore faith, hope and positive thinking back into our collective mindset. The restoration of these three essential elements are the keys for restarting America’s Constitutional engine.
I believe that we can all agree that those three things are good things. How do we, in these United States, get those things back?
I despise the co-opting of the phrase “Make America Great Again” in that it has been employed to imply that America was only great when straight wealthy white men held all the social, political and economic power. It has been used destroy faith, hope and positive thinking through a deceptive and destructive turn of phrase
The phrase, in its current iteration, makes my stomach turn. It makes my stomach turn because it sounds like it has the noblest intentions in mind when it has just the opposite intentions in mind. Keep the rich white oilagarchs in power, return American women back to “Susie Homemaker” and keep the middle classes blindly consuming while keeping the rich rich, the poor poor and ethnic minorities in their place. Oilagarchs is not a misspelling.
The phrase isn’t new. Ronald Reagan used it in his presidential election campaign of 1980. It was used at a time when the United States was reeling from the Iran Hostage Crisis and a 60% majority of Americans wanted a larger budget for national defense. Check out the link above to see other presidents that have invoked this phrase.
Let me get firmly back on point. My minister came up with an appropriate acronym for what I believe is the root cause of our national malaise:
F alse
E vidence
A ppearing
R eal
“F.E.A.R. ” is the opposite of what I will call “R.E.A.L.” (Rational evidence about life). F.E.A.R. has been used to confuse us, to divided us and promote fear. Fear is a powerful tool. Carry a gun because the country is being overrun by ethnic minorities, eliminate the woman’s right to choose what they do with their bodies because they belong at home barefoot and pregnant, deny climate change change because it is too “woke,” Democrats are baby killers.
Fear is a powerful tool used by those with the real power to keep their power. Those of us down here under the thumbs of the rich and powerful are fighting their proxy war. Divide and conquer. Keep us fight among ourselves while the real source of our national problems are sitting in their elitest mansions and corporate boardrooms enjoying the fruits of our labors. They have turned us against each other, red v. blue in order to save their own position of wealth and power.
We can get out of this mess if we work together and fight back against the forces that divide us. We can do that by overcoming this fear and uniting as people to take our country back again.
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
Graduation season is here and we have a graduate this year. Our grandson is graduating from high school. We have eagerly awaited this upcoming event with gratefulness and gratitude.
The joy of the season has been tempered a bit by the loss of my wife’s father and aunt last week. Those passings are to be grieved. Carl and Nancy made significant contributions to the world and they will be missed. Yet, their peaceful transitions are something to be grateful for and accepted with a spirit of gratitude. At 98 and 93, they had both lived long and productive lives and they were getting little joy at being confined to an aging, unresponsive and frail body.
At 18, Aydan’s healthy body and sharp mind are preparing for his next experience as a college student at the University of Oregon in the Fall. I am so proud of him. I am not his biological grandfather, but by virtue of marriage to his grandmother I became Grandpa Bruce. I couldn’t be happier than to have had the opportunity to watch this kid grow into a young man literally right before my eyes.
At 98, Carl was a veteran of WW 2. At 93, Nancy possessed her quick with and independent spirit until her last day. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to cross paths with both of them.
As Carl and Nancy leave and Aydan enters, I am humbled and grateful by their accomplishments and mine. The “Greatest Generation” as journalist Tom Brokaw called them, deserve a large amount of the credit for saving the world from the scourge of Fascism and white supremacy. Carl and Nancy both did their part to deliver us Baby Boomers into a world that was, for the most part, free from these autocratic, tyrannical forces.
Yet as Aydan moves on to take his place in the world, us Baby Boomers are now called upon to be the next Greatest Generation as we fight to hold onto and strengthen the democratic world that they fought and died to establish.
I accept the challenge proudly and hope to join them in that select group of heroes that placed democracy over self service.
Aydan and I salute you and give you our deepest thanks.
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
While my wife Meredy navigates the care and transition of her aunt, mother and father, I stroll merely along with the occasional blog post, middle school track coaching and even the luxury of an every-other-week-or-so golf game, she is the ever on call care giver/organizer/planner.
Just now, she was called by a paramedic at Belmont Gardens to sign off that a trip to the hospital for her Mom was unnecessary. She had taken two falls out of bed over the course of the evening and they suspected that she had hit her head. But, she was currently sitting up and playing her ukulele. So, Meredy got dressed, hopped in the car and drove five minutes over to Belmont to sign a waiver saying that Barby had been offered the cursury trip to the hospital to get checked out by a doctor, but no thanks. Considering that her POLST form has a “do not resuscitate ” provision in it, there isn’t much that the doctor or the hospital could do to provide care.
This is her world right now. Our neighbor and friend suggested a few months ago that we hire an agency that specializes in elder care to help with the myriad of doctor contacts, coordination of care at Belmont and the dozens of decisions being made each day for Barby and her husband Carl, Meredy’s Dad. That has been a Godsend.
Meredy is ever the problem solver, but the range, scope and sheer number of problems was becoming overwhelming even for her. Thank goodness for SAGE and Craig.
I started with the intention of using my experience as a golfer (hacker?) as a metaphor for life. One day you feel like you’ve got the game figured out and the next time you play like you’ve never had a club in your hand. Such was the story with my game yesterday.
I’m a person that believes that everything is connected in all facets of humanity and nature and that even shooting a 104 on the golf course has meaning in the greater sphere of the human experience.
We will never have anything totally figured out as my golf game clearly exemplifies. Yet, just because we are destined to not “figure it out,” we need to be willing to share our ongoing attempts to “f.i.o.” and hope that in so doing that we can reach out and touch each other in the tenderest and sincerest of ways. The world comes down to simply that.
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
The past three plus months have been largely focused on being support staff for my wife as she coordinates and provides care for her 98 year old Mom and Dad and her 93 year old aunt. Her parents live in Assisted Living that is a 10 minute walk away. That’s a positive in that it is easier to provide the necessary care. That’s a negative in that it’s easier to provide the necessary care. Like I said, I’m support staff.
Which means that writing has taken a backseat to life. I’m writing today with one hand as the other hand is attached to an arm that is donating platelets into an Apheresis machine at the Stanford Blood Center. There’s not. much much else I can do at the moment!. My mobility is somewhat limited.
My thought/writing project in recent months has been to write down my beliefs and then seek to rationally justify or defend each one of my nine stated beliefs. I’m still thinking and researching semi-actively, but not writing very much. I’m learning that this project requires more depth of thought and research than I expected.
So, I have put that writing on the back-burner.
What I can’t seem to put on the back-burner is my concern for Democracy and my country. When I started this blog, I wrote a 20-part series based on Dr. Timothy Snyder’s book, “On Tyranny.”
Since Democracy and it’s institutions have been figuratively and sometimes literally in the crosshairs of actual and would-be tyrants since at least 2016, I have been fixated on identifying and sharing my thoughts on the subject here in this blog.
This subject has been , after my family, Priority 1 since 2016. Because it remains a high , if not the highest priority for me right now, I put the 20 posts into a folder or category for you to revisit and linked it in the small shaded block above.
I too am going back to read my own work in order to remind myself how tenuous and how important Democracy is. I urge you to read my posts or read “On Tyranny for yourself.
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
This belief is proving to be surprisingly nuanced in my attempt to rationally defend it in a persuasive way. I’m wrestling with the idea of “best interest.” Who gets to decide what the best interest is?
"In egocentrism, you're unable to see someone else's point of view; but in narcissism, you may see that view but not care about it. Going even one step further, people high in narcissism become annoyed or even enraged when others fail to see things their way."
Source: Apr 7, 2012/Psychology Today.
By the Cleveland Clinic’s numbers, 95% of us are capable of at least some degree of empathic behavior. The main question then is , if we are capable of thinking of others, is it a good thing to be good to each other?
"However, recent studies show that caring for others is good for us. It's beneficial to our well-being. Giving support to others out of choice leads to “reduced stress, increased happiness, and an increased sense of social connectedness.” Jan 21, 2019/World Economic Forum Agenda.
Since choosing giving to others leads to “reduced stress, increased happiness and an increased sense of social connectedness,” I conclude that acting in the best interest of each other is a valid and supportable belief. Furthermore, we should all do it and be quick to point it out when they see anything short of it happening in their own lives.
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
The justification of this belief begins with the rather large assumption that there is a divine. This “divine” is the sum total of absolutely everything that our finite minds can comprehend. Everything that is, was and ever will be is the sum total of “the” divine.
To even begin to define “the” or “divine” is well beyond my neural capacity or the intended defense of my beliefs. It is probably also unnecessary to defend my beliefs with someone else’s beliefs. Second hand beliefs do not provide a rational defense of my own beliefs.
So let’s move on to “all souls and matter.” In order to justify this claim, I found it necessary to look up a few thoughts on what is actually meant by the word “soul.” I found a five minute video from physicist Sabine Hossenfelder that captures the gist of this belief statement.
Source: The Big Think
In this video, Hossenfelder makes the point that all things can be explained through particle physics. This is the foundational concept on which I base this belief. I’ll leave it at that.
New Banner ready for rally, freeway overpass and street use. Inspired by the song “Love Wins” by Mel Washington and Wyatt Durrett which I got to sing at church about a month ago. Banner design by Paul Ender.
https://newslit.org/
Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
Now the hard part begins. How do I justify what I believe. My gut tells me that I shouldn’t have to justify what I believe. It is what I believe.
But, if I leave it there and take the easy way out, then people that believe that the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capital was a peaceful tour of the grounds could use the same argument to justify what they did as simply “what they believed” to be true.
So, as my philosopher friend Glenn reminds me, it is necessary to take a rational, scientific evidenced-based look at each of the beliefs that I included in my Personal Theology a few weeks ago.
This is going to take some time, but I think it will be time well spent. I would rather continue to voice my opinions on the latest adventures in political fiction, but none of those opinions would be any better justified than the opinions that I disagree with already. Maybe any subsequent opinions that I share will have a glimmer of relevance that they didn’t have before.
I’ll start with my first belief statement stated in the title of this posting: “I believe that all people regardless of race, intelligence, religion, age or anything else that other humans may create to try and divide them, are created equally in the eyes of the divine.”
I didn’t exactly start with the easiest one. It is my desire to come up with increasingly robust supporting evidence for my beliefs. But, here’s my first draft on Belief #1.
Evidence
Unitarian Universalism, the religious community of my choice, has Seven Guiding Principles. I site the first of those principles to begin my defense of my first belief. Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignityof every person.
The second guiding principle of Unitarian Universalists is justice, equity and compassion in human relations.
The concept of “the divine” is widely accepted among religious believers and non-religious believers. It has many forms and many names, but theists and atheists alike acknowledge the presence of “the divine” in their own ways.
