Review of On Rumors : Why Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done by Cass R. Sunstein

The Bible warns us against bearing false witness against others.  In the extreme, this would be lying under oath in a law court that someone had committed a crime when you knew they really were innocent.  But most of us are guilty of this crime in its far lesser form: spreading rumors.  Sometime these rumors are fairly benign such as “I read that taking this herb not only improves your eyesight but also clears your skin, gives you fresh breath, and improves your libido!” while others can ruin and shatter lives forever: “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.  We must invade and topple their government immediately!”.   I know I have angered some of you already with that example because you believe there were WMD’s but they just were smuggled out before our invasion.  Maybe that is true.  Maybe it’s not.  If you have first-hand information let’s talk, if not, then calm down.  Chances are your information source on this was the same as mine:  I saw it on the news.  The difference is you have a different opinion and therefore a different conclusion.  In On Rumors, Cass Sunstein explains how intelligent humans can believe some really unintelligent things that have no basis in reality and that we are all susceptible to this.  How does this happen?  Well, none of us are omniscient that’s why.  All of us depend on and gather our information from others.  Sometimes the source is very credible, sometimes they seem trustworthy but are ignorant, sometimes they are manipulative or downright malignant in the information they give.  The point is, the less I know about anything, the more susceptible I am to rumors.  Case in point, I know a ton about Church history.  When The Da Vinci Code came out a few years ago, I didn’t spend one moment saying to myself “gee, I wonder if this is true?!”  I knew fact from fiction and Dan Brown’s book was really, really, really fictional.  But I met another person around that time who was very intelligent and said they believed the book was largely based on fact.  What was the difference?  They knew next to nothing about Christianity much less church history.  But talk to me about DNA or what happens on a navy air craft carrier, and if you speak with a measure of authority and it’s not too outlandish, I’m likely to believe you because I know next to nothing about these things.  Then we talk to others and so forth and the rumor spreads and takes hold. Sunstein writes the book in the context of the internet age where information—good and bad---is spread at the speed of light and where rumors can potentially spread so fast as to hurt economies, start wars, change elections, and ruin corporations a lot faster than ever before.  In the book he furnishes many examples of how humans tend to assimilate facts according to their personal biases and that even countervailing evidence will serve to further lock us into our positions not change our minds.  If I don’t like a political figure to begin with and then here a rumor of some ethical misdeed, I will be likely to believe it.  If that same political figure rushes to correct that rumor, it might potentially change my mind but more likely will cause me to think, “wow, that was fast!  I wonder what he is really hiding?”  The macro point is that we may believe we are neutral about the information we receive, but chances are we already have a predisposition and pre-commitment about the meaning of this or that fact in the geography of our mind.  I’m glad Sunstein didn’t talk much about religious beliefs in this book.  It is very easy to draw the correlations.  Religious views are formed through a very complex matrix some of which I believe are supernatural, some sociological, some situational.  Nonetheless, religious ideas are largely received information and where and from whom we receive this information often makes a huge difference in where we end up.  The author does make a modest proposal for protecting free speech and reputations from rumors and that is simply holding people legally responsible for their content on the internet if it is knowingly and demonstrably false.  He points out that while the marketplace of ideas, where the best ones compete against the lessor ones and the best ones win, is a noble idea, it doesn’t line up with the reality of our humanity or the increasing power of the internet.  I think in the barrage of opinions and news and advertising we hear every day, all day, we all might benefit from asking ourselves the question “says who?” and it’s followup: “is there any reason they might have an ulterior motive in sharing this information?”.  Yes, maybe more suspicious, but at least less gullible.