When American author Mark Twain was on a speaking tour of Europe an obituary of his death was mistakenly published. Considering how high a profile personality and writer he was the news caused a stir; however, it wasn’t true. He famously communicated to the press back home that “news of my death is grossly exaggerated.” The issue was cleared up relatively quickly as Twain turned up to subsequent speaking events not as a corpse but as a walking, living, breathing and talking human being. But it pointed out how easily and quickly people can hear one thing, or just have something suggested to them, and then they buy into it hook line and sinker; it’d be nice if we could just trust the sources of information we expose ourselves to; however, as David Hume observed, this would be unwise given the human penchant to lie, to deceive, to be deceived, and to make mistakes.
When getting information and news from Facebook, and other kinds of social media, be ever mindful that more often than not what you see and read is carefully curated “for you” specifically (and in this echo chamber the curators of the “attention economy” do not care if that information is accurate or true).
Given the propensity of our believing brains to cast aside reason to embrace the conspiracy du jour, I would say facts might be stubborn but there’s nothing as immovable and stupid as unqualified conviction.
Peasants & Emperors 