World We Have A Problem

Whether it’s our personal lives, our professional lives, or in arena of politics and public policy, we live in an increasingly complex world where objective thinking and effective decision making is made all the more difficult due to the bias, misinformation, and manipulation we are often confronted with. 

 

Take these facts:

68% of Americans “say they see too much bias in the reporting of the news that is supposed to be objective as a ‘major problem.” 1

 

83% of Americans felt that news coverage was politically biased, with 46% indicating a “great deal” of bias, and 37% a “fair amount”. 1

 

In 2022 only 16% of Americans said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, down from 51% in 1979.2

 

In the one-year period of time ending in the second quarter of 2022, Facebook removed 6.2 billion fake accounts. 2

 

“Troll farms, professionalized groups that work in a coordinated fashion to post provocative content, often propaganda, to social networks—were still building massive audiences by running networks of Facebook pages.  Their content was reaching 140 million US users per month.”3

 

Generative AI chatbots have been documented to make up answers to questions that they do did not know.  According to Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and creator of ChatGPT “If you are making AI, it is potentially very good, and potentially very terrible.”  

 

If we want to overcome bias, misinformation, and manipulation in a complex world, we need a method of thinking and making decisions that is industrial strength.  One grounded in an understanding of how the systems we are looking at work, and one that is impervious to the thinking traps that can cause the smartest of people to trip up.  In short, we need Critical Systems Thinking.

 

 

 

Reference:

1 2020 Gallup/Knight poll

2 Gallup

3 Statista

4 September 2021 MIT Technology review