Learning from Fake News

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column explores what "fake news," conspiracy theories, and hoaxes can reveal about our culture:

Fake News Is an Oracle

He begins by discussing the mistaken idea that science fiction predicts the future. Instead, SF "can serve as a warning or an inspiration, influencing the actions that people take and thus the future that they choose." A second function of SF, where the analogy with fake news comes in, is to expose "our societal fears and aspirations for the future" somewhat the way a Ouija board planchette reveals the fears and desires of the users by responding to unconscious movements of their hands. As Doctorow points out, even the most innovative spec-fic creators must choose their material from an existing array of tropes that resonate with their audience. Authors write "stories about the futures they fear and rel­ish." The fiction that gets published, achieves bestseller status, and captures the imaginations of readers reflects hopes and fears dominant in the current popular culture: "The warning in the tale is a warning that resonates with our current anxieties; the tale’s inspiration thrums with our own aspirations for the future."

Similarly, a hoax, conspiracy theory, or false or deceptive news item that gets believed by enough people to make it socially significant "tells you an awful lot about the world we live in and how our fellow humans perceive that world." As an example, Doctorow analyzes the anti-vaccine movement and why its position on the alleged dangers of vaccination seems plausible to so many people. Asking what makes people vulnerable to conspiracy theories and false beliefs, he speculates, "I think it’s the trauma of living in a world where there is ample evidence that our truth-seeking exer­cises can’t be trusted." While the first step in fighting fake news is "replacing untrue statements with true ones," a deeper solution that addresses the roots of the problem is also needed.

Speaking of true and false beliefs, and harking back to the topic of my post of the week before last, I was boggled by a widely quoted comment from a certain junior congresscritter: "I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right." Say WHAT? As one article about this remark is quick to point out, using precise language and accurate facts isn't mutually exclusive with being morally right. Ideally, we should aspire to do both:

CNN

The article summarizes the attitude behind the Congresswoman's remark this way, noting that it's not exclusive to her: "My specific fact may be wrong, but the broader point I was making still holds. The problem with that thinking is that it says that the underlying facts don't matter as long as the bigger-picture argument still coheres." This attitude is said (correctly, in my opinion) to lead to a moral "slippery slope."

I would go further, though. I'd call having the correct facts one of the essential preconditions to being morally right. How can we make moral judgments if we aren't certain of the objective materials we're working with? If a speaker's statements about concrete, verifiable facts can't be trusted, should we trust that speaker's version of truth on more complex, abstract matters?

As writers, we in particular should place a high value on accuracy of language. Referring again to C. S. Lewis (as I frequently tend to do), his book THE ABOLITION OF MAN, first published way back in 1947, begins with an analysis of a couple of secondary-school English textbooks sent to him for review. From certain passages in those texts implying that all value is subjective, Lewis expands the discussion to wider philosophical issues and constructs a detailed argument in defense of the real existence of objective values, "the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. . . . And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason. . . or out of harmony with reason." And how can we recognize which values are "true" or "false" in this higher sense without verifiable knowledge of "the kind of thing the universe is"?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Inspired by a True Story

I recently watched the movie THE GREEN BOOK, about a famous black concert pianist in the early 1960s who hires an Italian-American as a driver and general assistant for a tour of the Midwest and the South. The film bears the caption "Inspired by a True Story." This label seems to serve as notice to the audience that the script may portray events and people differently from the way they existed in reality, as well as including invented episodes. For example, reading about the movie and its factual background reveals that the pianist had multiple brothers and was on good terms with them, while his film counterpart claims to have no family except one brother, from whom he's estranged. People who knew the real-life musician describe him as less uptight than the character shown in the movie. As for particular incidents shown on the concert tour, I didn't come across any information about which actually happened (if any) and which were invented.

Most movies "inspired by" real-life happenings seem to alter the facts to one degree or another. I'm thinking mostly of stories about people within recent memory, with friends, relatives, and colleagues who are still alive, rather than historical figures of the distant past. Some members of the Von Trapp family were famously upset by the inaccurate portrayal of their father as rigid and cold in the early part of SOUND OF MUSIC. Moreover, in escaping from Nazi-occupied Austria, the family didn't flee over the mountains by night; they openly boarded a train, left the country, and didn't return. SCHINDLER'S LIST, understandably, concludes with the end of the war, then skips to the present-day view of "Schindler's Jews" and their descendants visiting Schindler's grave. It doesn't mention the breakup of his marriage or his failed postwar business ventures. SHADOWLANDS, about C. S. Lewis's marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham and her death of cancer, had two feature film adaptations "based on a true story." In the second, better-known movie (starring Anthony Hopkins), one of Joy's two sons is deleted. I consider this omission rather serious. On the other hand, changing the first meeting between Lewis and Joy to have Lewis's brother present (he wasn't) seems justified for dramatic effect. I found it mildly annoying that Lewis is shown driving a car (he tried to learn to drive at one point, and everybody involved quickly agreed that the attempt should be abandoned) and having no idea how to comport himself at a country inn (something he had ample experience with), but those departures from fact don't mar the story. It's a much more serious distortion to portray Lewis as an ivory-tower academic with no prior experience of either suffering or women. His mother died of cancer in his childhood, he was wounded in World War I, and he and his brother shared a busy household for several decades with the family of a woman Lewis had "adopted" as his foster mother.

What's your opinion of movies allegedly based on real people's lives that take broad liberties with the facts? In my opinion, minor omissions or unimportant deviations from actual events can be acceptable for dramatic purposes, but larger changes are problematic. I just tend to laugh or groan at blatant errors in films set in distant historical periods. With events that happened within living memory, though, I hope for stricter attention to accuracy.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 30 - Depicting Royalty

Depiction

Part 30

Depicting Royalty 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts in the Depiction series can be found listed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

Neuroscience and social science has been intensively studying human behavior for decades, but new tools are bringing to light many ways in which humans behave in the aggregate -- and as individuals.

Any rule you can verify by observation will have a percentage ( 5% to maybe 15%) of humans who just don't follow that rule -- or who maybe sometimes do follow the rule, but then other times not so much.

During a lifetime, we change.

We looked at a research article about how people are different as they become older -- fundamental personality and attitudes differ.  Character traits such as reliability can change drastically with age.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/06/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

So as you grow and mature as a writer, so too your audience (and editors) grow and change.  What matters to you changes.

But how do you change?  From what to what?  In what direction?  And why is it that there's always an exception to every rule?

Here's another bit of research that may give you a clue to what makes the difference between "the masses" or "the peasants" and "royalty" or "the rulers."

http://www.corespirit.com/new-discovery-shows-dont-listen-facts/

This article says only a small percentage of people alter their "first impressions" according to new hard-fact data, while most humans form opinions to "blend in" with their friends, associates or Group identity.

We seek "validation" from others (social interactions) above truth.  Being socially acceptable is a better survival trait than being correct, or so many humans seem to assume.  That assumption seems to be a survival trait.

So, because people care more about what opinion others have than about what is real, it is easy to "control" what some call "the masses."

That small percentage of people who incorporate new facts and change their attitudes to match reality may be the natural rulers of humankind -- or perhaps the mavericks who will explore and settle the stars?

The natural "royalty" -- the Kings, Dukes and Princes of so many Romance novels, -- will be drawn from the few who revise their understanding of reality based on new facts, not based on their first impressions.

It is said you get only one chance to make a first impression.

Maybe that's not true with Royalty - with natural rulers.  The kind of human (rare though that kind is) that reassesses everything they think they know, and their whole inventory of assumptions based on new facts ought to be the ones to watch.

As a novel Character, such a person would be the Hero, or the Main Character -- the most admired by some, but dreaded by others.

These rare individuals are the disruptors, the explorers, the innovators, and the agents of change.  They don't go along to get along.

In many ways, such Royalty might well be regarded as asocial, or even sociopathic because they form opinions independently.  They don't accept an opinion formed by another person and make it their own.  They question and investigate upon what this other person bases that opinion -- then they try to reproduce the data the other used to form the opinion.

In other words, they not only accept new facts -- they seek them out.

The experiments cited in the article
http://www.corespirit.com/new-discovery-shows-dont-listen-facts/
are based on a trick played on the experimental subject.

As usual in these experiments, the big hole in the scientific procedures is that the subjects are all drawn from college students who are volunteers.  That does not represent any kind of random cross section of humanity.

And lying to those volunteer students is also common in psychological experiments.

In this experiment, as described in that article, the point was to get the subjects to believe the lie -- then tell them it was a lie and see if they changed their minds about what was really going on.  Only a very few changed their minds based on the fact that they had been lied to.

The article ends off pointing out how the current political news relates to this ignoring of facts in favor of one's first impression.  That leap may be faulty, but a good Romance writer can make you believe it.  A good science fiction writer can plot a story that will destroy the experimenter's credibility.  Put the two together -- and see if Love Conquers All.

Are the individuals who change their minds based on facts actually Royalty, actually better "rulers" or better decision makers in terms of the survival of the society?  Or are these stubborn radicals the sand in the gears of society that reduces the changes the society will survive?

What would it take to "change" (as with age) one of those who accept the opinions of others as their own into someone who thinks for himself?  That is a science fiction premise -- how can you depict such a massive shift in the basic nature of a Character in such a way that readers will believe it?

What if a Character who does not think for himself is kidnapped by a UFO, and returns as someone who thinks for himself?  What would that do to the marriage he was in before being kidnapped?  Would the wife think that the man who returned was not actually her husband but an impostor?

In science fiction, traditionally, the lead character, the Hero, thinks for himself and never just goes along with the crowd.  In Romance, it isn't always that way -- but very often to embrace the Happily Ever After a couple must depart from tradition.

How can you make your reader believe such a drastic personality change?  How can you get a reader to root for the marriage that was so fundamentally disrupted by a UFO kidnapping?  Was it really a UFO kidnapping?  Or was it something else?  Mystery genre will give you some clues as to how to handle depicting massive personality change.

These two genres, science fiction and romance, belong together, and when you add Mystery -- you get Classics.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com