Stoicism in the Age of Fake News

Techniques and perspectives on an ancient problem

How does a Stoic navigate today's media environment?

It’s a complicated question – but the ancient philosophy has several useful techniques to offer in response. Not only that, but it urges us to change the way we relate to information.

The Problem

There’s so much information in the world and it’s challenging to determine what is true. Following the philosopher Justin McBrayer, we can categorize information as: 

• accurate

• misleading

• misinformation

• disinformation

Accurate information is correct and significant. It’s ideally what we want. Yet so much of our information environment is populated with the three species of false information. Often we consume simply false misinformation. Sometimes, what we see is not just false, but intentionally so – this is disinformation. Perhaps the worst case is when it is misleading. The information shared is true but does not promote knowledge or get at what is most important.

The information we seek and are given is not ideal. So what can we do?

Stoic Attitude

The Stoics would first remind us that this situation is not surprising. It’s not an aberration of history.

Disinformation was commonplace in ancient Rome. Seneca spread fake news when he presented a letter to the senate justifying the assassination of Nero’s mother, Agrippina, on the grounds that she attempted to kill the emperor. Marcus Aurelius’s military rival, Avidius Cassius, undertook a coup based on the misinformation that Marcus Aurelius was dead. Even when Roman’s honestly sought the truth it just wasn’t that easy to find. Institutions that are completely incentivized to have correct views still make mistakes. Things have not changed.

Indeed, the fact that we live in a paltry information environment is predictable from a basic analysis of the players in our information environment.

Consider the suppliers. Today, many people look to the media for entertainment. As entertainment companies, they’re driven to make money, not spread knowledge. Of course, there is some incentive to practice epistemic virtue, but it is not the dominant one. Misleading information that plays to consumer biases is generally more lucrative and, perhaps, even more fun to make. Hence, we’ll get misleading information – or worse. Rejecting the profit motive does not fix the issue. Many sirens call academics, nonprofits, and government bureaucracies away from the truth. Ideas that threaten one’s shot at tenure, funding, or promotion are not that attractive to spread. Views and theories that increase one’s power and importance are. Many intellectual projects have had promising beginnings only to be steered off course from the object of truth.

Now, consider the consumers of information. For many issues, we aren’t motivated to be good believers. If I don’t have correct views about traffic when walking to the store, I’m likely to end up injured or worse. I don’t need much epistemic virtue to carefully cross the street. But if I have false views about geopolitics, economics, history, law, and many more important and abstract topics, I will be fine. It may feel better to read media that provides what I want to hear, regardless of the information’s merits. We want to have true views, but also seek to be entertained, have others think well of us, and be important. True views are boring! However, news consumption driven by negativity bias, not only the simple desire to feel good. Media often presents the misleading picture that life is horrible and getting worse. Perversely, It’s easier to look at that picture of the world than a more accurate one.

Both suppliers and consumers lack the drive to cultivate an ecosystem of accurate news. We get the world we want.

Stoic Shift

A modern Stoic may begin with the attitude that the existence of fake news is not surprising. We could modulate Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations II.1 as follows: 

Start your day by telling yourself, "I'll encounter people who are dishonest, incompetent, gullible, biased, closed-minded, and ignorant. They're that way because they don't know any better.”

People will spread inaccurate reasons for vicious and innocent reasons. The world is full of epistemic vice. That’s to be expected.

What is the Stoic response? Marcus Aurelius continues:

I can't be angry or hate anyone, because we're all part of the same human family. Acting against each other is unnatural, and it's acting against each other to be angry and to turn away.

It’s not to be pessimistic or judge others as epistemic sheep. Instead, we should aim to cultivate epistemic virtue, as best we can. That’s an individual and social project.

As individuals, we can start by pausing more often.

Instead of immediately jumping to judgment – stop. When you notice emotions arising, pause and ensure you’re thinking clearly. Indeed, sometimes there isn’t even a need to come to a firm opinion. Do you really need to know the answer to some geopolitical, economic, or historical debate?

This is how the Stoics would generally counsel us to behave. Managing news is just one application of the discipline of judgment, the practice of seeing things as they are. We live in a world littered with misinformation, disinformation, and misleading information. That cannot be changed. 

In a sense, it’s all very simple.

As individuals and as a culture, we should change how we relate to news. The news isn’t about entertainment. 

In Lost in Thought, Zena Hitz talks about the distinction between studiositas and curiositas. St. Augustine used the term curiositas to describe a kind of empty curiosity – the desire to see what is happening at the gladiatorial games. Such a desire isn’t driven by wanting to embrace reality, but to experience it. Curiosity wants sensation and so, of course, what it gets is sensational news. Zena Hitz understands studiasitas to be the virtue of seriousness. It’s about directly aiming toward the truth. Reject sensation, power, and profit, and be serious if you want to see reality as it is.

Such a shift isn’t necessarily Stoic, but it fits with the Stoic attitude. Much of the discipline of judgment consists of ensuring that we think with excellence in our environment. Epictetus talks about the ethical aspect of this with:

Don't let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent.

Determine whether something is under your control or not. If it is, act on it. If it isn’t, return to whatever is important. If you’re asked to believe something only believe what is so. Do not embellish the picture or crop out what you do not want to see.

In addition to seeing what we’re given as it is, we must take the epistemic posture.

Consider a conspicuous cultural event from the nineties – the Rodney King riots. There’s a way to interact with that event seriously. To the extent that it’s relevant and important, figure out what happened. Take action, or not, accordingly. However, there’s another stance that many watching and participating in the event took. Experience the news and events as they arrive as quickly as you can. Let them reinforce, not challenge, whatever ideas you had previously. Don’t learn anything. The example chosen here doesn’t matter. How much ink spilled about the event has already effectively disintegrated into nothing? The curiosity of a nation was held, gripped, for days. It moved on to millions of other events.

The right posture towards such events should be a serious one. A useful question to ask when interacting with the news is, am I learning anything of significance? At the point that the answer is no, it’s best to stop. This is simple advice, but it’s one we need to remind ourselves of over and over again. The human mind is bound to move away from pursuing knowledge and back to seeking experience or power.

Marcus Aurelius once urged himself:

Throw away your books — no longer distract yourself: it is not allowed.

As if you’re now dying, despise the flesh. It is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries.

Stoicism offers heuristics for coming to more accurate beliefs and choosing information sources. Pause. Be careful of giving way to negative emotions. Aim for applying consistent standards. Understand and explain opposing views accurately. Seek the truth.

But perhaps its most important contribution, one it shares with other substantive philosophies, is its call for seriousness. To reject sensationalism and all nonepistemic purposes of the news is to approach virtue.

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I recently spoke with Justin McBrayer here.

What do you think about the virtue of seriousness?