Member-only story
Our (corona)viral pitfalls
The stakes in the global battle against the coronavirus are high, and our ability to make sense of often conflicting messages is under strain — there are many pitfalls. How should we evaluate what we read?
A new virus is messing with our health and with our society, and we are all ignorant. There is still a hell of a lot we do not know about this novel coronavirus — it’s the kind of novelty we can all do without. That is a thoroughly unpleasant feeling: we prefer by far simple, unambiguous messages.
That’s something social media are good at: conveying and delivering simple, unambiguous messages. The trouble is, it is not always easy to tell how accurate and helpful they really are. Many of them contain data and graphs, giving them an air of credibility that they do not necessarily deserve. Many of them come from, or are repeated by, people we have come across before, people who we believe to have a good reputation, and who would not knowingly spread false information or inappropriate speculation.
But they are human, and therefore subject to cognitive distortions that interfere with human reasoning, especially in these highly emotional times. And so are we: there might be a difference between what we think we…
