VIEWPOINT / Ignorance and Social Media

By Timothy Weaver, Ph.D.

On ignorance and social media. The rhapsodic devotion to Trump is a phenomenon of our age. But it is not new or unique. German’s saw this phenomenon between 1933 and 1945. Our own Huey Long in the 1930s had such a grip. Trump’s rise has coincided with cable news as 24-7 entertainment; and with social media. In the latter case, the ignorant and the brilliant, the Ph.D. and the high school dropout have the same standing. The grammatically challenged go unchallenged by the dreaded English teacher and her red pen. The illogical are free to spout nonsense without correction.

Social media, especially Facebook, has given the poorly educated and the highly educated an equal footing. As bad money drives out good money so it is that bad ideas drive out good ones. Given the ubiquitous nature of Facebook and Twitter, the least intelligent can send a message around the world at the speed of an electron in copper, at the speed of a light or sound wave. All ideas are given equal time and space in which to spread. No teacher or editor to mark down or reject even your most poorly written sentence. No guardians of syntax, logic or meaning. Every concept, fact, piece of evidence, logical conclusion has an equal and immediate reaction—an ill formed concept, a lie, false equivalency, conspiracy, an “unlogical” conclusion. Each has a willing audience, a constituency.

This is the change. Before the instant gratification of having the worst gibberish in the world published for six billion viewers to see, publication was limited to professional journalists, writers, academics, writers of letters to editors of newspapers and magazines, and books. Only those with appropriate training and professional backgrounds could publish (with the exception of letters to editors), but even then published material was reviewed by editors or peers. No one was free to publish lies, conspiracies, falsehoods, except through the vanity press and the occasional rogue book (Clifford’s Irving’s fake auto biography as told by Howard Hughes). The undereducated now have a voice. Facebook and Twitter have become their fora to blather and spread ill-conceived arguments. I’ve never been so aware of this remarkable phenomenon as during the past year. Even today I see posts from those struggled in school repeating false news about Trump being cheated. What to do? I spent way too much time posting counter arguments and fact-based comments on Facebook. No one who should have learned something ever seemed to do so. I persuaded no one in the ill-informed crowd.

We know there is a crisis when ignorance prevails over deep thought, analysis, logic and facts. It should surprise that we, collectively, are among the least well educated in the western world, as measured by standardized tests. Is there an answer? I attribute this in part to the failure of our fundamental concept of a common education. We once thought public education was the best answer to defeat ignorance, mayhem, chaos, anarchy, unbridled passion and the demise of civilized society. This was an American invention—free grammar schools. This was a marvel of the western world. But, yet a recent study of how college students select and internalize propaganda on social media shows that even at the college level, the thinking techniques we are teaching students are woefully inadequate.

The universal thinking characteristic of the ignorant is black and white. Instinctively, they react to parody, satire, sarcasm by confusing it with realism. They are blind to complexity and subtlety. They are reflexive in their response mechanism. The ignorant respond to every stimulus with a threat/non-threat response. Black or white. Retreat or fight. Simplifying the complicated. Those with his type of cognitive structure fail to grasp the complexity of satire, parody, dark humor, sarcasm, when that sarcasm is intellectual in nature. That lack of cognitive complexity is evident to the trained eye.

Here is what I see: The ignorant on Facebook have a tendency to pounce with their usual crudeness, rudeness, lack of knowledge and ad hominem attacks. The reason they do so is to be found in the literature on “cognitive complexity.” The simple cognitive system must render all stimuli to a simplistic level in order to comprehend and respond. This is as predictable as gravity. My research at Syracuse University tells me how robust this theory of human thinking actually is. I found that cognitive complexity was predictive of responses to questions requiring speculation and a high level of cognition.

My beloved aunt, a lifelong educator, once told me that ignorance was the hardest thing in the world to fight. I refused to believe her but I’m realizing how very wise she was. When the truly ignorant call the well-educated ignorant, we sense there is a problem. While my aunt may not have been introduced to conceptual thinking systems, this is one possible explanation as to why we have educated persons on Facebook who go along with the ignorant without questioning them. Conceptual complexity is a mental construct and may not be related to mastery of material at the level of an average college undergraduate program. In short, at the college level there can be a spectrum of cognitive complexity.

From reading hundreds of Facebook posts for nearly a year regarding the election, I see Facebook as dividing itself along lines I describe above. Many of the well-educated who are comfortable with higher order thinking have posted that they are culling their friends lists and continuing to communicate only with friends who they perceive can grasp complexity, do their own analysis, respond as intellectuals do in exchanging ideas. The ignorant are no doubt doing the same thing. Facebook’s ambition to bring together all persons of different backgrounds, different levels of education, different levels of intelligence into a world community is breaking down. The Trump phenomenon no doubt has sped up the process. It is inevitable that people who have nothing in common as to cognitive complexity would sooner or later discover that and treat Facebook as a series of interest groups one can join or not join. The goal of forming communities might work when the interactions are about a common cause. All sorts can contribute, each according to his or her skills or abilities. But, I see more groups forming where the common trait is of an intellectual interest. I would expect this trend to continue, even accelerate. The Biden team announced this week is a professional, highly intelligent group of experts in their fields. They will not appeal to many on the far right who sadly fit the category of ignorance detailed above. Listening to their introductory remarks tells me that they will reach a different kind of audience, an audience missing from the past four years due to the ignorance, incompetence and deep prejudices that have engulfed policy making in the Trump administration. It’s a new day and I expect that new day will show up quickly on Facebook and Twitter.

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