Actually, Sometimes Facts Don't Matter
The book is on-sale today, and TIME Magazine has an extended excerpt from Weaponziation of Expertise’s chapter on misinformation:
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” This saying has become one of the most overused phrases of the Trump era. It has a seductive appeal in a partisan era. It’s reassuring—your opponents must simply be misinformed—and suggests an easy solution—make sure people have the right information, and disagreement magically dissolves.
There’s just one problem: it’s not how democracy or knowledge work. When it comes to political facts, disagreement is inevitably—and happily—part of our civic fabric. The facts we fight over and how we fight over them are value laden and fraught with questions of interpretation….
If facts are the result of preexisting divides, our energies really should be applied elsewhere. … Facts cannot simply displace politics.
Read the full excerpt, “Actually, Sometimes Facts Don’t Matter,” in TIME.