2020 is an election year in New Zealand… and somewhere else, but I forget where.
As election day approaches, politicians campaign and special interest groups holler away. We’ll see a flood of articles, PR, PR masquerading as articles, and general commentary (aka waffle).
The question for each of us against this wall of noise is: who is right? Who is wrong? Who needs to be blocked and unfriended?
The key is to look underneath what’s being said, to the quality of the information. We need to rank it. And to do that, we can use a time-tested theory… card suits.
Remember how suits work in classic card games? They determine which card of the same (face) value will beat another. Hearts is the top trump, followed by diamonds. Then we have spades, and finally the lowly club. So a Queen of Hearts is higher than a Queen of Spades, Diamonds will outrank clubs, etc etc.
Let’s treat information in the same way. Here we go…
HEARTS = FACTS
Hearts are facts. Not “alternative facts”… actual facts from peer-reviewed journals, mathematics texts, unaltered satellite photos of receding glaciers, etc etc. Facts include things that we can see with our own eyes, touch, smell, taste and hear… and that others can verify. So if you hear holy ghosts talking to you in the night, but I don’t… and then we ask three other randomly selected people and they don’t either… soz.
DIAMONDS = INFORMED OPINION
Diamonds are the opinions of people who know a lot about the area. A chef holding forth on the correct use of salt, for example. A pro basketball player talking about court shoes. Or 90,000 climate scientists signing a letter about global heating. The key thing to remember is “informed” covers adjacent areas… for example, in a debate about space, the opinion of the physicist will beat the opinion of the chef. And vice versa if we’re debating soup. The physicist doesn’t actually don’t have to have been to space themselves to say whether the moon landing was possible. The vast factual knowledge from that area supports their informed opinion. So that means an epidemiologist who doesn’t have children (gasp!) is still right when they tell you to sort your shit out and get MMR shots for your child. And sorry no… your 5-episode web tutoring from an “alternative learning centre” doesn’t make your opinion a diamond. Read on, dear friend.
SPADES = ANY OLD OPINION
Ahh, spades. This is where we’re most likely to hear (soon to be former) friends and colleagues belting out the line “well, that’s my opinion, and it’s just as valid as yours, so let’s agree to disagree”. Spades is where we find Mike Hosking ranting against bike lanes from the comfort of his Land Rover. It’s drunk Steve from IT mansplaining why 1980’s Margaret Thatcher style trickle-down economics will eventually provide a lovely lifestyle for all Kiwis. And its Karen from Facebook, in the comments section. This stuff has no basis in fact, no surrounding expertise, or may have at one time been sorta correct but has long since been proven false… but the speaker is far too complacent to update their worldview.
CLUBS = RANDOM BULLSHIT
Finally, right down the bottom of the barrel we have our clubs, aka random bullshit. This is the deodorant dodging vegan at the party telling you that cows milk is poisonous, Jenny McCarthy, and Trump’s inauguration turnout numbers. It’s Breitbart, Infowars, and half of Reddit. It’s your friend’s mum who reckons her teeth are being destroyed by the chlorine in tapwater. It’s Facebook Ads and that lady on who stands on Great North Rd all day long with her cat, yelling.
There you have it. Go forth and enjoy, armed with your new ranking system.
And each time you see a topical piece of info this election cycle, just drop a little card-suit emoji into the comments section, to give future readers advance notice of what they’re walking into. You’ll make the world a slightly better place.