We spend our days being flooded with information from media, experts of every kind, polling institutes, research centers, governmental and international organizations, historians and specialists of all sorts.
Many of us consult this information with enormous interest, relying on the reputation of the author or the credibility of the organization to analyze an important subject.
When I was a teenager, I was extremely naive. I thought, for example, that journalists knew their subjects perfectly and were truly independent experts.
The age of experts
When I became a freelance writer at 16 for computer magazines, I realized how much of the work consisted of copying topics already covered by others, or writing about subjects people did not really know.
A freelancer is paid by the number of characters in an article. Even with the greatest professional conscience at the beginning, he quickly realizes that to earn a living he must produce papers. And to produce many papers, he must cover many subjects, increasingly subjects he does not really know, or does not know at all.
How many times have I been interviewed by journalists on important subjects, and how many times have I realized how vague their understanding was of what they were discussing?
They interviewed a few handpicked experts, often contacted in a hurry only hours before deadline. Then, in 90% of cases, and I am not exaggerating, the answers I gave were inserted into the article either out of context or completely distorted to fit the direction the journalist had chosen from the start, because journalists also have opinions to push. They call that an angle; it is often a bias.
The problem is more serious than a simple lack of professional rigor.
Each of us is influenced by our history, our emotions, our interests, our social environment, our politics, our fears and our gratitude. Even when we think we are independent, invisible threads pull our judgment.
I once had a legal case influenced in a ridiculous way by a television program the judge had watched the night before about graphology. A so-called expert explained that the signature of a fraudster had not been made by him and that, according to their analysis, there was a strong chance I had made it instead. It was nonsense. The fraudster had signed the contract in front of me, and it was his signature.
That is how a trial can be influenced by a television show about a supposed science.
When you enter a store, you immediately have the reflex to ask a salesperson for advice: what is the best washing machine? You then hear a speech about the virtues of one model or another, thinking he is neutral.
You may even thank him warmly, but in the end he may simply be trying to sell a model because a new one is arriving in a few days and stock must be emptied, or because it is the model on which he has the best margin or commission. The same is true of recommendations on e-commerce sites, which are almost all influenced, and of your banker recommending one investment or credit card over another.
In recent years, I had sympathy for Francois Hollande. Not for all his political positions, but for a personal reason. After my wedding, my wife and I went to Galeries Lafayette to collect gifts from our wedding list. We had large bags and were waiting for the elevator. When the doors opened and people were entering and leaving, I heard a voice say, Sir, you forgot a bag there. It was Francois Hollande, then First Secretary of the Socialist Party. I have always kept a feeling of gratitude toward him, and that feeling influences the way I consider him despite our major disagreements.
The same subject, the same speech, the same event can therefore be judged in radically different ways depending on the person looking at it. Objectivity is rare.
Going beyond our own prejudices
To protect ourselves from this lack of objectivity, we must first open our eyes.
We must tell ourselves that every article, every YouTube video, every expert opinion, whatever the diploma or title, is biased and can be challenged. There is no pedestal that cannot be shaken.
We must also try to remain objective ourselves, fight to keep a clear mind and try to analyze things in a world full of information. We must free ourselves from the chains that keep us attached to a way of thinking in order to find our own.
We must also understand that there is never only one truth on a subject. There are, and always will be, other points of view, and we must take them as such while remaining as open as possible to criticism and to arguments that could contradict our own.
Good luck to all.
P.S. On the same subject of influence, see the article I wrote a few months earlier: Thinking by and for oneself in the era of social networking.