"I was alright with someone putting it in my head, but turns out I was not alright with putting it in someone else's." Good line. Good man

Intelligence begins with "I don't know", and it flourishes with "I was wrong."

My favorite quote is, “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.” - Orson Scott Card

When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he either ceases being mistaken or ceases being honest. Thank you for being the man who ceases being mistaken!

When I hear "you are not immune to propaganda" I think of stuff like this.

"This aligns with my understanding" is probably the main reason why most lies gain traction.

I was about to say, we’re a married, one income household with two children and our tax burden is DEFINITELY not only 8%!

Jonathan Haidt said it best. He described people as "born lawyers". We don't use our cognitive abilities to come to rational conclusions but instead use our brainpower to JUSTIFY our belief in the things we already want to be believe. He says we ask ourselves two questions: 1) When a statement aligns with what we already want to believe, we ask "CAN I believe it?" meaning we'll take the tiniest bit of sorta kinda circumstantial evidence and say "Aha! Confirmed! Case Closed!" 2) When a statement confronts us with something we do NOT want to believe, we ask "MUST I believe it?" meaning we'll look for any scrap or ghostly hint of evidence that the statement is false and cling to it for dear life.

The point about feeling weird only when putting maybe-wrong things into other people's brains resonated a lot. That's usually when I have a moment of "hmm, perhaps I should fact-check this...", when I suddenly find myself relaying some tidbit which didn't feel worth checking when it was 'just' me hearing it.

....This is why we have fact checkers...

Thanks for doing this! When I was a kid, the old people would say "don't believe everything you hear on TV". This should go extra for social media, but those companies profit heavily from engagement, not education. So you're incentivized to share faster than you can/should think. And there's barely any accountability, since the people that will call you out are generally the people that disagreed with your world view already! Regarding viral videos, "a lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets it's pants on" 😬.

The topic of Information Literacy is what deals with ALL of the things you are talking about here. I teach this subject at an academic library, and I constantly use the Crash Course series on Digital Information for this, but you better believe I'm adding this video to my teaching arsenal!! Awesome vid Hank!

Touching grass isn't going to cut it for me this year, Hank. I need to be absorbed into a wetland by strange and wonderful algae.

For once, I wish for something to become a bigger trend on the internet. Publicly admitting to having believed in lies and misinterpreting things would do us a lot of good. Thank you for the video!

A friend of mine shared a meme showing various newspapers claiming Canada, Antarctica, Israel, Africa, Australia were seeing global warming increasing at twice the rate of the global average. I was skeptical... I found the articles - they were all genuine articles from reasonably reputable sources. So then I put my brain to work and a light bulb went off. Land heats up much faster than water... and most of the world is ocean, therefore you'd expect land to be heating at more than twice the global rate.

This is not the first time Goodall has been the victim of false reporting. When the Gary Larson’s Far Side released a comic calling Goodall a Tramp her organization wrote a cease and desist notice. When Jane got back she loved the cartoon and made the lawyer drop the notice. Gary licensed the cartoon to Goodall’s organization to use as a fundraising and they became friends because of it.

can’t believe he exploded at the end of this video

That last one is so much of science in popular perception. Almost every time people think scientists as a group are "lying" it's because someone unqualified misinterpreted what scientists said and the people who are mad are just hearing that interpretation second or third hand.

Hank is the one who taught me that anything that confirms my bias online is something I should always check data and refine before sharing. I engage with things that confirm my bias, but dismiss and ignore the extreme ones that seem flawed automatically.

I love this. I definitely fact-check a lot more stuff than the average person, but even I can fall into that dead-eyed stare where I.. uhh.. forget to remember to fact-check something, and then it passes through my hands to my great shame. Oh, I love this because I sometimes feel like I'm "crazy" for being so self-analytical, for not only knowing things but insisting on knowing how I know them, for holding conflicting ideas in my head without feeling the need to believe either. I've never heard anybody else talk about this.

Not only did you start with humility, but you then went on to educate us about why being wrong is ok as long as we are willing to learn. I can't stress enough that this is what we all need to move forward as a society. Your humor and joy about learning the facts behind the misinformation help to drive it home. Keep it up, we appreciate it! Being wrong is ok, learning from it is better!

THERE ARE! FOUR! LIES!

This video is awesome for so many reasons. One that I find particularly funny is that we can see, from the "Most replayed" points on the timeline, where you got a haircut. As soon as you mentioned it, I was like, "Huh! I didn't notice!" and I immediately had to go back to find it. "Thank you" to everyone who did the work for me in advance. :)

Thank you for this video, seriously. It's genuinely so refreshing and eye opening to see some, especially someone we rely on for knowledge, say these things instead of just pretending like you know everything all the time and that it's okay to admit that you were wrong. It's even better that you understand why you were wrong and are able to articulate the mistakes that led to that conclusion and way of thinking. I think a lot of people could learn from these examples, myself included.

I cannot emphasise enough how important I think a video like this is. Over the last few years there’s been a phenomenon of people holding beliefs, being presented information which shows that belief is incorrect and then doubling down hard on that belief anyway. For someone to hold up their hands and say ‘yes I was wrong, and this is why’ is just so important. Believing something only to realise it wasn’t factual or true isn’t the end of the world, but learning from it and being honest about it crucial. Nicely done!

Two that I see quoted a lot are "the 15 biggest ships pollute more than all the cars in the world" and "100 companies are responsible for 71% of carbon emissions" The first one is not true about carbon emissions, although that's what most everyone thinks of when they hear "pollution". The original paper only says that 15 ships emit more *sulfur dioxide* than all the cars. Sulfur dioxide is not a greenhouse gas, it is bad to breathe, but it only lasts about a day before it gets converted to sulfate, so it's only a local pollutant. The only reason those ships emitted so much is because we let them, because we thought sulfur dioxide didn't matter way out in the ocean. But since then we've changed the laws and the ships hardly emit any SO2 anymore. So the fact is both out of date, and doesn't say the thing most people claim it says. The second one comes from a paper that counts all downstream emissions as belonging to the fossil fuel mining companies. So if an oil company drills some oil, sells it to a refiner, who sells it to a gas station, who sells it to me, and I burn it in my car, only the oil company counts as having any emissions. People quote this paper and then say "see, me driving my car doesn't matter", but your car *is* part of that 71%, and so is -all- the electricity you use at home. The paper doesn't say that 71% of the blame goes to those companies, because that's so much harder to determine. Whose fault is it when my car emits CO2? The oil company's fault? My fault? My boss's fault for not letting me work remote? My city's fault for not building more transit? The car company's fault for not making it more efficient? Yes, probably all of these. I wanted to believe both of these because I do think big companies need to be held responsible for climate change, and putting the blame on individual consumers is problematic. But I don't like how the quotes get used to say something they don't actually say (probably not on purpose).

We have tons of empty homes. They're used as short term vacation rentals, they're rich people's second homes, they're being kept empty to keep their value artificially high. We didn't suddenly tear down all our houses and apartments a few years ago.

Thanks for the transparency and showing how easy it is to get tangled up by misleading info sometimes. 😊

There's some conversation about the lack of homes being a cause of homelessness, specifically some talk about how there are plenty of vacant homes for people in cities where there are homeless people. The people I've talked to who work in housing or homelessness agree that this is a distraction that stops us from confronting the reality of the obvious and clear connection between limited housing stock and homelessness. When there is less housing available, rents go up. Search for "vacancies are a red herring" if you want to read more on this!

To self evaluate something you already believe tobe true and discover is false is very difficult

Thank you for being honest about these misunderstandings. EVERYTHING should be viewed through a skeptical eye.

This is why real journalism is more valuable than ever. Despite the continued narrative, there are a lot of people at established media outlets trying very hard to write and produce stories that are researched and fact checked. They are NOT PERFECT, but many of the reporters and editors doing the real work actually care about reporting the truth. The problem is the economics have made it too draining. Having multiple people spend hours, days or even months on a story is increasingly hard to commit to when they are competing with social media "journalists" and aggregators who can just re-post 15 out of context things a day and get more engagement than the original works. I think one of the most important things you can do is to subscribe and pay real money for a local or national newspaper that is employing real journalists. I know people think that a lot of these entities are too influenced by big companies that own them. Sometimes that's true. But it's not always true, some have remained independently owned or supported by independent benefactors. Either way, continuing to give more of your time and attention to giant social media platforms and negligent or manipulative content aggregators is a way worse option in my opinion.

I just respect you so much doing this. I will say, as a former small town journalist, regarding culpability for Scientific American, thinking two steps ahead of the reader is kind of their job. This was something I would harp on about until my editor wanted to gag me, but any graph, graphic or other standalone element has to be evaluated out of context for how people might take it, because people don't read articles, they cue off visuals.

I didn't catch the haircut until you mentioned it.

I love these videos and the recent 'I have questions about' it's teaching critical thinking, but more importantly it's reminding us about critical analysis, and fact finding. It's so very very important right now, and hearing people say 'I was wrong about...' is refreshing and makes me think about things I might be wrong about, and maybe I should look into. Love it!

This is THE best content on the internet. Honest, earnest, criticism of a problem that we ARE ALL subject to. You cant "outsmart" false information, you have to actually put in the work to look into it. Thank you for showcasing this stuff off Hank, I sincerely appreciate it.

So Hank, as a librarian, we often have conversations about misinformation and bias and even data (explaining it, finding it, working with researchers to curate adn store it, etc). But I don't think we have a grasp on how "the public" - especially on social media - use internformation and data. It's a qustion some library folks are looking into, but understanding the information needs of the public and also how information is used on social media are both very new conversations. This video is a fascinating example of how complex these topics are! Thank you

You touched upon a good point, that we should think “would I be comfortable sharing this without fact checking” I think have peer groups that keep us ‘in check’ is one solution to this.

Thank you, Hank, for making it clear that someone as intelligent, educated, and internet savvy as you are is still vulnerable to misinformation. This is a great reminder to double check things, even if - especially if - it seems to fit too well into my worldview. This video is amazing, especially for the different kinds of misinformation you pointed out. I'm saving it for future reference!

Really appreciate the humility and approach in this video. Really well done. I’ll throw a challenge flag on the “fake news” graph because it’s not cited and doesn’t have context for what constitutes “fake news.” Feels like a test in the spirit of this video. If so, we’ll played 😉

My father talked to me about how everyone is prejudiced, including himself, and he was a Superior Court Judge. He said you just have to examine your thoughts to work through that, and make adjustments. That has stayed with me my whole life

wow i was just looking at that rent/income graph just a few hours ago! i had seen it before but i looked more closely this time and went "wait a minute..." it caused me to reflect more on the fact that i don't question things that look right, even when they're surprising. how serendipitous!

I love this. A thinker. And you're explaining the process. People WILL learn from this. Not many, but... you know. I subscribed to your channel, although I can't recall having seen any videos from other channels I was subscribed to for several years, so I don't really know why.

It's not about right or wrong. It's about your beliefs changing with new information. Your willingness to accept you were wrong and desire to have the correct information even if you don't like it. I too fell for many things just like this. I try to be more thorough with what I believe because I will be more likely to repeat it. Self realization is a skill that many do not possession nor want to. Kudos for always being willing to improve. You have leveled up.

This is probably one of the most important videos you’ve put out. We can’t begin to solve problems effectively without first assessing these problems truthfully.

So refreshing to see a trusted source say they believe what their bias presents, but check that with which they disagree. Then turn around and say they were deceived by their bias, and gracefully allow themselves to be corrected. And then make a frenetic UKposts video that is awesome. DFTBA EVERY DAY

This is a great example of how much time it takes to actually get to the truth. How people are used to spending 1 minute looking at something and accepting it or not. It takes work to be accurate. We also really suffer from confirmation bias.

Thank you for pointing out the need to research any information you receive. Misleading, half truth information is everywhere. Appreciate your candor ❤

I hear arguments for fighting confirmation bias all the time as I'm in a psychology undergrad program, but hearing the process from start to finish from a source I trust is impactful. Thanks for this, especially the reshoot. Correcting ourselves is worth the effort.

Fantastic video.

This reminds me of a series of assignments my 9th grade science teacher had us do called, "Misconceptions Killed." That one set of assignments has guarded me against blindly believing things and not questioning something once I believe it. Which isn't to say I am not subject to that, but I would be in far worse shape without that one year of "Misconceptions Killed" exercises. My takeaway from this is, minimize or eliminate exposure to "social media". Well meaning people will do sloppy work and if most of them think like you do, they'll do massive poisoning to your mental well.

First: Thank you. I respect this. I take pride in being wrong, loudly admitting it. I deserve to be joked on if I'm willing to hold wrong ideas. Stating my own mistakes, honestly, hopefully will encourage others to try and be right.

The fact that I didn't notice the haircut change until he mentioned it was the craziest part of the video honestly

One psrt that really resonated with me was when you said you only thought to check a fact after imparting the information to someone else. I think, much like learning, sometimes only when you explain to other people do things really click in your brain and that can solidify your understanding of the subject matter, or in this case make you doubt and need to confirm the information. I have also done this too many times, and often immediately said, "hang on, let me check that!" As it sounds weirder or less true when spoken out loud somehow than when it just nestles in your brain, especially when its part of any preconceived personal biases. Great video, always worth reminding people to be open to checking facts with proper institutions and reliable sources. (ie, not some mad uncle on Facebook).

The last one is so important to understand. It happens both intentionally and unintentionally on many, many issues on social media and frankly in the traditional media as well. Obviously politicians and advocates create these misunderstandings intentionally all the time. It’s very very harmful and driven partially by people’s inability to think for themselves.

Homeless home is a problem of 3 different problems: life destroying addictive drugs, lack of public mental institutions and housing. We need to address all 3 not just housing.

Thank you for making this video. I recently came to my own “can’t believe I believe these lies” moment and I felt so ashamed. Not only had I just believed those stories as facts but also I had spread them afterwards. I feel so seen by your video Hank. Thank you for helping me come to terms with the fact that everyone can be wrong, it doesn’t make you any less smart. We just have to be more vigilant.

I'm obsessed with this video. In my social psych seminar, we've been talking a lot recently about these types of biases and how we can avoid them and, more than that, how HARD it is to avoid them. Everyone makes them. No one likes to think that they do. This is a great example of how to admit to our biases and learn from them.

I find it telling that the tax burden goes up (America would be in the middle of that table) if we included our healthcare... and look who is at the top of that table of Tax revenue as a share of GDP: Denmark, Sweden, Finland and others who are constantly being used as examples of "free" healthcare.

This is an AMAZING idea. We need a couple thousand intelligent and honest people doing these videos. We all know (well some of us know) that it's more difficult to convince us that we have been fooled than it is to fool us, and we all need to be eager to find our misconceptions or whatever. Thank you.

I'mma need that TikTok graph with both either adjusted for insulation or both not. Edit: INFLATION 😂

"I would use this ring from a desire to do good... But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine." The metaphore is far from perfect but I cant help but feel like hank is gandalf and twitter(or social media) is the one ring. You can try to use it to spread the truth but ultimately the algorithm doesnt care and even truths slowly turn into lies online.

I didn't start parsing news and data successfully until I first understood that it is far easier to come up with messages that are * Easy to spread * Valuable for them to teach that it is to come up with messages that are. * Absolutely true and honest * Worthwhile for me to learn. So here's the easy litmus test. If someone is spreading the truth they'll give you full sources so you can easily check all of the data, not just the data that most convincingly makes their case. Meantime if someone hasn't given you full access to their sources of their information then assume that the data they are presenting you is the best possible data they could find to make their case and they are probably hiding all the data that disagrees. And remember that new truth is always hard to come by even when people are 100% devoted to only finding and teaching truth. So never expect it to come sugar coated and free.

The simplest but hardest solution I see here is to spend less time on social media and the internet in general, so less of our beliefs become reliant on ideas that can be summarised in a handful of words. The world needs lots of nuance to accommodate for how vastly complex it is, nuance is naturally never popular on social media platforms because it's not entertaining - dunking is only possible when you rely on surface level summaries, back and white thinking, and gut instinct. These are natural human inclinations and social medias and the internet in general seem to encourage them. Feeling like one is a part of an online community also comes with feeling like one has to conform to not be excluded from the community. This is true of all communities but it seems to be extreme online where voicing an uncommon perspective can lead to death threats from strangers. On the other hand, I don't see 2nd guessing everything you hear and never talking to people online healthy either. The internet is very much what you make of it and discarding that altogether would be wasteful. The human curated content idea you seem to have followed up with is a great step in the direction of adding nuance

I didn't notice the haircut change until he mentioned it and then I had to rewind a little and see how big of a difference I had just overlooked.

It’s great that you’ve taken stock. I started actively fact checking as I watch anything, “trusted source” or not, a few years ago. Especially if someone is quoted or telling me what someone said in a speech or whatever I’ll just look up the source material and watch it for myself. Sins of omission are everywhere and there’s so much twisting of facts and findings. “A new study shows” is treated as if all “studies” are on par with one another and the newest one just cancels out everything that came before it. If I’m talking with someone and I heard something that contradicts what they’re saying but I haven’t looked into it I’ll tell them exactly that rather than run the risk of spreading falsehoods.

The bit about the NOAA graph is a perfect example of why I'm universally hated everywhere. People don't like being told when they're wrong, but usually, people are wrong. Heck, about two-thirds of the scientific papers I read in one semester of college had lies, unbacked assumptions, or logical fallacies littered throughout. The ones that didn't were based upon those that did! Basically, we don't know anything and these "four things" are barely the tip of the iceberg.

I just read an article that was on a different topic, but one that pointed out that our thinking on a topic can be tainted, thus resulting in "bad science", which is then perpetuated by the masses. The practice of trading popularity for truthfulness is worse than sad, yet this is what our society seems to be flirting with. I'm only applying these thoughts to your presentation, but only as it generally relates to the topic you're discussing.

One of the things I discuss with students I teach at the High School level is the burden of proof, with whom does the burden of proof lie. And what I teach, biased though it may be, is that the burden of proof is on the speaker. Whomever is presenting the argument should, 100%, be responsible for the the fact checking, the proof, AND evidence of the contrary. In the psat, I've heard arguments that claim we should check up to 3 sources to verify claims we hear; but in today's internet age, we need to check 5 or more. Considering the wealth of sources, it is very ironic and mixed-up that we have to check so much more.

I love the idea of “having an alliance to the truth”. The hard part is accepting truth as it is, and not the truth as you want it to be. Hank, thank you for being an example to us all.

Lack of homes is not the problem. I’ve seen multiple stats saying there are upwards of 10X as many empty houses as there are homeless people. Companies like black rock buying up all the homes for more than the asking price with cash up front seems like one of the root causes amongst other things.

This is a good video that makes a lot of very valid points about information presentation in general and how it can be mis-leading. In this age of internet, we must all learn to analyse information and cross check it the way journalists are supposed to. Nothing should be taken at face value. Doing so is important but also very complex because most of the online resources available for research can manipulate data as well. It has become known that Google intentionally manipulates information presentation using algorythms to reflect their corportate opinions and politics and/or that of their employees. If you spend any significant amount of time using search engines this will become obvious. It is imperitive when doing online research to open and read all pertinent listings way down the list, to avoid this type of bias. Also, important is to use more than one search engine while making sure that each is independant. There are many search engines that use Google for instance.

dynasty typewriter mentioned

I worked closely with the homeless for years. I've been homeless myself. My family helped get many off the streets, off drugs, into jobs and into housing. And we fed 100's more every weekend sending them away with enough for the week. And having tackled this issue from every angle. I can tell you with absolute certainty that homelessness is not a housing problem. That narrative is what allows governing bodies to get away with awarding people who have them in their pocket with development and redevelopment contracts that ultimately help almost none of the people they were intended to. Even taking the most cursory numbers it simply doesn't add up. Ignoring homes built before 1975 (of which there are millions but it's hard to quantify an exact number), there is 1 home for every 2.3 people. Considering that most housing is between single family occupancy (3-5) and single occupancy unit complexes (which is actually 1-2 per). There is more than enough living space. Even after you account for derelict dwellings you have to consider functional housing which isn't accounted for fully. Such as non-subdivided ADU's, RV's, and places not zoned as residential being used residentially. Like an old industrial building being turned into college dormitories without rezoning or changes in use on unrestricted land. Homelessness is a multifaceted issue. Building a house doesn't help the guy who will strip it for copper to pay for a habit. It doesn't help the woman who won't sleep inside because bees live in the walls. And most of the people who it could actually help will never see the inside of one because of the red tape that stands between them and it. People who need housing the most often do not meet housing program requirements. For one thing they have no way of identifying themselves officially much of the time. Birth certificates, ID's Driver's license. Hell even a library card. For a lot of them that was all lost, expired or stolen years ago. And to renew most of it...to get the ball rolling on getting into housing, you know what you need? Proof of physical address. On top of all that they often have to find a way with no money, poor hygiene and physical appearance to get from a to b several times a day to get things regarding all that done. They have to do that with all their worldly possessions to. because if they leave it somewhere. They'll be lucky if it's there when they get back. So you better have a buddy when you're homeless. Another homeless person who will watch your shit while you do things if you watch theirs while they do. And that relationship is based off mutual benefit. Once one of you takes too long or is getting something not being shared equally and it's known (like the possibility of one of you getting housing and the other not). That relationship and your only thing resembling a safety net is dissolved. Then you have to explain yourself to a lot of people on the street. Because if you flake or do anything that's perceived as trying to do better for yourself without raising the position of those around you as well, you will be excluded from a lot of circles. You're only going to find 1 person in a 100 who even meets whatever parameters were stipulated by those who actually made "free" housing happen (the program that develops out of the idea will not resemble the initial concept once it's made it's way through the bureaucratic grinder). And maybe every 4 of those people you'll get 1 to go along with it. And if their lucky. That system setup to "help" them won't chew them up and spit them out. Putting them in a worse position than they were before. It's easy to say we just need more houses, problem solves, and dust your hands off. But that doesn't even dig in the direction of the root of the problem. And that's why housing first has never put a dent in this issue. Because it's not a housing problem it's an economic classism problem. So much so that people of too high a station in life relative to the on the ground issue don't even understand the problem and are therefore incapable of helping it.

From what I could find, the median housing cost (not sure about rent, but it should correlate if landlords are economically savvy enough), and median income in the state of Texas still diverge heavily, though I am guessing not accounting for inflation on one variable would make the divergence pretty extreme. As I found it, housing cost have quintupled since 1990, while income has tripled, which still makes complaints of this divergence somewhat viable. Though other variables like "are median houses getting bigger in Texas?" I did not account for, so keep that in mind too.

“I was fine with the information put in my head, but when I put it in someone else’s head I felt a little weird about it.” I’ve noticed this about myself as well. I’ll go along believing something without fact checking but if I say it out loud somewhere, it’ll occur to me that maybe I should make sure that’s true. There’s only so much time in the day and this is how my brain tries to be efficient.

People misrepresenting research on social media and in news articles happens all the freaking time, it's maddening.

This is such a massive problem online. I was almost duped yesterday by a headline declaring that a local politician on the other side of the political spectrum said something absurd and outrageous. The only reason I didn't fall for it was because the image of the headline contained a few sentences from the body of the article that sounded kind of weird, and reading more of the article and watching the original statement made it clear that the statement was taken out of context. But if I had only read that headline, I would still believe that this politician said that absurd thing.

1:42 building more homes doesn't work when a developer buys an old house for $300,000 and builds five $800,000 homes in its place. It's the exact same unaffordability problem.

Very well said. As a libertarian/conservative I very much so appreciate people point out when they’re wrong regardless of what side. The right is definitely worse about these things because they’re insistent on sensationalism instead of facts. I really appreciate your perspective

I think it is so important to talk about how easy it is for inaccurate information to make its way into our brains, even for those of us who consider ourselves conscious of how much wrong information is out there. I also really appreciate you being honest about bias, and it will certainly make me try and fact check more often before I share information that may have been misconstrued or edited to appear a certain way (ie. Always read the fine print on statistics and graphs as often they are done in very narrow margins so the data aligns with expectation).

We should never be embarrassed by having to admit when we are wrong. That shows normal and growth. If you never have to admit your wrong, you're either lying or delusional.

I was able to use this for one of my class assignments on misinformation! Thanks Hank!

This reminds me of the phrase, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Funny, because the quote is often attributed to Mark Twain, though Google tells me there's no evidence of this. He did, however, state in his autobiography, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!" Your video is a great reminder that none of us are immune to lies and propaganda, and that we'd do better to verify our sources and beliefs with an open mind.

Good stuff, and thanks. I deeply respect this. What helped me in this area is adopting the following guidelines, and specifically believing they are true from the evidence: 1) Anything other people tell me is a hypothesis. 2) If the validity of the hypothesis is important I must evaluate it first by reviewing all available evidence for and against the hypothesis. As a starting point, what are people supporting it claiming and what are people opposing it claiming? 3) Everything claimed is wrong at some level of detail. It's important to understand what details are important or not when applying a claim to a situation. A half-truth is fine if the true part is what matters, but not if the untrue part matters. 4) I am an "other people" to everybody else, so I should also expect others to scrutinize what I claim in the same way.

I had a very interesting conversation with my dad about the importance of correct phrasing when it approaches topics of natural disasters and the correlation to climate change, specifically in regards to forest fires. It’s not that forest fires are increasing in frequency, because forests fires will happen no matter what, it is the intensity that these forests fires are burning at because of, low humidity, and increasing temperatures, and all the things that are attributed to a changing climate. As someone who is constantly changing opinions on topics, as I learn more about them, I can appreciate admitting that I was wrong, and that people I look upto like Hank can do the same.

Digging down is often hard and occasionally surprising. One thing I never trust is the statement that "I researched that" meaning "put it in a search engine and read the results", sometimes only the results and not what is linked. _"Rumors end with the wise."_

Loved the coversation about the data from NOAA! As an emergency manager working primarily in mitigation and preparedness it's actually really important to see how data in relation to disasters is talked about and understood!

"I had no reason to question" is a very unscientific and very human perspective to carry. Love the honesty in this video, mate.

HANK! THANK YOU!!! One of my beefs is the simple fact that very few people on the internet fact check themselves before posting, spreading, or rebroadcasting false information. Hell, we were doing it long before the internet. You'd think having all of this information at our fingertips would make it easier to check if the thing we're about to say is BS or not. But humans are lazy, we're only going to fact check if absolutely forced to, and then only believe the stuff that confirms our falsehoods (confirmation bias) instead of letting our understanding of the world be challenged. And I realized all this ten to fifteen years ago. AND I WAS JUST AS BAD AT IT TEN TO FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. (I've gotten better, but still fall into the trap occasionally.) Case in point. In the mid 80's, I was at "the local Taco Bell" (I believe Jacksonville, AR only had one Taco Bell at the time. I could be mistaken.) One of the kids I knew from school was there and saw me pouring a Dr. Pepper for myself. And he told me the "fun fact" that "Dr. Pepper has prune juice in it." And I ran with that fact all the way into the 90's. (Didn't stop me from drinking the stuff, as I love Dr. P, I was a Jewish kid at the time, and old Jewish men are kind of known for knocking back a glass of the pruney stuff. So Win all around.) From about 1984 to around 1995, I was spouting off that fact... that happens to be absolutely not true. Yeup, No prune juice at all. Nada. (Sorry, Dr. Pepper bottling company.) And to answer the question you left us with, "Yes, it's still wrong to pass on falsehoods, even if good comes from them. The problem is that someone's going to eventually point out how those statements are wrong, and the people who bought into whatever change that needed to be made are going to feel lied to, used, and manipulated. They'll even go as far as to question why they did what they did, despite it ending with a good thing. It's better to have a truthful argument because it cannot be challenged as a lie. (It can still be challenged as all arguments are not black and white. But that's a good thing as well.)

"What does it matter if it's not accurate as long as it gets the results I want?" Because when the people figure out that they were misled, it undoes all the good, sometimes ending upnmuch worse than it started out as, and makes it harder to convince them the next time.

Dude, this is great idea for the whole channel. Probably not daily videos, but certainly weekly.

This is what they were always on about in all those media literacy classes! You're setting such a great example, showing that absolutely no one is immune to falling into the comfortable trap of our own biases

9:16 «And yes, sometimes I feel like, what does it matter if somebody's saying a graph is saying something that it isn't actually saying, or that this graph is making people sort of active and excited and enthusiastic about making the kinds of change I want to see in my country, even if it's not right, what does it matter?» I definitely hear this one.

Enjoyed this content. Did you uh... double check that graph you flashed at the end?

I believe in Dave Green

This is my favorite vlogbrothers video in recent memory. As a medical student, I also strive to be someone with an alliance to the truth. It’s so important to critically analyze how our own inherent biases color our perception of the world. Thank you, Hank, for doing the hard work and trying to increase awareness of bias, even if it felt embarrassing!

The older I've managed to become the more I have learned to enjoy being wrong. I tend to hold very strong opinions about things so when I'm wrong I'm fantastically wrong and this use to lead to embarrassment and me learning to argue very effectively for things that are simply not facts - Now when I state something I'm even slightly unsure of I look it up and that is sometimes followed by me stating I was wrong and this is what I've now learned. Everyone benefits.

@1:55 homelessness is a problem due to a lack of *available* homes. This is also sometimes due to ownership structures.

I really resonate to striving towards having a very strong alliance with the truth. I've recently realised that truth and authenticity are core values of mine and it sometimes shocks me that not everyone shares these values. That said, as you highlighted, caring about the truth is not enough and confirmation bias is really tricky to successfully avoid. I heard a quote once that had the sentiment of "always fact check, especially when it aligns with your pre-existing beliefs".