The Constitution of Knowledge: How to Identify Reliable Sources of Information

 

This past week, my daughter has had a frustrating correspondence with a friend who is an avid Trump supporter and is convinced, even though she doesn’t like Trump’s morals, that he is the only answer to our country’s problems. In the course of their communication, the friend provided a long list of arguments and sources for where she was getting her information. Most of them are on the far-right fringe. I’m sure this correspondence is similar to many other conversations that are occurring between family members and friends who disagree on what is real and true and what is not. These conversations (sometimes shouting matches) don’t always revolve around politics. Sometimes they deal with climate change, vaccines, racism, economics, or other current topics.

So, how do we determine whose version of reality is valid? Does everyone just get to have their own facts? Well, no. A couple of years ago, the Church added a statement to the Handbook about sources of information. Here’s a portion of the statement: “In today’s world, information is easy to access and share. This can be a great blessing for those seeking to be educated and informed. However, many sources of information are unreliable and do not edify. Some sources seek to promote anger, contention, fear, or baseless conspiracy theories. Therefore, it is important that Church members be wise as they seek truth. Members of the Church should seek out and share only credible, reliable, and factual sources of information. They should avoid sources that are speculative or founded on rumor.”

Hard to argue with this. But how do we determine which sources of information are reliable? A couple of years ago, BYU Studies published a special issue of the journal on good government (issue 61.1). In that issue, one of the best articles was by Kristine Hansen, professor emeritus of English at BYU. In this article, titled “‘To Moderate and Unify’: The Role That Latter-day Saint Citizen-Rhetors Can Play in Healing American Political Discourse,” Hansen refers to a book by Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2021). Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. I recently started reading the book, and I believe it should be required reading for anyone who is interested in following the counsel in the Church Handbook.

Rauch lays out the challenge in the book’s first chapter. He describes the world of journalism that he was trained in—a world of ethics, truthfulness, and fact-checking; of peer reviewers and editors; of foundational values that have been institutionalized. “The world I was trained for,” he writes, “seems, in hindsight, a long way off. . . . In science, in journalism, in politics, and in daily life, truthfulness is for the most part a civic norm, not a legal requirement, and the twenty-first century put it under severe pressure. Most shockingly, a president of the United States gleefully shattered every known record for lying. On might be tempted to write off all politicians as liars, but no prominent figure in American politics has lied nearly as brazenly, wantonly, and prolifically” (5).

And because of our political tribalism, millions of Americans either believe the lies or simply don’t care, because they like what Trump says, regardless of how untrue it is. This is a frightening development, not just because a truly dishonest individual may again become the most powerful man on earth, but because it undermines the Constitution of Knowledge that Rauch is defending. So, what is this Constitution of Knowledge? First and foremost, it is a system—a system of thought and practice that helps us determine what the facts really are. Rauch quotes Republican Senator Ben Sasse, who said in 2017, “We have a risk of getting to a place where we don’t have shared public facts. A republic will not work if we don’t have shared facts” (9). Rauch then quotes Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, who wrote in the New York Times, “‘These are truly uncharted waters for the country. We have in the past argued over the values to be applied to objective reality, or occasionally over what constituted objective reality, but never the existence or relevance of objective reality itself.’ The battle lines, Hayden perceived, made for some strange bedfellows. ‘In this post-truth world, intelligence agencies are in the bunker with some unlikely mates: journalism, academia, the courts, law enforcement, and science—all of which, like intelligence gathering, are evidence-based’” (9).

Rauch defines the Constitution of Knowledge as “liberalism’s epistemic operating system: our social rules for turning disagreement into knowledge” (15). When he mentions liberalism, he is not referring to a political stance in America, generally represented by the Democratic Party, as opposed to the conservatism generally espoused by the Republicans. He is referring to our modern liberal order, which includes capitalism and democracy, an order that is depersonalized, decentralized, and rules-based. “The system did not assemble itself by some automatic social magic; it was the product of hard-fought battles and hard-won norms and institutions, and many people suffered and bled for it along the way. It is not self-maintaining; it relies on an array of sometimes delicate social settings and understandings, and those need to be understood, affirmed, and protected. By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge, and by exploring contemporary threats to it, I hope to arm its advocates with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, and why, and how” (15).

When you look at the institutions that Trump and his followers are attacking, you see the fundamental institutions that create and protect the Constitution of Knowledge: journalism, science, intelligence agencies, academia, courts of law, law enforcement. This is why Trump is so dangerous. In his narcissistic quest for power, he is eager to tear down the very foundation of our Republic, the shared view of facts and reality that have held us together, sometimes barely, for 235 years. The fact that so many Americans are willing to buy into his project does not bode well for our future.

In a later chapter, Rauch defines what he means by reality and lays out two “Rules for Reality,” rules that govern the institutions that help us determine what is true knowledge and what is not. First is “the fallibilist rule: No one gets the final say. You may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be debunked, in principle, and only insofar as it withstands attempts to debunk it” (88) The second is “the empirical rule: No one has personal authority. You may claim that a statement has been established as knowledge only insofar as the method used to check it gives the same result regardless of the identity of the checker, and regardless of the source of the statement” (89). If these two rules sound an awful like the scientific method, that is not a coincidence.

These two rules then lead to certain commitments that those in reality-based professions follow. Rauch lists ten:

Fallibilism. The notion that any of us might be wrong at any time on any subject.

Objectivity. Nothing is true merely because you feel it is true or because a person you revere says it is true.

Exclusivity. “Members of the community share not just a commitment to the idea of objective reality but also an understanding that outside of that commitment lies anarchy” (104).

Disconfirmation. Individuals attempt to confirm their own viewpoints and try to persuade others, “but they understand that their claims will and must be challenged; they anticipate those challenges and respond; they subject their scholarship to peer review and replication, their journalism to editing and fact-checking, their legal briefs to adversarial lawyers, their intelligence to red-team review” (104).

Accountability. People want to feel safe making honest mistakes, but they should be encouraged not to make mistakes. “So we need just the right amount of accountability—not too much or too little” (104).

Pluralism. “The reality-based community not only accepts viewpoint diversity, it positively depends upon viewpoint diversity. . . . ‘Shut up,’ they understand, is never an explanation” (105–6).

Civility. In order to keep the conversation going, “community members develop and follow elaborate protocols which encourage them to argue calmly and depersonalize their rhetoric” (106).

Professionalism. “Earned credentials count. To develop a track record and reputation, you need to study and practice for years, often decades. . . . To organize and join teams, you need to be connected to institutions (universities, medical boards, scientific societies, media outlets, journalism schools, law firms, bar associations, government agencies, pharmaceutical corporations). . . . There is always room for amateurs to contribute, but they cannot get very far without consulting with institutions and experts” (106–7).

Institutionalism. It’s also important for institutions to network with each other.

No bullshitting. You must behave with a sincere regard for truth. “Whereas a liar expresses a certain appreciation for truth by trying to conceal or deny it, the bullshitter ‘does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly” (107). This is a spot-on description of Trump’s attitude toward truth. He doesn’t care whether what he says is true or not, as long as people believe it.

Well, this is a pretty good blueprint for determining whether your sources of information meet the standard the Church expects. In his book’s first chapter, Rauch gives an example of a story CNN ran that turned out to be not true. The network broadcast a retraction, admitting the mistake, and let two of its employees go for broadcasting this false account. Tellingly, Trump used this as an example of “fake news” in order to smear the network and discredit the whole mainstream media that he detests. But this is actually an example of how the reality-based community should work. It is not infallible, but when it makes mistakes, it self-corrects. Science, as part of the reality-based community, is also self-correcting. This is why we can trust it. But to use this feature of the system to undermine it, as Trump does so regularly, is why he is so dangerous to the future of our republic. But what does Trump care about the republic? He has made it clear he has no use for its institutions or guardrails. He stands for everything this grand tradition fights against. Which is why I again insist that Rauch’s book should be required reading for everyone in “post-truth America.”* We should fight to preserve not just the United States Constitution, but also the Constitution of Knowledge.

*If you are a BYU student, employee, retiree, or alum and have an account on the Harold B. Lee Library's website, you can download a digital copy of this book through JSTOR at that website.