I'm All Out of Eyeballs!

That's right. You read that title correctly. God gave me two and apparently I need a few more.

I was recently reading a posting by Michael Shermer, Founding Publisher of Skeptic Magazine, on his blog (here is the exact post) and something jumped out at me. Read the following paragraph:

"Several of you said that I am a victim of one of my own central tenets of baloney detection: the confirmation bias, where we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe and ignore the disconfirmatory evidence. Yes, I will admit, I do this. Everyone does, and we must guard against it, especially when it comes to religion, politics, and economics. To combat this problem, I read the conservative Wall Street Journal and the liberal Los Angeles Times. I listen to such conservative talk radio hosts as Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Praeger as well as the very liberal Bill Maher. I have read Karl Marx’s books as deeply and carefully as I have read Adam Smith’s books. I have read a host of books from liberal and conservative and libertarian authors on the current economic meltdown."

Ok, the confirmation bias thing I can buy easily. I do it. You do it. It's pretty much unavoidable. However, what struck me was the second part where he talks about following as many angles of the political spectrum as possible. In today's society, with the internet and 49 different news channels on TV and 35 different news radio stations, we have a staggering amount of information that each and every one of us has at our fingertips. Now this isn't news by any means, but when I actually think about it in terms of finding the appropriate, accurate information I need in which to base logical conclusions from, my brain begins to spin so rapidly that I fear it will suddenly become a helicopter and propel itself upward, violently bursting through the top of my skull. There's too much information!

So here's where my eyeballs come in. We all know there are two sides to the old "political spectrum" and we all pretty much fall somewhere in between. I always have one eye on the right and one eye on the left. Ok. I'm good there. Where I'm not good is keeping an eye on the left, the right, the up, the down, and the diagonal all at the same time (oh, and don't forget there are many degrees of diagonal!). That's at least five eyes right there! For instance, here's a little hypothetical situation that accurately represents my aforementioned "brain to helicopter" problem:

I have a friend who watches the Daily Show and he says there was a Democratic politician who told Jon Stewart that the Republicans were rallying against a bill that gives money to widows of soldiers who were killed in action. Hmm. That's not good. Money should definitely go their way. I look up the bill online and indeed, there it is. It's called the Give More Money to Widows of Soldiers KIA Bill. Wow! What's wrong with these Republicans?! So I ask my conservative friend who points me to a Wall Street Journal article detailing how the Democrats have snuck in a little portion that allows for puppies and kittens to be systematically slaughtered on the tax payers' dollar. Whoa! No wonder the Republicans are rallying against that one! But wait, I then manage to catch a CNN clip that tells how these particular puppies and kittens outlined in the bill have some disease that forces them to eat the limbs off of any baby human under the age of 2. Ok...and now we're back to square one. But wait once again. I then happen to be listening to Glenn Beck's radio program and he says that these disease-ridden animals actually came from experiments (government-funded experiments) backed by the Democrats and opposed by the Republicans. Hmm, I need to look this one up myself. Ok, so now I find a New York Times article showing how these experiments were indeed inspired by ideas from two leading Democratic senators, but were actually backed by both sides of the aisle.

And once again, the brain helicopter begins.

I really do think that the amount of information we have at our fingertips is a good thing overall. It does help us make better-informed decisions on pretty much every aspect of life (how many of you haven't, at some point, Googled a restaurant before shelling out $30?). I feel my opinions are strengthened by my ability to research the data using a multitude of sources. However, we have officially gotten to the point where it is utterly impossible to cover every angle. I constantly hear people from both sides of the spectrum telling me I need to be "more informed" if I don't agree with them. So does that make the person on the other side who just showed me information that contradicted yours "better informed" than you? Maybe it just means his (or her) information is simply from a different source and therefore has a different angle. Does the information from both of your sources combine in any way that might seem helpful? Who knows. All I know is that I only have so much time to be reading articles, watching news shows, listening to the radio, and all the while trying to live my own life (you know, the part where I work, clean dishes, spend time with my wife and friends, etc.). So I guess I have come to grips with the fact that there will always be someone "better informed" than myself. Now if you don't mind, I have to go fetch my brain on the other side of the room.