Some of you more astute readers might be wondering what this has to do with the theme of this site – success. Isn’t thinking and talking about death the opposite of living and succeeding? In short, no.

 It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live. ~ Ayn Rand

We can’t talk about living unless we also talk about the absence of living. The very definition of life implies an opposite. So to accept that opposite as the inevitable end is not in any sense giving up.  Nor abdicating our responsibilities. I don’t wish to avoid death, but rather accept that it will come in order to better live my life now.

It’s using the key principles of living – purpose, thinking, and self-esteem – and applying them all the way to the end. Doing so helps me to answer questions such as “How can I share my wealth with purpose, think through end of life conditions, and die with dignity and the knowledge that my property will be shared in a thoughtful and meaningful way?” And how can I do that in a way that minimizes taxes and fees?

Yes, live your life to the fullest. Which also means living life knowing that your end could potentially help others live their lives to their fullest.

The post My Last Will and Testament appeared first on Reason for Success.

I found the book The 4 Disciplines of Execution after reading a recommendation on the Thoughtful app. A friend of a friend suggested this book as a means of transforming organizations through a focus on execution. Execution is often the bastard step-child of leadership. Strategy gets all the attention. Yet, without execution, strategies simply whither and die.

The book caught my eye because it met an intersection of my thoughts recently. Last semester, our College of Business shared it’s updated strategy and associated goals. Last week, I completed a multi-day course redesign focused on leadership. Currently, I’m writing a book on individual productivity and purpose, working on a chapter on habits. In all three instances, I recognized that having vision, missions, goals, and plans were not sufficient for success. Each requires execution. Yet, that’s one area where my mind isn’t clear. What actions are necessary for execution? My hope is this book would help fill that void.

Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.

The 4 Disciplines

Discipline 1: Focus on the wildly important goals.

There’s an insatiable temptation to do more as a leader. The grander the vision, the more splendid the accomplishments. To reach those grand visions, there’s a temptation to set more goals – to attack a problem from multiple different directions – to add complexity to achieve more.

Ironically, focusing on fewer goals works better. It allows each person in the organization to know the full extent of the goals, enabling greater buy-in and greater ability to focus on the goals that matter most. Wildly important goals (WIG) are goals that are not just important, but critical, essential, and fundamental to success. Through such goals, leaders can better express the means of achieving the strategy.

After reading this, I wondered how might my department express a WIG. What goals are essential to us as a department? What goals are wildly important? If we look at the goals of the university and college, there is one area that I consider the biggest WIG of them all: student success. True to the mantra of SMART goals, this WIG should be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timebound. In my mind, the best measure of student success would be long-term career success in the MIS field. But that’s difficult to measure and not very actionable. However, placement rate after graduation might work better. As such, I might recommend to our department that our WIG for student success be a 100% placement rate of our students within 6 months after graduation. A lot of what we do in the classroom and service can lead toward that goal. The only downside to this WIG is that we don’t have complete control over the outcome. Students will do what students do, sometimes shooting themselves in the foot. Sometimes dropping out of the workforce all together.

Discipline 2: Act on lead indicators

While goals capture the attention, good indicators keep an organization on track for success. In the second discipline of execution, the book suggests that indicators should be leading, not lagging. In other words, what indicators express a behavior that leads to the outcome, not the outcome itself.

Considering the WIG for student success above – 100% placement rate of our students within 6 months of graduation. Great, right? Not so fast, that’s a clear lagging indicator. They have already graduated so we have no control over that. Instead, we should focus on leading indicators – things we have control over in our classrooms.

What specific behaviors might be leading indicators? To be honest, I hope to find more clarity on this topic when I read the the rest of the book. But my initial thoughts would be on what we do in the classroom or through service. Based on this limited understanding, a lead indicator might be the percentage of students that experience a business engagement, whether through class projects, guest speakers, internships, etc. These experiences do several things, including building the student networks, providing real organization experiences, and building a culture of professionalism. These in turn lead to a greater chance of placement after graduation.

Discipline 3: Keep a compelling scoreboard

The next discipline strives to make the goals and indicators an integral part of the day-to-day operations. Making a scoreboard compelling, public, and easily accessible helps keep the goals fresh on the minds of everyone in the organization. Constant reminders on the progress toward the goals, as measured through the leading indicators, keeps the goal in focus. Individual sub-units and employees can then look at their contribution to the whole.

While our department doesn’t currently have a scoreboard that I’m aware of, it sounds like something easy enough to implement. While I think our college and university have scoreboards, they are not available for all the faculty to see – but should be.

Discipline 4: Create a cadence of accountability

Ah, accountability! Where the rubber hits the road. Where execution happens consistently and long-term – where it becomes a habit. While its great to have goals, indicators, and a public scoreboard, each and every employee should be held responsible for accomplishing those goals. To do that, regular weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meetings should cover how the organization, unit, or sub-unit is progressing toward the WIG. As the book states: “The team must feel not only this is a winnable game, but a high-stakes game.” Each employee should be asked what they can do in the next week to move the needle on those indicators.

True to accountability, their annual evaluations should reflect the effort they put into these WIGs. But the key to the discipline is creating the cadence, the regular review of work toward the WIG. I see the similarities between this discipline and Agile methodology because Agile excels at creating that cadence of accountability with daily stand-up meetings and weekly or bi-weekly fulfillment cycles. As the book suggests, these meetings don’t need to be long, just regular. A weekly 20-minute meeting can be effective at keeping WIGs front and center. They can help refocus efforts when emergencies throw things off track, without overwhelming the employees attempting to do their work.

Here again, our department currently doesn’t have such a cadence. We do have occasional meetings on curriculum issues and personnel issues. As a whole department, though, we meet perhaps once or twice a semester. But given the competing demands of students, research, service, and other distractions, its easy to lose track of the WIGs.

Moving forward

Reading just the first chapter of this book has captured my attention, enough that I’m willing to recommend it. It fills a missing piece in my understanding of effective organizations. These four disciplines of execution provide a potentially huge improvement on operational excellence, turning strategies into action and transforming visions into reality. I look forward to reading the rest of the book and hope to add more posts on it soon.

The post The 4 Disciplines of Execution – a book review appeared first on Reason for Success.

For several years, the notion of going into administration captured my interest. Each time, however, when an administrative position opened, I found a lack of fit between the role and my goals. I had almost convinced myself that perhaps administration is not right for me. And then the intern Dean for the College of Business announced a new position as Assistant Dean of the Thomas Arthur Graduate School of Business. Bam! This was it. Ten years sitting on the graduate committee created a passion in me for excellence in these programs. This new role would super charge my ability to actualize that excellence.

For three months, I worked on my application and prepared for the search. After an hour long interview with the search committee, I, along with one of colleagues, was invited to present my vision for the Grad School. After spending nearly a week working on the presentation, I spoke to a room full of professors. I left feeling good.

However, the other candidate was also a high quality individual. We had spent a couple years together on the Faculty Senate and got along great. I knew she could handle the job well too. So, while I was hopeful, I knew that the decision would likely be difficult.

“The talk”

As I was leaving the presentation, the Dean said he hoped to make a decision by early next week. On Tuesday morning, he emailed me asking for my cell phone number. After I shared it, he said he would call in an hour.

That was a long hour. Focusing on work when your mind won’t let you creates for a stressful time.

When he called, my heart raced. This was the moment of truth, a time for great excitement or severe disappointment. He started with “I wanted to thank you for putting yourself out there and interviewing for this position. But…” Well, you can guess the “but”. Rejection!

Post rejection

After our call, I spent about an hour trying to convince myself that the Dean made the wrong decision. “I had more experience!” “I had a solid vision!” “I had more passion!” That didn’t work though, because deep down I knew the other candidate was a fine choice. That bit of honesty kept me from falling down a deep rabbit hole of self-pity.

After that hour of wallowing, I did something that pulled me back out. I started re-reading some of my previous blog posts, such posts as Creation is the Hear of Happiness and my 2021 Reflection. It was during this look back that I realized, my life is already really, really good. I have a career I like, a wonderful family, and great friends. Sure, I’m disappointed I was not offered the job. But considering everything else in my life, things are great!

While reading those posts, I poured myself a Scotch and reflected on my goals. Yes, I’m going to be alright. I should expect a short term drop in motivation, but I will quickly bounce back because I have a Central Purpose to my life. Rejection sucks, but its not the end of the world.

The post Dealing with Rejection appeared first on Reason for Success.

In stepped a new platform called Thoughtful. I first heard about Thoughtful on Alex Epstein’s podcast The Human Flourishing Project. Alex teamed up with Brian Amerige, a former Facebook senior developer, to develop Thoughtful. I’m hesitant to call it a new social media platform, because even though there contains elements of social in it, that’s not the primary purpose.

What is Thoughtful?

Thoughtful might best be described as a tool for organizing and consuming long form content. Not the quick and dirty posts or tweets of Facebook or Twitter. Nor the images or short video clips of Instagram or TicTok. Instead, Thoughtful helps you curate the best blogs, books, podcasts, and videos. You can subscribe to various RSS feeds or select ad hoc items recommended by other Thoughtful members or found elsewhere online.

Once items are added to your queue, you can consume them when time is appropriate. Thoughtful also tracks your progress on items and takes you back directly to where you left off consuming it. After consuming the content, you can recommend the best content to your followers.

My review

After one month of usage, I’m finding the platform useful, well built, and worthy of my precious time. I track my favorite blogs and podcasts and even physical books. Instead of looking in multiple different places for content, I can find it all in one spot.

What’s cool about the queue is that I can track books I’m currently reading and books I would like to read. I can even purchase those books in app.

Now, I’m brainstorming how to integrate the app with my daily habits so that I get the biggest bang from its usage – to make thoughtful consumption an inevitable part of my day. Particularly, I need to brainstorm if and how to integrate it with my GTD system.

It’s also clear the app sits in the early stages of development. While the app has performed without errors, there are many features I would like to see added. Undoubtedly, additional features will emerge in the coming months. One feature I hope they consider would be to add the ability for my recommendations to be shared on other platforms. For example, I like writing book reviews on my blog. Wouldn’t it be great to somehow merge what I write on my own blog with the recommendations I make on Thoughtful? Write once – post in two (or more) places.

I also understand releasing the app on just one operating system to begin with, and iOS is a good choice. But I do a fair amount of thoughtful reading activities on my laptop. A Windows app (they have a browser plugin, but that’s not the same thing) would greatly increase the value of the platform for me. Not to mention all the Android users that want to use the app. Hopefully, we will see releases on these platforms soon.

As more people join Thoughtful, there may be opportunity to add a dialog between users – a thoughtful back and forth discussion of content. Not just thoughtful consumption, but thoughtful creation. But how to structure the app to encourage thoughtful discussion and discourage mindless comments presents a challenge that no one has yet mastered in online environments. Never-the-less, that feature would make more people apt to use it.

Conclusion

Although the app is still new with limited features, those features add significant value. The design helps me to stay focused and avoid pointless rabbit holes of meaningless junk. From what I know of the founders, I expect future developments will stay true to this vision. If you haven’t already, I recommend getting on the waiting list and/or downloading the app to use.

The post Getting Thoughtful appeared first on Reason for Success.

Financial Security

Let’s start with the first, financial security. Of the two milestones, financial security represents the lower amount of saving necessary for living. This amount consists of the minimum amount of savings required to survive off the interest. Let’s break this down.

As you likely already know, as you accumulate capital you can invest that money in things that return interest. The larger the amount of capital, the larger the amount of interest that can be earned. Let’s say you have save $100,000. Calculating a conservative 4% interest per year, you will earn $4000 per year from the interest. At $1 million, that’s $40,000 per year.

For financial security the question becomes, “how much interest do I need to earn to simply survive?” In other words, assuming you lose your job and have no back up sources of income. Can you survive? What’s the minimum amount needed to pay for shelter, food, health, taxes, and clothing? In this calculation, omit bonus expenses such as vacations, movies, eating out, maintenance of your boat (unless you’re living on it), and any other extraneous expense. The point of this calculation is to figure out a worst case scenario. Can you survive for the rest of your life off the savings you have accumulated? It may not be a glamorous life, but it’s life.

Reaching this goal can provide an immense level of relief. But it doesn’t end there.

Financial Independence

Financial independence represents the amount of savings required to flourish off the interest. Independence requires a higher level of savings than financial security. With independence you get to add all of those extras expenses back into the calculation. Those vacations you planned, those nice jeans you like to wear, the dinners out with friends. They are all in the calculation.

For financial independence the question becomes, “how much interest do I need to earn to live at my current standard of living?” For most mid-aged middle-class individuals, their current expenses suffice. If you’re younger or unhappy with your current spending ability, using a slightly higher goal may help. But there’s a real danger in that. If spending constantly rises along with your income, you will never be happy. The financial independence becomes a moving target, making it that much harder to reach.

Once you hit that goal – retirement. You’ll have enough money to retire and not work another day of your life. Its mentally liberating to know you could stop working tomorrow and be financially set for life. Not that you have to retire, but you’ll be financial able too afford it.

What about?

Perhaps you see the value in each of these calculations, but are unsure about how to apply it to your life. For example, when calculating shelter costs, do you consider the current house or assume you sell it and live somewhere else. This is especially relevant to financial security. For example, suppose you pay $1800 a month in mortgage payments. That’s a large expense, requiring a much higher amount of capital to survive. Suppose you sell your house and increase your capital by $200,000. Instead of living in a house, you could get an apartment. Would the increased interest from the new capital pay for an apartment? Perhaps you could buy a smaller house with the $200,000. That would reduce the amount of expenses needed to survive. Heck, you could even purchase some land and put up a shack to live, keeping most of the capital and decreasing your expenses. Which scenario works for you? That’s something only you can answer. Once you answer it, you can improve your calculation.

You might ask, what about Social Security? Don’t count on it. As Social Security Administration admits, it will be insolvent in 2033. Welfare or food stamps? Who knows if and how long those will last. The point of the exercise is to make as few assumptions as possible. Calculate financial security and independence without these incomes streams. If they go away, you’ll still be secure. If they are still around, then you will get a nice bonus.

Some of you may also be concerned about inflation and rightly so. If the cost of goods increase significantly, then the original expense calculation will fail. Figuring that out requires more help than I can provide in this article. That leads to my next comment.

Financial Planning

Finding a good financial planner is worth their weight in gold. They can help make these calculations, running through contingencies and probabilities. They can help with the “what about” scenarios and help guide you in calculating your financial security and financial independence goals.

Even without a financial planner, you can do back of the envelope calculations yourself. For example, last year I calculated that our family needs $800,000 for financial security and $2.4 million for financial independence. I was happy to see we’ve passed the financial security goal. This was a huge relief considering the pandemic and the uncertainly with the economy. Now, its on to financial independence.

The post From Financial Security to Financial Independence appeared first on Reason for Success.

By all measures of quality, the knife sucked. It was barely sharp, not very functional, and looked ugly. And yet the entire experience was wonderful. The feel of the heat, the power of the hammer, the skills learned, and the knowledge gained, all led to an experience that was extremely cathartic.

Journey before destination

It’s the act of creation that leads to this catharsis, this ultimate feeling of pleasure and pride. It doesn’t matter that the knife I created is crap. It’s my first knife, so of course its crap. But the process helped me to learn, develop, and become stronger. The process showed me ways to work with something seemingly immutable and purposeless and turn it into something malleable to give it purpose.

I felt the same sense of enjoyment while building my backyard patio and pergola. During the process, I sweated, got dirty, and strained muscles. I knew nothing about building a patio or about how to build a pergola. Yet, I pushed myself to learn and strained to make my vision a reality. There were times throughout the process that I questioned my own sanity, taking on such a huge project myself. Why didn’t I just hire contractors to do this for me? I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I can look at the result and know that “I” did it. That I am the creator.

In spite of the effort required to do these things, its the work that makes those things meaningful. Its the hard work of creating that makes the created object so special. That’s why the IKEA effect makes people value their IKEA furniture more than it is objectively worth. Because we partially assemble the IKEA furniture, we value it more. The act of creation connects us to the object, connects us to reality.

Creating Happiness

That’s not to say we don’t enjoy taking things easy. Reading a book, watching a movie, enjoying a dinner, or hanging with friends can bring us immense joy. These relaxing times bring pleasure, undoubtedly. But the joy is fleeting. The memories may last, but the joy itself leaves after the experience. We absolutely need these experiences in our life, but they don’t bring the same sense of deep, lasting satisfaction.

In order to create happiness, we need to create. Reading a great novel is good, writing your own story is better. Enjoying a delicious meal is good, cooking that same meal yourself is better. Hanging with friends is good, creating unique memories with them is better.

If happiness comes from creation, why don’t we do it more? I don’t claim to have the final answer on this, but I suspect its out of fear. Fear that the creation will be sub-par. We fear others will mock our efforts or worse that we’ll mock our own efforts. The first time creating something, it never looks as good as professionals or experts. Measuring ourselves against those experts makes our efforts seems inadequate. This approach to creation is wrong. Our measure should be individually based. We should judge our efforts against what we did previously. So even though I created a crappy knife, it looks better than what I could have done previously – which was nothing. And because of that I’m happy.

This is the secrete to happiness – creation. So go forge a knife, build a patio, write a book, plant a garden, sew a dress, start a company, establish a career, and create a life. Happiness will follow.

The post Creation is the Heart of Happiness appeared first on Reason for Success.

First a back story:

I recently traveled to Seattle for a business trip where I was to be trained on new products and would participate in meetings to help forge the direction in which the company would move.  I had arrived a day early so I could take a tour of the city, and as I waited for my friend to collect me for the tour, I watched Modern Marvels of the Military on the History Channel.  The episode discussed how the sniper can change the outcome of wars by selectively eliminating key people, from military leaders to political leaders and everybody in between.   The show pointed to the Kentucky Long Rifle Men of the Revolutionary War being the original sniper, and through their expertise in shooting, these original snipers took the advantage of a bigger, better equipped British army, and put the advantage in the expert marksmanship of the snipers.  The British army preferred a straight forward, time honored tradition of war where two sides met in a field and took/inflicted massive quantities of casualties, like gentlemen.  The Americans knew they would not survive that way, so they innovated and found a way to meet their goal.

Many companies and individuals are much like the British.  My company is part of the world’s largest manufacturers of their industry.  We have the size and resources to defeat competitors; however, we believe in being “gentlemen”, and our competitors are not afraid to snipe.

One target of their sniping is our product line.  Pointing to one of our product lines as obsolete (though still preferred by many) and another product as ineffective (again still popular), the competitors have effectively waged a war against our brands and the battleground is the attention of the potential customers.  Consumers want to believe a company has integrity, so when a company posts a “study” or “research”, many will accept the claims at face value.  My company has integrity and is very concerned about truth in advertisement, so we are decorated generals sitting atop steeds with bright spotless uniforms, and we are getting shot.

The other target is claims of what a product can do.  Since our company is in a field with potential health benefits, enumerating those benefits is important; however, there is our approach (British gentlemen sitting on horses), and there is the approach of the sniper (get the job done).  Our company is careful to only state verifiable claims as researched and concluded by medical research professionals.  Our competitors will make claims ranging from anecdotal evidence and questionable testimonies to studies for which they paid the researchers for the results (not independent 3rd party analysis), and finally, they will stretch the verifiable claims as far as can be done, all with the use of the word, “may”. Ex. Such and such product may cure everything from the common cold to cancer.  As stated before, consumers want to believe that a laundry detergent will make mud soaked socks whiter than a peace lily at Easter, so the claims may be unfounded, but the competitors enjoy the advantage of not facing the firing squad because they hide in the cover of non-committal language.  Our company stands boldly before the enemy with confidence in what we say being true.

Like in the American Revolution, the snipers have changed the battle.  What once was a fight between manufacturers to provide the best product for a competitive price, has become guerilla warfare to discredit the competition to win the advantage.  We have yet to embrace this technique, and it has cost us market share, reputation, and we continually miss our goals, as the targets are quickly retreating with the snipers.

How does this relate to you, me, and businesses?  In our personal and professional lives, we set goals that are often influenced by the activities of others.  If we approach the goal with the same mindset and plan each day, we are going to miss the goals if the other influencers have changed their tactics.  A job description (or goal) may have a set of requirements upon posting, but as others compete for the position, the goal changes.  If two similarly qualified individuals are competing for the same job, which one “looks” better for the position?  Does one appear to work better with co-workers than the other?  Who seems more interested in the work assigned and the company in general?  Who takes more accountability for a project from start to completion?  While it may not be appropriate for you to snipe your opponent, to achieve your goal you must know your weaknesses and strength and know which areas might be targeted.  This should not make a person paranoid; rather, it should encourage us to do something we seldom do enough of: know ourselves.  If we know our strengths and our weaknesses and are prepared to use them for our offense or a prepared to protect them with our defense, we can achieve our goals, especially when competing against others.

What am I going to recommend my company do?  I am going to suggest we push our boundaries to where we are comfortable with the truth and ethics of our statements, but where we don’t leave opportunities to be enjoyed only by competitors, and when our products are sniped, I am going to suggest we set fire to their cover, so they cannot hide from the truth of their comments.  It may not end the war, but it will even the battlefield if they can no longer hide.

The post Are you the sniper or the sniped? appeared first on Reason for Success.

It started in late August with a germ of an idea. I wasn’t happy with this corner of the yard off the deck. While there were some green bushes and some Crepe and Myrtle trees that added some niceties and a super small patio for a grill, it didn’t feel welcoming. It was functional, but not beautiful. I decided to change that.

All the plans were my own. My idea was to build a large patio, over 450 sq. ft., and pergola, 12′ x 16′. One end of the patio would be under the pergola, where we would have outdoor furniture and a firepit. Up the side of the pergola, I would plant vines to provide shade in the summer. In one corner would be my grill and smoker. Off to one side, a picnic table could be added for additional dinning. Along the side would become a herb and flower garden.

Work began by creating a clean slate, tearing out bushes and trees currently there. It involved a ton of hard labor moving dirt, digging up roots and leveling the ground. Renting earth-moving equipment would have been easier, but was too expensive for my comfort. So we completed the task with shovels, axes, and wheelbarrows.

I marked out the dimensions and started digging. In the evenings, I watched many hours of how-to videos; how-to build a pergola, how-to lay a paver patio, how-to construct footers out of concrete. I pushed my construction skills beyond anything I had done before.

With the right financial incentives, I convinced my kids to help dig. We dug down 7 inches and moved a ton of dirt. Then, I dug six holes for the footers for the pergola. I wanted the pergola to be able to withstand the occasional hurricane we get, so I needed depth and strength to the footers.

While I originally planned to lay the paver patio before building the pergola, the pavers were on backorder due to supply chain issues. Rather than waiting an inordinate amount of time to finish, I decide to build the pergola first.

Over Thanksgiving break, a buddy of mine visited and helped me get started. Well, first we stained the wood a beautiful walnut color to add richness and depth to the design. After it dried, we hauled the 6×6 posts to the backyard, used a level to ensure they were upright and attached them to the footers.

With the help of my family, we added the cross beams. My eldest son and I measured and marked the boards while my wife and other two kids cut the boards. Then we screwed those boards into place.

After waiting another month, the pavers were finally scheduled to arrive. I ordered the gravel and sand to build the base. After laying gravel we tamped it down with a rented plate compactor. It was rather a cool experience using that heavy duty tool to get the job done.

The pavers arrived, Dublin Cobble by Belgard. With the help of my family, we started laying an inch of sand, using PVC pipes as convenient measuring devices, and placing the pavers on top.

Laying the pavers took a couple days of back breaking work. But it went fast. In a few spots, I had to cut the pavers to get them to fit. Luckily, my kids found the work kind of fun (much better than digging up dirt) and helped for several hours each day. My wife pitched in on her day off from work.

And then the rains came. The final step for the patio was to add polymeric sand between the pavers to help set the pavers into place. The sand requires a light wetting and then needs time to harden. But too much water can wash the sand away. Late January into February, the rains refused to let up. So I couldn’t finish.

Finally, a break came. On a Thursday morning, I swept the sand into place, sprayed a little water on it, and waited. Well, little did I know, the rains returned with a vengeance. Throughout the rest of February, so much rain came, that our local river reached major flood stage.

Until the last weekend of February. The weather relented. The sun came out. The temperature climbed into the 70s. The furniture and fire pit arrived. Lights hung and wood chopped, we hosted our first pergola party.

Its been a massive amount of work and its not done yet. I still need to finish the garden next to the patio. I want to build a picnic table. And there’s a giant pile of dirt in the backyard that I need to do something with.

But the beauty and comfort of this space is my own. And I love it. I can’t wait to spend my days outside, reading, barbequing, and entertaining. Everyone should have a similar beautiful space. And what’s more, it’s perfect for me because I designed it, built it, and have the satisfaction of knowing that I did it.

The post Make Something of Lasting Beauty appeared first on Reason for Success.

The readily apparent bias in media stories has become a meme unto itself.  The latch on to any piece of information and treat it as the most important thing in the world.  What’s more, that piece of information does not even have to be true.  Opinions are treated as facts.  Rumors are treated as facts.  Made up lies are treated as facts – as long they agree with the narrative someone wants to perpetuate. 

In steps the “Fact Checkers”.  Fact checkers serve an important role in today’s world, keeping news media, politicians, and everyday social media posts in check.  They attempt to dampen the spread of false or misleading facts.  Their focus is rightly on objective appraisal of reality.  Does a fact actually exist or not.  An admirable goal, to say the least.  But what happens if these same fact checkers lose sight of objectivity.  What happens when they introduce their own bias into examining “facts”.   

Quite simply, they destroy objectivity. 

The Bias of Snopes

This destruction became clear to me yesterday, when I watched a video by Ben Shapiro and read the associated Snopes article about the Capitol riots on January 6th and the reaction of AOC. I’ve seen parts of AOC’s reaction video, enough to know the gist of it’s coverage.  However, the Snopes article is not about AOC’s reaction video.  It’s about various media outlet’s coverage to her reaction video. 

Snopes titles the article “Did AOC exaggerate the danger she was in during the capital riot?”   Just the title is a read flag. The word “exaggerates” is a subjective evaluation.  It’s an opinion.  So why is Snopes evaluating an opinion?  I thought they only evaluated facts.  This title should immediately warn us to be careful of what follows.  

As I read on, I discover the factual claim Snopes is evaluating: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exaggerated the danger she was in during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in that she “wasn’t even in the Capitol building” when the rioting occurred.”  Now, there are several factual claims in that statement.  AOC’s statement, the date of the Capitol riot, where the riot occurred, and where AOC was during the riot.  Snopes, however, continues to include the world “exaggerate” in the claim, adding a subjective evaluation to the factual claims. 

How does Snopes classify this claim? 

Mostly False.  

Here’s how Snopes justifies this classification.  The start by addressing what is true: 

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located. 

So far, we agree.  It’s true that AOC was in her office, in a building across the street from the Capitol building.  Many Congressmen and Congresswomen have offices in those buildings.  They are sometimes referred to as the Capitol complex, in part because of underground tunnels that run between the buildings.  But they are in fact separate buildings.  Snopes acknowledges this fact.  

What does Snopes describe as false? 

However, Ocasio-Cortez never claimed to be in the main Capitol building. When the attack on the Capitol began, Ocasio-Cortez was, as she stated, in her congressional office, which is located in a network of office buildings immediately surrounding the Capitol, and her office building was one of the two buildings that were evacuated.

Wait. Let’s reread that claim.   It states in part – “…in that she “wasn’t even in the Capitol building” when the rioting occurred.”  That sounds like the claim is true.  AOC wasn’t in the Capitol building.  True, she never claimed to be.  But the facts are in agreement.  She didn’t claim to be there.  The media didn’t claim she was either.  And Snopes acknowledges this fact.  What am I missing?  Oh… the “exaggerates” part.    

In the description of their reasoning, Snopes bias shines through.  In it, they describe how “It took less than 48 hours for the right-wing disinformation machine to contrive a way to minimize what Ocasio-Cortez said she had experienced.” Already, Snopes makes clear with the phrase “right-wing disinformation machine” that they don’t trust anything coming from the mouth of a right wing politician or pundit.  Whether that is warranted or not, a site purporting to be objective assessor facts should avoid such phrases.  They are imputing value judgements when only fact evaluations should be included.  And “contrive”… again using a loaded verb to describe the actions of those Snopes doesn’t approve of.  

How would a neutral fact checker write that sentence?  How about “Within 48 hours, right-wind pundits claimed that Ocasio-Cortex’s experience exaggerated the danger was in.”  That would be consistent with the claim above and free of value-driven phrases.  

And then, there’s the evidence.  They say: “…conservative news outlets and social media conspiracy trolls latched on to the misleading claim that Ocasio-Cortez “wasn’t in the Capitol building” and therefore was not in harm’s way, as she had described in the Instagram video.”  The first two headlines Snopes uses as proof state: “AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience,” from RedState and “AOC Was Not Inside Capitol Building During Breach on Jan. 6” from the Daily Wire.  As already discussed above, she wasn’t in the Capitol building.  So those headlines are 100% true. 

Just to reiterate, here’s what Snopes said is true:

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located. 

Here’s a headline that is deemed false:

AOC Was Not Inside Capitol Building During Breach on Jan. 6

They say the same thing!

I could go on, highlighting every instance of bias in the Snopes article, using loaded phrases such as “emotional 90-minute video” and “ensuing chaos”.  But I won’t.  I have my opinions, but that’s not the point of this article. Rather, I want to discuss two things, 1) the motivation of Snopes and 2) the future of fact checking. 

The Motivation of Snopes

In 2009, Snopes had a track record of fact checking political statements that seemed free of bias. Since then, the standard for fact checking seems to have slipped. For many years, I’ve privately been disillusioned with Snopes and their increasingly biased approach to fact checking.  

The facts, as I outlined above, are not in dispute.  What is in dispute is the phrase “exaggerates”, a value-laden word that suggests AOC overstated the danger she was in. So let’s break down the facts about AOC’s video. 

Did AOC imply she was in danger?  Yes. 

Did she genuinely feel unsafe?  Likely.

Is that feeling warranted?  I’m in no position to judge people’s feelings (and neither are you).  Feelings are what they are.

Was she in imminent danger?  No.  The rioters never reached her building.  The evacuation of her building was precautionary. 

Did she imply she was in imminent danger?  Yes, on multiple occasions, such as when the police officer came to evacuate her office.  She stated that there were loud bangs on her door, loud bangs over and over again.  She kept repeating the loud bangs in her video, as if they were some sort of threat. 

Could they have just been loud knocks, knocks designed to be loud to get people’s attention?  Most likely.  A police officer attempting to evacuate a building isn’t going to mess around with soft quiet knocks.  They want to get people’s attention so that the act quickly.  But she didn’t call them loud knocks and she called them bangs.  It seems she is trying to exaggerate what happened. That’s not to say she didn’t fear for her life.  She may truly have had that fear.  But the wording of her experience seems designed to highlight the worst possible outcome. And when she discovered he was a police officer, she implied he was suspicious and “didn’t feel right.”  Yet she obviously trusted him enough to follow his instructions for evacuation.  Again, it seems exaggeration may be at play. Based on my observations of the video, the exaggeration judgment seems justified – but I acknowledge this is my subjective evaluation. 

Yet, Snopes calls it mostly false.  In this case, it seems as if Snopes is motivated to repress anything negative said about AOC.  They want her “experiences” accepted without question.  While it’s true that her experiences and her feelings are her own, that doesn’t mean 1) that those feelings are well adjusted reactions to the situation or 2) that her explanation of those feelings and experiences are free from exaggeration. 

People exaggerate – that much we know.  Politicians more so than most. It takes no stretch to imagine AOC fits this mold. 

Through this claim, Snopes shows a severe lack of objectivity.  The purposeful focus on the subjective aspects of the claim gives them wiggle room to pretend they are factual.  But even the subjective judgment of “exaggerates” is plausible.  At best, Snopes should classify this article as Mostly true.  That fact that they didn’t shows the serious bias of Snopes in their reporting, particularly in this instance. 

The Future of Fact Checking

With a deluge of information and “facts” in today’s world, the necessity of fact checkers will become increasingly critical.  It becomes impossible for an individual to verify all the information presented to them.  There’s just too much damn information. Dependence on fact checkers, people whose job it is to verify facts, and experts must become a norm in society. We can’t function in any other way.

In order for fact checking to be effective, we need fact checkers to apply objectivity. They must carefully strip away subjective opinions and value judgments and focus on just the facts. They must study techniques for mitigating biases and find ways to think more clearly. This process requires rigorous self-assessment to remove personal feelings, extraneous influences, and other opinions from impacting the result.    

If fact checkers start introducing personal biases in their fact checking work, it 1) makes it more difficult for people to relate to the world and 2) spreads the mistaken belief that facts don’t matter (because fact checkers are sometimes wrong).  

The post How to tell if Fact Checkers have a bias appeared first on Reason for Success.

Building on the Renaissance and the Scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, often called the “Age of Reason” rocked the world by challenging traditional means of truth. Starting in the late 1600s, philosophers such as Locke and scientists such as Newton, began to change the way we approach knowledge. Knowledge, according to such thinkers, came not from some revelation of immutable truths “out there”, but were discovered through systematic observation and application of critical thought. During this time, philosophers began to treat observation and logic with the attention it deserved. In short, the world moved progressively toward reason.

Age of Reason

This change was epitomized in 1794 when Thomas Paine published the first part of his political and religious tome, The Age of Reason. In it, he argues that the Christian Church was corrupt, that knowledge came from reason, not revelation, and that the Bible amounts to ordinary literature, not divinely inspired. This deist approach to religion saw the world as moving and changing independent of any influence by God. Natural law provided the explanations of the natural world.

Revelation, Paine argues, can only be verified by the receivers of the revelation. But how can this be used for evidence of God’s existence to anybody who has not had this supposed “revelation”. Revelation demands faith rather than reason.

We are seeing again today explicit calls to this faith. Sure some people give lip service to reason, but the politicization of many seeming innocuous topics suggests the age of reason is dying.

Reason in Politics

Take for example our recent election. On the one hand, Trump and his hoards of fans claim the election was wildly fraudulent. This fraud gave the election to Biden. Yet, Biden and his allies claim the election results stem from one of the most honest and fair elections of all time. Both sides claim “evidence” to support their claims. Yet, neither challenge their supporters to try to understand the evidence, to think through what the evidence means, and to apply reason in such an analysis.

For example, in a November 19th press conference, Rudy Giuliani claimed to have affidavits from witnesses of fraud. Giuliani correctly pointed out during the press conference that these written affidavits are a type of evidence, so to say they don’t have evidence is wrong. Yet, the very next day, CNN published an article claiming that Giuliani’s claims were without evidence, despite the affidavits. CNN didn’t just reject the evidence as invalid, they pretended it didn’t exist. CNN rejected the use of reason to consider all the evidence, preferring instead to cherry pick sources that fit their “revelation” that Trump is wrong.

What is the correct way to determine if the evidence is legitimate? Fortunately, we have a system in place for judging evidence, our judicial system. And of the 40 or more cases the Trump team and his allies took to court, not a single one won. In other words, the evidence provided by the Trump was considered insufficient, ill-defined, or not appropriate for the claim they were making. In other words, there is no provable evidence of fraud. That’s not to say that some fraud did not occur. But given the tenacity with which the Trump team chased this idea, the striking failure in the courts suggests Trump’s claims are wrong. If their evidence of fraud was so compelling, then why did so many judges (some even appointed by Trump) reject that evidence. As someone who did not see the situation and am unaware of the intimate details of the vote counting process, I have to accept the judges’ conclusions, that massive fraud did not occur. The fact that Trump continues this “revelation” of massive fraud and that so many of his supporters still believe it, also shows how reason is failing.

Yes, both sides claim “evidence”. But both sides fail to use reason to judge the evidence. Granted, many smart people on both sides use reason to think about this issue. This is not meant to belittle either. What’s troublesome is that the leaders in each group appeal to “revelations” and “inherent truths” and that so many people simply accept the results without critical thought. Bias runs deep and too few question it.

That’s how reason dies.

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