Wikileaks just released a lot of classified documents that imply the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable.   Much of the coverage I saw this morning implied that what Wikleaks essentially did is quite a bit of damage to the U.S. While some clearly think that Wikileaks is providing a necessary and critical service, I believe Wikileaks is evil.

It kind of depends what you want to know, but I am going to argue Wikileaks is evil and it is the path I use to get there and not the result that you may find more intriguing.  Of late, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the topic of beliefs vs. facts and why our hardwired tendency to favor false beliefs may be fatal.   I’ve been using the questionable Apple defenses on their antenna problems as the easiest target to point this out, but Wikileaks may be even better.

Much of the spin I saw on the Today Show yesterday morning seemed to surround the security leak as the problem that needs to be addressed rather than the bigger issue, to me, that the facts surrounding a deadly war are being misrepresented.

This is like Steve Jobs arguing that the problem with the iPhone are bloggers like me and not the poorly designed antenna. Granted, both are problems, I’m sure my wife would agree with him on the former, but you would think that most people would like to know the truth behind the actual problem. The fact is they wouldn’t, and you are likely just like them in some way.

So, the core question, and it isn’t as easy as it sounds, is whether you would rather know the truth or be told a believable lie that was less troubling?  Let’s explore why we prefer the latter and are more likely to condemn Wikileaks than a politician (from any party) who is misleading you.

Beliefs vs. Facts

Evidently, we don’t store information like a hard drive or flash drive does.  We refresh that information every time we recall it and, every time we refresh it, we change it in some subtle way. We also tend to embellish stories over time changing the small fish we caught years ago into the man eater we currently fondly recall. This means we actually falsify our own memories to make them more comfortable over time. In effect, we lie to ourselves regularly.

There is an interesting paper up on the web that looks at Hoaxes and points out common ones like Crop Circles that were debunked years ago, but persist because folks want to believe. Other hoaxes like phony viruses have recommendations connected to them that could actually do damage to our PCs, if followed yet we believe them as well.  Apparently we are too trusting of authority; we enjoy the excitement of spreading new information more than we dread looking stupid; we aren’t particularly skeptical; believing gives us a feeling of belonging, and we believe that being the source of interesting information (true or false) improves our status. The paper concludes by arguing that some of this false information actually seems to behave like a human computer virus making the fake computer viruses actually successful and ironic human brain viruses instead.

A lot has recently been written on the fact (and I now use that word loosely) that beliefs and facts are processed in the brain the same way. This means we treat information backed up by reality equally with information that isn’t. The referenced study (in the above link) also showcased that we favor one over the other, not based on the reality part, but based on its consistency with our other beliefs.

I once knew a guy who, when he ran short of money, would open up a store front and preach until enough donations came in so that he could fund his next scam. He believed that his efforts would make him very wealthy in the face of facts that suggested he would spend a lot of time in jail, the facts (for as long as I knew him) proved more true than the beliefs. In effect, he was conning himself in a more damaging way than he was his victims.

But the lesson here is that people, and I’m pretty sure both of us are in that group, prefer information that is consistent with their beliefs over information that is more truthful but inconsistent with those beliefs. This could mean that most of what both of us think we know to be true is actually false.

Why Wikileaks is Evil

When I was first studying law, I used to spend afternoons with my great uncle who was a superior court judge. He would tell me about his cases in exchange for being able to talk to me about Christianity.  All I had to do was to not challenge the latter in order to get what amounted to a very valuable free education on the former. As you can imagine, I didn’t know when to shut up. The last day we did this was during the discussion (and I use the word loosely) on Satan and how he was the great deceiver.  I thought about this and asked ”if Satan was the greatest deceiver, wouldn’t it makes sense that he would be Jesus because that would be the greatest deception?” I got a look that made me wonder if I’d sprouted horns and I was booted out of the office never to return, because I had crossed the line and become evil.

Evil is the intention of causing harm or destruction while threatening or deliberately violating morality. Morality is subjective and my question, which I’ll admit under the circumstances, was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, was intended to target my great uncle’s beliefs and could potentially have destroyed them. Since those beliefs were founded in his own definition of morality my question, to him, was evil both by intent and foundation. Chances are if you challenge someone’s religious beliefs successfully they will view you as evil as well and this is not a best practice.

By releasing the documents on the web, Wikileaks challenged our beliefs that our government was being honest and transparent about the war in Afghanistan. We were comfortable with these beliefs and a lot of people had lost close relatives to this conflict. By creating a question on whether the foundation of the war was legitimate, the release put a cloud over the deaths of those that died in it and, from the eyes of both, those that were comfortable with the beliefs surrounding the war and their losses Wikileaks was behaving in an evil fashion.

So, from a certain frame of reference, Wikileaks is evil.

Can you Handle the Truth?

One of my favorite books is “True Enough:  Living in a Post Fact Society”. The book goes into great detail on how our predilection for false information that we find comforting is used to constantly mislead us and uses examples that go back nearly a century to make its point. It is eye opening reading, but first you have to decide if you want to have your eyes opened. It is kind of reminiscent of that scene in the first Matrix movie where the hero is given a choice to see life the way he currently sees it or the way it is.  It would seem that most of us would prefer not to take the pill he took and, given what later happened in that movie, it is hard not to see the wisdom in that.

In the end, you have to decide whether you want the truth or the comfort of false beliefs. Personally, I think our survival as a species depends on more of us wanting the truth, but I do understand why most of us avoid it.  So, do you think you want the truth or would you prefer lies that supported your beliefs? The real question, however, is whether you want to stay there.

Apparently, most do.

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