Fact Versus Opinion: How Today’s Literacy Crisis Is Fueled By Fake Subjectivity
By Carolina Dionísio
According to the Oxford Dictionary, anti-intellectualism is defined as “opposition or hostility to intellectuals, intellectual pursuits, or intellectual reasoning; the fact or quality of being anti-intellectual”. The term was coined by Richard Hofstadter in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), and today, more than ever, we live in an anti-intellectual world.
I believe one of the reasons why is this generation's adamant belief that opinion and fact hold the same merit. They don’t.
Nowadays, everything is up for debate. To a certain extent, I can argue about the perfect weather for an outdoor adventure, what fabric is more comfortable on a couch, or if black and dark blue match or not, because all of this is subjective. At the end of the day, me liking yellow over red and pasta over rice does not change a thing about the world.
The problem is when we start reaching into non-negotiable grounds, such as plain facts.
Bryce Hoffman wrote for Forbes an article titled “Facts And Opinions: Half Of Americans Don’t Know The Difference”, in which he explored the “blurry the lines between facts, opinions, and assumptions”. The study, conducted by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, concluded that 45.7% of Americans could not correctly categorize current events as facts or opinions.
In Europe, the same thing happens. Media and digital literacy levels are dropping amongst the youth. According to the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), “43% of students do not reach the basic level of digital skills” and are classified as “underachieving”. Even countries such as Denmark, often applauded for their performance, are far below the top-performing countries, such as South Korea (27%).
This is a global problem: people don’t hold a complete grasp of their reality and the current state of the world, and most lack enough interest or motivation to go out of their way and properly study. The result is believing misinformation and fake news, adding your twist, and spreading it.
Of course, this isn’t just the only variable fueling today’s literacy crisis. There’s increasing difficulty when it comes to pursuing a higher education as it has grown prohibitively expensive, however, there’s also an issue inside Universities as well — the reduction of self-conducted research and study, and the constant reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
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College students of all degrees are succumbing more and more to ChatGPT to carry out any kind of task. Meaning: our future doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc., don't know how to answer basic questions without dropping a prompt on any AI generative engine. Or, even if they do know, they're still too lazy to skim through a book, think for themselves, and write it down.
I’ve seen dozens of videos of college graduations where students openly admit to copying everything from ChatGPT. This is not funny nor smart; it’s concerning. The blatant disregard towards the privilege of pursuing higher levels of studies, just to leave with an empty diploma and less than half the knowledge you should’ve acquired.
Using technology for research is not the same as depending solely on technology for knowledge. Searching for articles, books, and essays online to enrich my research paper is not the same as telling AI to answer a mathematical equation for me. One makes me a student, the other makes me lazy. And I believe we should hold people accountable for their lack of knowledge, and stop acting as if everyone is entitled to speak up on very real study fields, because not everyone has enough expertise to make a plausible argument.
We're not all equal academically, thus, there are different levels and fields of study in all of us. Admitting such is not depreciating to the ones who don't hold a PhD, for example, or to those who studied Maths over English. We’re all important in our own area.
What is depreciating is acting as if we know more than a Doctor because Google told us so — years of practice, study, and research down the drain. After all, suddenly, everyone's an expert thanks to AI. But it's okay not to know, it's okay to not be able to converse about a specific matter. What is not okay is the constant debate of opinionated self-entitlement, when things such as law, medicine, science, and math are not opinions or theories we can either prove or disregard.
Some like to call this Elitism: the belief that society should be led by an elite. But is it truly Elitism to look up to the scholars who have been studying these subjects for decades, following the steps of more scholars who did the same for even more decades? Is it Elitism to admit that yes, there are geniuses, prodigies, and masters in the field who are academically more knowledgeable than us, therefore should be fully trusted in their respective areas and not questioned because I’m “entitled to my own opinion”?
We’re only moving backwards if we’re constantly having to prove what has already been proven years ago, just because someone doesn’t agree with it. Disagreeing doesn’t make it false. Also, to fully disagree with a certified fact, we must hold a certain level of knowledge to be able to formulate a counterargument — most of the time, this doesn’t happen, and people are disagreeing just to disagree.
And this doesn’t happen just inside academic facilities.
Every day, we see analysts and commentators on TV arguing about politics and the economy when, oftentimes, those are not even their areas of study, or they’re biased instead of impartial. The same thing goes for self-proclaimed journalists on social media.
“50% of the under-30 group relies on social media and so-called news influencers who provide opinion-based takes rather than traditional reports”, says data collected by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit that informs the public about global issues, attitudes, and trends.
These news influencers usually take information from traditional and established media sources and “give their spin”. The number 1 rule of Journalism is exactly the opposite: journalists cannot, under any circumstances, give their personal opinion when providing information, or else they might affect the public’s judgment. Journalists must inform, not influence.
This is one of the reasons why the current political state of the whole world is engulfed in fire and far-right parties are rising to leadership: because people are relying on the opinions of others, such as these commentators and influencers, as if they're facts, instead of researching and writing down their conclusions based on proper material developed by experts on the area.
One of the far right's best weapons is oratory: propaganda, holding power over the media, and saying exactly what a fragilized and uneducated population needs to hear. That’s how most dictators legally and lawfully ascended to power — simply by public speaking. One of the tools created to combat this, especially in political debates, was live fact-checks. Yet, here come the social media journalists, who hold no degree in Communications, say that it’s all a conspiracy or a scam and that, actually, it’s the media that’s trying to trick us.
And no one questions or has the desire to educate themselves on their own because it’s too much work, as if a 2-minute-long TikTok video is enough to cover the entirety of what’s happening at all times, all around the world.
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Another topic deeply upsetting about this wave of fake subjectivity is the way people use it as a shield. When added to the “freedom of speech” card, anything can be excused. Again, and of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but let’s not mistake opinions with irrefutable statements — or worse, prejudice.
A derogatory “opinion” on people of colour is not an opinion, it is racism.
A derogatory “opinion” on non-hetero sexualities is not an opinion, it is homophobia.
A derogatory “opinion” on women is not an opinion, it is misogyny.
A derogatory “opinion” on people with disabilities is not an opinion, it is ableism.
These are not opinions, as they are bordering on hate crimes. Freedom of speech is a right, but it does not give you the right to question whether someone else’s life is worthy enough or as worthy as your own.
As I’ve said, not everything is up for debate, such as basic human rights, and not everything is a good enough reason to start a feud online. Sometimes, I feel like these pointless arguments over undeniable events are simply puppets casting shadows on issues that matter. We’re so scared of facing the reality we created that we’d rather blame it on the past by digging up scientific facts and labeling them as false, but that’s not going to lead us anywhere closer to peace.
Instead, when advocating for global issues, we should be fearlessly assertive. This is right, this is wrong, and it’s not an opinion: it’s a non-negotiable. That’s the only way we’re ever going to have a chance at bringing actual democracy back — by viewing and acting on prejudice, propaganda, fake news, and anti-intellectualism as a concern we have to fight against, and not an opinion we might discuss.
