Inferring and Explaining

6 InferrIng and exPlaInIng my credentials, or even with the president and who he is. It’s more likely that your confdence in either of us is shaped by the media sources you listen to, who you voted for in the last elec- tion, and what your friends and family tell you. In a way, this is just the problem of cultural rel- ativism all over again. But something seems to have changed just in the short time between my generation and yours. I am really nervous about where this discus- sion must proceed. Every generation seems to look at the younger generation not just with puzzlement but with a funny kind of judgment. Tey’re going to hell in a hand basket! My par- ents couldn’t really understand the music I lis- tened to or why I opposed the war in Vietnam. I’m still trying to get my head around hip-hop, and I’m bafed about why climate change is a real controversy. But the cultural change I’m focusing on now is not generational. Let me see if I can make this clearer by telling you about how I learned to enter Lynch’s arena of reason. School played a huge role, of course, but there were other important shared sources that united my generation with that of my parents. My friends, my parents, andmy teachers all read the Los Angeles Times , watched the evening news on one of the threemajor networks, and basically shared a common stock of information about what was going on in the world around us. We disagreed plenty about how to interpret the data, but at least, we all had the same basic collection of facts to disagree about. Of course, there were plenty of critics and skeptics about these sources. Some saw the Times and CBS News as lackeys of the capitalist corporate culture. Others claimed they were nothing but liberal, antireligious pro- paganda. But these complaints were directed more at “editorial policy”—what stories were run, howmuch time and line space were devoted to them, and the like—and, yes, at the political views endorsed on the editorial pages. But almost everyone agreed about what the basic facts reported in the stories were. Now, I don’t want to overstate the confdencewe had about all this.We worried that we weren’t getting the whole story about the war or that the Warren Commission lied to us about the Kennedy assassination. But these were the exceptions, not the rule. Your generation, however, often gets its information about what’s going on from very idiosyncratic web sources. And be they liberal or conservative, they ofen seem to disagree not just about how to interpret the facts but as to what the facts are in the frst place. I can’t remain neutral here. Some sources are more reliable than others! Some sources are completely unreliable! If you are serious about the truth, if you care about reason, you must fnd some trustworthy sources of information about what’s going on around you—the worlds of politics, science, and everything else that matters. I’m perfectly happy to share the sources that most informmy beliefs about what’s going on in the country, the world, and other areas that I care about, includ- ing sports, movies, music, and even science.Tey are without question the New York Times and National Public Radio, particularly Morning Edi- tion . Tis is partly a matter of habit, preference, and convenience. It’s also amatter of trust. Some of you are, no doubt, aghast. Of course those are his sources! He’s a liberal, and they’re blatantly liberal sources. Tat’s probably true, but my best friend hates both of these sources because he believes that they have sold out the search for truth because of a false need to appear fair