Now it seems that truth is a matter of opinion and comes disguised in a thousand versions, all dressed in the same typography, with the same urgency, and often with the same ill intent.fake newsThey have become a central threat to a society accustomed to jumping to conclusions before thinking.
And therein lies the first problem: we are more excited by an inflammatory headline than by solid data, by an indignant speech than by a serene mind. Those who design falsehoods know this very well. They are engineers of emotion.
The second problem is even more delicate: the progressive erosion of trust. When everything can be false, our capacity to recognize the truth crumbles. Doubt is healthy, but absolute distrust is a desert.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in 1933, in his essayThe Triumph of StupidityThat fools have immense certainties, while intelligent people live with doubt. Educating in critical thinking means giving young people the most effective vaccine against disinformation: well-managed doubt. Not the corrosive doubt that dissolves everything, but that other, more modest kind that makes us ask: who says it, why do they say it, how do they know? It means teaching them to detect warning signs and giving them tools to perform reverse image searches, to distinguish an opinion from a fact, a rumor from proof.
Freedom of information is defended with facts, with rigor, and—paradoxically—with a certain skepticism. In a world where everyone wants to be right, perhaps the best defense is learning to doubt.
