Skeptical, not Cynical: How to Think in an Age of Misinformation | 372

In today’s media environment do you know how to think well? How do you know who to trust? Today we’re going to talk about how Stoicism can help you to think critically about what you consume, and how be skeptical without being cynical. “You become what you give your attention to…If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” — Epictetus ACT 1 — THE PROBLEM When was the last time you read a headline and immediately trusted it? Not skeptically clicked through to check — just trusted it? If you're like most people, that moment feels increasingly distant. And honestly? That makes sense. We've been burned. We've shared things that turned out to be wrong. We've watched experts contradict each other. We've seen the same event reported in completely opposite ways by outlets that both claim to be telling the truth. The result is a kind of information exhaustion. A low-grade weariness that comes from not knowing what to believe anymore. And I want to say clearly at the start of this episode: that exhaustion is valid. You're not paranoid. You're not stupid. You're a person who's paying attention in an environment that has made paying attention genuinely difficult. But here's where it gets interesting. Because that exhaustion tends to push us toward one of two wrong responses. The first is blind belief — you find a source that feels right, that speaks your language, that confirms your worldview, and you just... outsource your thinking to it. It's comfortable. It's simple. And it's dangerous. The second is total cynicism — you decide everyone is lying, everything is propaganda, and the only rational response is to trust nothing. It feels like wisdom. It isn't. Here's a distinction I want you to hold onto for this entire episode: Skepticism is a method. Cynicism is an identity. The skeptic says show me. They stay open, ask questions, and update when the evidence changes. The cynic has already decided the answer is "they're all lying" — and that's not a conclusion, that’s surrender. It feels like critical thinking but it's actually the opposite. It's just a different kind of lazy. The Stoics had a lot to say about this. And what they built, two thousand years ago, is one of the most practical frameworks for navigating an information-saturated world that I've ever come across. ACT 2 — THE PHILOSOPHY Impressions and Assent Let's start with Epictetus. Epictetus was a former slave who became one of the most influential philosophers in history. And at the center of his entire teaching was something he called the discipline of assent — in Greek, synkatathesis. The idea is simple but demanding: you don't have to accept every impression that arrives in your mind. In fact, you have a duty not to. Here’s how he explained impressions and assent: “Impressions, striking a person's mind as soon as he perceives something within range of his senses, are not voluntary or subject to his will, they impose themselves on people's attention almost with a will of their own. But the act of assent, which endorses these impressions, is voluntary and a function of the human will.” — Epictetus (Fragments 9) But more directly on this point, he taught his students to meet every incoming impression — every piece of information, every claim — with a kind of active interrogation. He called it confronting the phantasia, the impression, before assenting to it. He put it this way: “Don't let the force of the impression when first it hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, "Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.” — Epictetus (Discourses II, 18.24) That's a media literacy practice, written in the first century AD. Think about what that means in the context of a headline designed to provoke outrage, or a video clipped out of context, or a statistic stripped of its methodology. The impression arrives and feels like the truth. Epictetus says: slow down. That feeling is not the same as fact. Take the time to interrogate it and see if there is any truth behind it. It’s Okay to be Wrong Now let's talk about Marcus Aurelius. Marcus was Emperor of Rome — arguably the most powerful person on earth during his reign. He had every incentive to believe his own perspective was correct. And yet the Meditations are full of reminders he wrote to himself about intellectual humility. In Book 6, he wrote: "If anyone can refute me — show me I'm making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective — I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance." — Marcu