Strong Thoughts: The Anti-Influencer Podcast: Recent Episodes
Ben Skutnik
In the current health and fitness landscape, there is an overabundance of information. Whether it is good or bad, the information is delivered faster than we can process it. Not only that, but the 280-character tweets and one-minute long stories limit the amount of nuance needed to explain most of the "like and share" inducing content. This is where Strong Thoughts comes in.
The scientific process is a controlled, rigorous, and systematic process in explaining phenomenon that occur in life.
In theory, when executed as it's meant to be, there should be little debate in the results. But, if you look to the world, there is plenty of debate and no one will claim to believe "bad" science. A recent article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology sheds some light on what might be going on. While the world is clamoring to identify the "science deniers" as a source of misinformation, the focus might actually be more revealing if shifted towards those who blindly believe what they perceive as science.
Supporting literature can be found here: https://bit.ly/3n1j8Qb
The only way to build proficiency in any skill is to practice. Applying the filter of skepticism is no different.
In this episode, the filter gets applied to one of the most commonly occurring instances of the authority’s appeal: a foreword of a book. The book in questions is the recent hit “The Oxygen Advantage”. Unless you too are a physiologist, you might not be equipped to apply the filter because you need the requisite knowledge. Check the link below for access to a few papers dealing with the topics in question.
Supporting Literature: https://bit.ly/3znxnT0
Building on our three concepts of signal, noise, and bias, this episode examines one of the most prominent sources of error that muddies up the signal in the influencer space: the argument of authority. Whether it's a verified account, a certain set of letters before or after a name, or the number of followers someone has, these all are factors that add to their seeming authority on a topic. After all, if everyone else agrees with them and they have such a large platform they can't be wrong, can they?
To add to their facade of intelligence, the snowball of agreement that comes from the masses (or maybe the bots) furthers this fallacy and ultimately strong arms a sense of groupthink among the field. If you tell a lie long enough, it will become assumed as truth. But we can build filters for these lies, for this noise.
One of the buzzwords floating around the influencer space is "Bias". We're told to recognize our bias, to drop our inherent bias, and to proceed with an unbiased view on matters at hand. While this compelling call to action sounds great, the execution is anything but possible.
The interplay of signal, noise, and bias is happening every day but you don't often hear about the first two. But like so many other things, it's what you don't know that matters. This episode explores the concepts behind data acquisition, message delivery, and how looking to control our bias has us looking in the wrong direction.
What does it mean for a podcast to be "anti-influencer"? In short, it means to impede. That is, to disrupt. To disrupt the immediate buy-in that many influencers rely on. It is not to say you shouldn't be influenced or to have someone or something influence your life. We all have those in our lives, or at least we should.
But looking at the Influencer, with a capital I, as someone who is adding more noise to the system this podcast's mission is to help filter out some of that noise to expose the actual signal being transmitted. Reducing the noise is necessary because, typically, these influencers mean well or share similar messages. But since the squeaky wheel gets the grease, often times the noisiest influencer gets the clicks.