Do not read this Aeon article if you are comfortable continuing to believe everything said or written by some of the most popular media gurus, your boss or your know-all friend.

Skeptics are often characterised as cranky, miserable, faithless non-believers. A desire for genuine progress implies that we should remain open-minded to inquiry into matters outside our current knowledge. However, in this “post-truth” (the word of the year) era, our world is overflowing with easily clickable misinformation, three-word mantras, pseudo-science, spiritual claptrap and pop-economics. We are now generally unprotected by a degraded investigative media who, in any case, could not possibly cover the volume of material now produced.

Individually and collectively, we can then easily be overwhelmed, deluded or become subject to our learned biases. The Aeon author’s research found that more than 20% of 800 participants in his studies “… rated sentences that consist of random buzzwords as more profound than the sentences with clear meaning.”

Maintaining the desire, and developing the skill, to identify misinformation, bias (others’ or ours), obfuscation or outright lies are now more important than they ever were. Doing something about them requires discipline and perseverance. Unfortunately, Alberto Brandolini’s Law – the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle applies:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

While the quality of education and upbringing is crucial, developing a sensible skepticism is an individual responsibility of mature adults. Sensible skepticism protects us against financial, political and medical frauds, but perhaps even more important for the future, increases the likelihood of genuine progress of humanity.