Not Born Yesterday summary

Why do we communicate? One explanation is that if we didn’t, we’d be confined to the knowledge in our heads. Without communication, we’d also be without cooperation. We wouldn’t be able to help or receive help from anyone. 

In Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, fitness is tied to how successfully an organism can reproduce. When cells of the same organism or individuals of the same family have the common goal of fitness – in order to maximize their reproductive capability – they have inclusive fitness. When individuals have a common goal, it’s in their best interest to work together. And that means sending reliable signals is key. 

When you go about your daily life, how do you stay out of harm’s way? And how do you decide who to trust? We’ve developed cognitive mechanisms to help us make these calls. But because we rely on verbal communication as a species, we’re also at a much higher risk of being deceived by communication.

In the 1950s, there was a lot of anxiety surrounding mind control and brainwashing in the US. People thought the subconscious was deeply vulnerable to new ideas – to the point that if you saw a coke ad, the subliminal messaging would control your actions and make you reach for a bottle.

You and your colleague have an appointment with an important client, but you disagree on the best travel route. You vouch for the subway, arguing that it’s faster than the bus. Your colleague tells you the conductors are on strike so the bus is the better option today. 

You could ignore her recommendation and go to the subway anyway, but then you’d find it closed and be late for your client. You could also compare what your colleague said with what you know in general about subway strikes – and chances are, you’d end up agreeing with her. If you’d thought of the strike yourself or seen it on the news, you’d have probably made the same judgment call to begin with. 

When Sabine Moreau got in her car to pick up a friend from the Brussels train station, she didn’t expect to end up in Croatia. She left her hometown, Erquelinnes, and followed her GPS. What should have been a 50-mile domestic trip within Belgium turned out to be an 800-mile journey across the European continent. It was only when she reached the Croatian capital city of Zagreb two days later that she thought something wasn’t quite right. Had she missed an exit? 

Perhaps you, too, know someone who would rather drive their car into a river than disobey GPS orders. For the rest of us, the dilemma of identifying who – or what – knows best is a constant effort.

Fake news. It’s not the first time you’ve heard of it, and it won’t be the last. Anyone who was alive and well in 2016 knows how quickly some were to pin the cause of both Brexit and the US presidential elections on voters misguided by fake news. 

At first glance, it’s a narrative that makes perfect sense. Here were two countries frantically searching for an explanation as to why so many people would vote for leaders or policies that seemed misguided, or even destructive. The Collins English Dictionary even named “fake news” the phrase of the year in 2017.