Mic Drops

Written while recovering from Covid.

I admit I’ve spent way too much time scrolling through online news, opinions, ads, click bait, and various polemics. Discouragingly, most of what I’ve seen is noise – underscored by smug declarations of victory – sometimes using the expression, “mic drop,” among many others. Full disclosure. My non-charitable impulse is to tell the would-be mic droppers of the world to shove the mic where it will not see the light of day until a surgeon intervenes, but I digress.

I react this way for two reasons. First, I taught courses in audio and recording for decades and the thought of anyone intentionally dropping a mic is abhorrent to me. More importantly, what was said hardly ever turns out to be the last word on the topic. When someone “drops the mic” it’s usually a massive case of confirmation bias, not definitive truth. Truth does not need to self-congratulate. Jesus never dropped a mic, nor would he have needed to. The Sermon on the Mount does not call for a rap battle-style ending. It seems to me, mic drops, like other inflated claims, are noise.

In radio astronomy, tons of resources are devoted to detecting and filtering out noise. The desired signal is often only a miniscule fraction of what we might be receiving. So, it takes diligence to separate the two. Penzias and Wilson discovered cosmic microwave radiation (CMR) in a painstaking process, and later received a Nobel Prize.

In social media, most of what we see are posts and re-posts of noise: wishful thinking, unverified information, extraordinary claims, out-of-context quotes, oversimplified memes, personal attacks, embarrassing gaffes, and extreme examples chosen to represent the “total evil” of the other side. The desired conclusion seems to be, “Look! Based on what this one did, all of them must be bad. You should be outraged!” Or, “Only this one is telling the truth. Everybody else is lying!” Maybe if we took the time to squelch this kind of noise, we wouldn’t complain so much about “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

Socrates questioned his students. “What do you mean by that? Have you forgotten anything? Are there any exceptions? Are you certain?” He knew good questions can help us cut through the noise. Science and law require precise definitions, even if these are tedious, because sloppy definitions let the noise overwhelm the signal.

I’ve spent time trying to ask better questions. For example, recently many people have asked, “what is a woman (or a man)?” It seems to me before we ask that question, maybe we ought to ask, “what is a definition?” I was taught that definitions should be clear and comprehensive. Let’s face it. People are hard to define. All men do not think or act alike. Neither do all women. And that’s assuming we can define exactly what we mean by men and women. Even in a biological sense, there are always exceptions to consider. And questions can be traps. This is one reason Jesus often answered questions with more questions: “Who do you say I am?”

I used to ask my critical thinking students to define a chair. At first, they thought it would be easy to define such a basic, commonly-used object. Then they realized there are thousands of workable variations. It takes some effort to come up with a fair, widely-applicable definition. Unless, by the word, “definition,” we mean a narrow conception that includes only what we want to include. It’s easy to create such a definition, perhaps useful in a game of No True Scotsman. It’s much harder to craft a precise definition, useful in court or when deciding public policy.

When most of what we see is noise, it’s difficult to find the signal. We must reject a lot. Science uses specific methodology to screen out the noise. We can use logic, common sense, and decency. Often the noise doesn’t even make sense, much less obey the rules of logic. Fallacies abound. The noise is often arrogant or mean-spirited. It’s easy to become distracted by it. And the noise doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as it gets our attention. After all, noise is a form of hate. Nevertheless, as in Astronomy, while it may be subtle, it is important to keep searching for the signal. And we should hang on to the mic. There will be more questions to ask.