How do you think a person's idea of what is factual becomes distorted? Do you feel there's a way we can avoid being manipulated into false views?

At the beginning of the book, Julia appears to have faith in the Party's goals for their society and expresses love for Big Brother. How do you think a person's idea of what is factual becomes distorted? Do you feel there's a way we can avoid being manipulated into false views?

We all need to learn to think critically and to not listen to just one source of information. I think it’s vital to read opinions from many places, to look at information for accuracy, to read history and learn from past mistakes as well as achievements. Now days I see many people who listen to their friends ideas to confirm their own instead of seeking information from reliable and multiple sources. Lately I see one person repeating the same lies over and over again but some people don’t ever question the information and the more it’s repeated, the more they believe and accept. I think we also need to be aware of the other tricks people who try to deceive us use such as trying to demonize “others” and divide us and to restrict information by banning books and demeaning the press or anyone who disagrees with them.

I think if some people hear a lie often enough, in their mind it becomes a fact, and the more people that believe the lie the harder it becomes to contradict. Even memories can be altered if someone tells an inaccurate version of events and over again.

It's getting harder and harder these days, I think, to filter out misinformation. I feel that it's human nature to pay more attention to the information that backs up our own opinions, and social media plays right into that, feeding you more stories that tell you what you want to hear.

I agree with Candace above that the only way to counter the trend is to search out information that talks about the "other" side of an issue, and then think about it dispassionately. It's pretty easy to simply dismiss news stories you disagree with.

Great opening posts by candaceb and kimk! We all are subject to perception bias, we tend to believe what we want to believe. There are many influences on us as children: our parents, our siblings, our relatives, our friends and schoolmates, our teachers, etc. etc. Our own nature also plays a part in the development of our personality and brain. As we grow and mature, without conscious awareness, we begin to accept as "factual" what fits with our own mindset instead of being objective and logical. Thus, people can reject science and facts, so they are comfortable with their chosen view of the world. If we are more diligent, we can learn to find and accept the truth even if we do not like it. Julia had to convince herself that the Party was actually working for the people and that Big Brother actually cared about her or she would not have been able to survive.

Parents and teachers have a responsibility to instill in young people the duty to ask questions, refuse to accept as reality everything they hear or read, to require students to learn debating skills by assigning a controversial topic with students assigned to research a position and present it - even if they disagree. Debate in school taught me how to consider opposing viewpoints. It helps us to understand how the same set of statistics can be interpreted differently.

While media outlets have always been slanted, the extreme partisanship is mind numbingly blatant. All one has to do is look at the students protesting about issues they do not understand because of Propaganda, partisan news media, educational institutions stifling honest debate, reliance on social media for information, failure of universities to allow opposing viewpoints, failure to teach critical thinking skills. Now, Artificial Intelligence creates news. Too much group think.
I read various news sources with often diametrically opposing slants and editorial boards. Then I read the comments by subscribers. It is evident that too many do not consider views that are different and cannot tell the difference between fact and opinion.

Unfortunately, we seem to be at a place where the Government, the press, and most disturbingly, our universities, believe that on some issues, there is only one "legitimate side" and that other views must not be allowed to be heard. Speakers are banned, press stories are suppressed, people are punished by public shaming for expressing the prohibited views, etc.

I can only add my agreement with what others have said so well (underlined!): We need to take our news from multiple sources—not from social media—and constantly evaluate the credibility of those sources or of anyone’s opinions based on what facts they offer as support, what experience they bring to their judgment, what personal stake may be involved, and the quality of their reasoning. That last is so important and not always taught in school: recognizing personal attacks on the speaker to dismiss what they have to say, or broad, unsupported generalizations including stereotypes as well as “everybody knows..,” or misrepresenting and exaggerating counter arguments, etc. We need to question what people tell us too (“Where did you hear that?” or “What makes you think so?”)—-not as a challenge, but as a way of setting a tone of inquiry and reason in a conversation, opening it up to dialogue rather than shutting it down by creating an argument. The age of television and the internet has made it easier in many ways to get information but also easier to get caught in a bubble of confirmation bias. That bubble of limited information, filtered by bias, is the basis for brainwashing.

Adding to that tendency, most areas in the country no longer have more than one independent local newspaper or TV station (and many have none). This makes it easier for media conglomerates to control information. Don’t take my word for it: google it.

Needless to say, the movement toward book banning in school and public libraries is a symptom of the danger we are facing. Parents and politicians should be more concerned about teaching kids how to think than what to think, while setting a good example.

The hardest lesson to learn, I think, is that just because you disagree with a person's viewpoint doesn't necessarily make the other person wrong. I feel like some people get so entrenched in their positions that they've lost the ability to look at problems/issues from any perspective other than their own. I think it's actually pretty sad.

First the mind has to be open to hear distorted idea = and this could be for a variety of reasons. Then there needs to be a group in control that seems to speak to you directly and it gets repeated time and time again.

The posts in this thread have pretty much covered the way I feel and see things. There is one incident that sticks in my mind even after a few years have passed. A man in a very high position, Speaker of the House, lied about a presidential candidate saying that he had not paid his taxes in years. Many people believed him and he lost his chances to run. At the end of the presidential election, a reporter approached the Speaker and asked him about the statement, saying that it had been a lie and the candidate was eliminated. The reporter then asked him what he thought about that and he answered that it worked, hadn't it? I've never forgotten that. We see this kind of thing repeatedly in Julia. It is up to each individual to research and validate statements made by authorities. Easy to say - but how does one do that in Julia's situation?

I would basically repeat everything that vivianh said above. As a high school teacher, I value critical thinking above just about everything else (although writing is right up there as well). My personal opinions are irrelevant in class discussions; my role is to spark conversations and help students form their own opinions based on information from as many sources as we can provide. I do wish that people in general were more open to listening to other points of view. Arguing should never be a matter of volume and debate is not debate when people are unwilling (unable?) to listen to other possibilities.