ABSTRACT
Filters. I define a filter to be anything that directly or indirectly influences information as it flows from its source, i.e., a fact in Nature, to you. Possible examples of filters are reporters, editors (of magazines, newspapers, radio and television programs, Web sites), advertisers, boards of directors of corporations, the government, professors, parents, public relations firms, friends, would-be internet censors, and so forth. The filter that managed to eliminate all but one line from Jack Blum’s testimony, cf., page [443], on our government’s relation to the importation of cocaine into the U.S. in the ’80s is one of the more spectacular filters I have run across. Think about all those facts in reality about which you need complete and
accurate information. If you are not getting your information about these facts from direct experience, what do you know about the filters between you and the facts?
