The problem: Every information source sometimes gives you bad information. You don't know which source to believe, or when to believe it. No one has the time to know everything about everything. And the incentives of each information source are rarely aligned to give you the whole truth — Fox News lies to you. Breitbart lies to you. CNN lies to you. The New York Times lies to you. The CDC lies to you. The CCP lies to you.

How do we know what's true?

Agreeing on a single universal truth is a lost cause. That ship has sailed. Or perhaps the ship was never here. The sooner we come to terms with this, the more we can look for alternative approaches and adapt to the fast-changing world.

One such alternative approach I propose is the Swiss Cheese Model for Sense-Making . It is an adaptation of the Swiss Cheese Model in risk management.



Imagine slices of Swiss cheese (Emmental cheese) where each slice has holes of varying sizes and positions. In this model, a slice represents an information source. And a hole represents its flaws. Every slice has its holes. Every information filter has its flaws.

When you stack the slices as overlapping layers, you end up with a combined "super slice" with fewer holes.

And that's all there is to this simple approach.

Assume that each information source is imperfect, similar to the assume breach mentality in cyber security. And then stack various slices of information together to get a fuller picture of "the truth".