As a journalist, I’ve been conditioned to be skeptical and to ask questions. There’s been a lot said to me in the wake of the fires in Lahaina that have caused me to be skeptical. 

I’ve repeatedly been in conversations where theories about “smart cities” have been cited. 

On Monday, during a friendly chat outside the Papa’aloa Country Store on the way to Hilo, I was encouraged, once again, to “look it up” to learn more about the situation and how it might apply to the future of Lahaina. 

I took my new acquaintance’s advice. I looked it up.

I found this explanation via Politifact, a website run by the Poynter Institute, a trusted resource for journalists. 

The article explains “there is no connection between smart cities and wildfires or any other natural disasters. Most smart city technology is small-scale and incremental — such as adding software and sensors — and doesn’t require destroying anything in a city to implement it.”

But in the moment, when I was faced with another person sharing an unfounded lie they heard, I just listened. I didn’t push back on what he said. We were just talking story and what he said was an aside. 

I have many colleagues who are exceptionally adept at pivoting on statements and calling into question conspiracy theories and their origins. And even for them, it can be hard to persuade or change someone’s mind on something they assume to be true.

Like you, I’m trying to navigate through the choppy seas toward the truth after the disaster on Maui. It’s still startling to think that some of the original disinformation came from accounts attached to China’s communist government. 

The corrosive intervention worked and discord was sowed here in Hawaii. How do we manage this going forward when we know that more disasters will come, and that social media companies are doing little to nothing to stop the spread of lies?

I wonder if we fully understand how more uncivil things are at risk of becoming. 

In her column earlier this week, my colleague Beth Fukumoto wrote about the bullying and harassment that led to Nani Medeiros’ resignation as Hawaii’s chief housing officer. 

“If we don’t self-correct and stop normalizing incivility, we won’t just lose good people in government. We’ll attract bad ones,” she wrote.

And it’s hard to imagine that we can attract people worse than what we already have. Trust in government has never been lower in the United States.

As I sort through these situations, I repeatedly ask what is the most important question in these situations.

It’s a question my wife, who for more than a decade led the world’s biggest digital news organization, would ask her reporters and editors when navigating through situations where truth and facts were being openly menaced. 

It’s a question that’s repeatedly invoked at our ohana’s table. “Is that knowledge or assumption?” And to make the question less binary, she’ll ask to place the statement on a scale of 1 to 5.

With all the dubious social media theories flying around, this is the question serious people need to be asking. There’s no greater question to ask right now in Hawaii.

“Is that an assumption? Or is it knowledge?”

What does someone know with certainty, what does someone assume is true because they heard it, or because it simply fits their world view? Being more aware of the spectrum of assumption to knowledge matters now more than ever. 

For years, every morning I walked out the bedroom in our old house in Atlanta, I was confronted by the spine of Chuck Klosterman’s 2016 book “But What If We’re Wrong?” It was right at eye-level on our bookshelf and it was impossible to miss.

Klosterman recommended that we get past our hubris by thinking about our Bronze Age or Victorian Era ancestors and reconsider how we regard the things that were once considered to be immutable certainties.

Does the sun revolve around the Earth? Do leeches cure cancer? You get the idea. 

So along those lines, what are we currently assuming to be true, that may not be? 

What beliefs and ways of living do we currently practice that our grandchildren regard as ignorant or abhorrent? Facebook? Flying? Football?

How can we all better understand that we shouldn’t believe or spread what we hear on social media? How can we all learn to examine our own assumptions versus knowledge? How can we be better at confronting and disagreeing with compassion and respect? 

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I have the knowledge to know they need to be asked and explored if we are to heal and move forward in the face of disasters, and as people and as communities living in times of challenge and hope.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by grants from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.