How do you deal with uncertainty of facts?

[auroraglacialis]

It is obvious to most by now, I think, that we are living now in an age of uncertainty. 50 years ago, people believed the scientists and the media, the chemists predicted a golden age of "better living through chemistry", the physicists declared the energy problem solved by nuclear power, the communists were the evil empire and the increasing mechanization of production was a bliss that would allow us all to work less. People could support a family with just one persons income. Since then, I believe uncertainy and paranoia has grown incredibly. Adam Curtis does a good job in examining the sources for this. One reason is governmental people with a paranoid attitude, another is the cold war and I think other ones are actually deliberate misinformation by those who profit from it, misinformation due to the participatory nature of the internet (which kind of confuses people if facts presented in a blog are credible or not) and denial in the face of multiple crisis that seem to converge now.
So now we are living in a world in which people are confused as they get at the same time contradictory information on many immensly important topics. Examples are climate change (will it turn Earth into a Venus, will it not happen at all, is it human made, are we facing a new ice age), nuclear power risks (is Plutonium the most toxic substance on Earth, is radiation incredible dangerous, do low level of radiation improve your health, are we all dying from cancer because of the bomb tests, did 43 or 1.000.000 people die as a result of Chernobyl), pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, nanotechnology, economics, social and political matters (capitalism, communism, socialism, social democracy,...).

In a way, this is "democratic" or rather distributed - everyone can access all kinds of information and form an educated opinion and then act on that. In theory this is what should happen in a democracy - that all participants look at all the information and form a well founded opinion that they then use to vote. This is not happening and maybe it is not possible. Instead of forming a well educated opinion, many people will not even try to do so or they will jump to the first polemic announcement made by a person or group they like. This has become more about factions than about facts. And even if some of the people form a well educated opinion instead of echoing something they heard of Fox News or on Al Jazeera or on Russia Today - they are disempowered to really act upon it as a minority. To make things worse, this whole problem seems to have not only completely engulfed politics, media and economics, it also seems to invade science, which was seen as the rational, objective force that could clarify the decisions by evidence and probabilities. So now there are scientists speaking strongly positive or negative about nuclear risks/climate change/economic theory/genetic modification/industrial chemistry/vegetarian lifestyles/alternative energy solutions ... and so on.

What do you think is the way to deal with this? To me it seems like humanity is watching a car crash - it is horrible but at the same time one has to watch it and one is stunned by it. We look at a big screen of flickering lights or different colors, at a control station in which the scales fluctuate between 0 and 100, needles jumping up and down, digital displays running random numbers as if possessed by a frantic demon. And at the same time the alarm bells are going off and warning lights blink in our faces. We look at the people around us who are either confused or just look at one readout and dedicate themselves to act upon it. Meanwhile the vessel controlled by that room is heading into unknown waters it seems.

This was metaphorized very well in Avatar when Trudy steered the copter into the mountains, all instruments going haywire and she says that she will have to fly on visuals only - but could not see anything. We never got to know how she really solved that problem, but I think it signifies the situation we are in globally.

Personally, I also just try to make sense of it all, try to get information I can rely on, but also cannot exclude that I at times am pulled into that factionism in some points, especially if it happens to exist within my realm - science. I try to use intuition, general knowledge, a holistic view of the whole situation, educated guesses in addition to the facts and try to decide with those which information I can trust, which are dubious, which are false, but it is incredible tiresome. Yes og course, if it is in "Nature" or "Science" or "PNAS", I do trust this, but no one ever can actually read all the papers that exist in respect to a topic. I do feel a sense of panic at times, as it become sincreasingly obvious to me that it is next to impossible to really get to know everything enough to really be sure. So I try to look at what is happening, what has happened - at the now and here as well as at the past. This at least is more reliable than predictions of the future though of course one inadvertently tries to extrapolate this. What kind of helps me is if I get facts from both factions that are similar enough once one ignores the suggestions and recommendations these factions attach to it. So it is a fact that 90% of the fish are gone and that there are millions of dams blocking rivers and that there are tons of pesticides brought up that are poisenous - but this is working with a skeleton of information if no additional bits add to that in terms of what the effects are. Another good one is if some faction has a long record of exposed lies, this destroys their credibility (e.g. nuclear power industry).
So then I do also refer to an emotional/intuitive side for guidance at times, a side that looks at these skeleton information and feels about it - I feel sad about the dams in the rivers, I feel grief at the loss of species and at the landscapes destroyed and I feel sick at the sight of too much grey concrete... But of course this is not something I can use as a basis for arguments it seems, as people want to get the objective "truth" - something that is elusive by nature and as I pointed out hardly reachable due to the formation of factions with different interests. I think evidence based, observative science is extremely valuable and it is a major base of my conclusions and view of the world, but I think that for one part this is not enough and for the other part I feel that for actual happenings in the world, it does not always matter - knowledge in that case is not power.

So how do you here deal with that situation - how do you deal with uncertainties, issues of trust, deliberate or natural confusion in the public discourse and with the emotional (or even spiritual) side of it? How do you form your personal opinions on something, what is your guidance?

Thank you
Aurora