I Pledge My Earnest Efforts To:

Brief Answer: 

Unfortunately, we cannot trust politicians and other public figures to tell the truth. The pledge changes the incentive structure for public figures to promote truth-telling instead of lying. Through taking the pledge, and encouraging public figures to take it, you take the lead in fighting deception.

Full Answer: 

While plenty of people have lied to get ahead in the past, this problem has gotten particularly bad lately. Recent political events in the United States, United Kingdom, and many other democratic countries have caused Oxford Dictionary to choose post-truth politics, “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,” as its 2016 word of the year. Fewer and fewer people trust the media, in part due to the rise of alternative media, in part due to the growth of opinion-driven reporting, and in part due to criticism of the media by prominent politicians. The replication crisis in a number of scientific fields is eroding the credibility of scientists. The most popular sport in the world is mired in scandals based on deception. Leaders of organizations are lying more and more frequently, and usually do not get punished. It’s not only a problem with public figures: fake news, more recently termed “viral deception,” is sweeping social media, shared by ordinary people.

Sharing such misinformation is not necessarily intended to harm others or even deliberately deceive, as our minds are not intuitively set on seeking the truth. Research suggests our emotions and intuitions instead focus on protecting our worldview and personal identity rather than updating our beliefs based on the most accurate information. We are thus not naturally inclined to live by the maxim of “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Being truthful thus requires the same kind of effort as any other sort of civilized, not-instinctive behavior.

Our society as a whole loses out by these lies, while individual liars often gain by their deception, a situation known as a “tragedy of the commons.” A well-known tragedy of the commons is pollution: we all gain from clean air and water, but some individual polluters gain more, at least in the short term, by polluting the environment, harming all of us. Similarly, we all benefit from a society where we can trust each other to tell the truth, but some individuals gain more, in the short term, by abusing this trust and polluting the truth. Fortunately, the environmental movement of the 1970s has now resulted in a situation where many people started recycling and our society passed environmental legislation. In the same way, we can change individual behavior and public policy alike to be more oriented toward the truth through the Pro-Truth Movement, and the PTP is one aspect of this movement to help fight deception.

How does the pledge solve these problems?

Behavioral science research suggests that addressing such tragedies of the commons involves a combination of strategies. One is changing incentives, namely increasing rewards for behavior that is cooperative and helps society (in this case, telling the truth), and also increasing punishments for behavior that defects from the common good and harms society (in this case, lying). Another strategy involves reputation management, clearly showing who is being cooperative, and who is harming the common good. A third strategy centers around managing the choices available to participants, what is known as nudging. The PTP takes advantage of a fourth behavioral science strategy of precommitment – if you publicly commit to a certain course, you will be much more likely to follow it.

The PTP, created by a group of behavioral scientists, combines all of these strategies. By doing so, it provides a tool that motivates all who take it to share accurate information and avoid sharing misinformation.

Besides providing the motivation, the PTP spells out what it means to orient toward the truth. After all, it is very easy to say you share the truth, regardless of whether you do so. It is even easy to say you “verified” a source before sharing the information. However, if you verified it through checking a source known to be systematically unreliable, whether Occupy Democrats for liberals or Breitbart for conservatives, you have violated the standard of avoiding unreliable websites, and thus violated the pledge. As you will see below, if you retract your statement, you will not suffer any penalties from PTP advocates. The clear standard about truth-oriented behavior not only offers guidance to those who take the pledge, but also a basis for evaluating whether pledge-takers abide by their commitment. For more information, watch this Q&A video about the Pro-Truth Pledge.

Brief Answer:

Misinformation is anything that goes against reality.  It can mean directly lying, lying by omission, or misrepresenting the truth to suit one’s own purposes. Sometimes misinformation is blatant and sometimes it’s harder to tell. For those tough calls we rely on credible fact-checking sites and the scientific consensus.

Full Answer: 

The PTP is violated when a pledge-taker shares misinformation. From the perspective of the PTP, misinformation is anything that goes against the truth of reality. It can mean directly lying about the situation at hand, for instance when an athlete denies taking steroids that she was actually taking. It can mean lying by omission, as when a scholar publishes a study with a successful experiment, while hiding that he conducted 50 of the same experiments that failed, until by random chance one finally worked, a phenomenon known as publication bias. Another example is when politicians cherry-pick numbers or stories that are not representative of actual reality to support their candidacy, for instance saying that violent crime is rising and giving an example of a gruesome murder when in reality police statistics show a decrease in violent crime. Misinformation can mean using obviously inflated statistics to support one’s argument, such as an economic commentator saying that people are better off right now because they earn more money while failing to adjust current earnings for inflation. It can mean misrepresenting someone else’s position in such a way that a neutral observer would have a completely twisted perspective of that position. Misinformation can mean representing an opinion as a fact, such as referencing an editorial or expert analysis (both opinions) and treating them as facts. It can mean insisting something is true despite lacking clear evidence that it is in fact true, especially after being challenged about the claim. It can mean sharing an article whose headline is at odds with the conclusions reached in the article. In a nutshell, misinformation is anything that conveys information in an obviously deceptive way that leads audiences to have a fundamentally wrong impression of the truth in any given matter.

In some cases, such misinformation is obvious, so that any reasonable external observer – in this case, fellow pledge-takers who evaluate each other – can see it. In other cases, it is less so. For those cases, the PTP calls on pledge signers to rely on credible fact-checking websites and/or on the scientific consensus. We consider credible any fact-checkers that have passed vetting by the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network and are listed as “verified signatories” on this website. Someone who takes the pledge will be considered in violation of the pledge if they make a claim that is similar to those rated as “mostly false” or “completely false” by one of these websites (they use different language, but you get the idea). In a case where credible websites disagree, for instance one calls a claim “mostly false” and another calls it “mostly true,” we will not consider the claim a violation of the PTP.

In some cases, fact-checking websites have not evaluated certain claims, but the claim will be opposed by scientific research. Since science is the best of all methods we as human beings have found to determine the reality about the world and predict the outcomes of our actions, someone will be evaluated as in violation of the pledge if they make a claim that goes against the scientific consensus. We are comfortable with the Wikipedia definition of scientific consensus as follows:

• “the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Consensus is normally achieved through communication at conferences, the publication process, replication (reproducible results by others), and peer review. These lead to a situation in which those within the discipline can often recognize such a consensus where it exists, but communicating to outsiders that consensus has been reached can be difficult, because the ‘normal’ debates through which science progresses may seem to outsiders as contestation. On occasion, scientific institutes issue position statements intended to communicate a summary of the science from the ‘inside’ to the ‘outside’ of the scientific community.”

Thus, we can recognize scientific consensus by position statements by prestigious scientific organizations, such as this statement from 18 associations on climate change, or the result of meta-analysis studies (evaluations of a series of other prominent studies) that come to a clear determination, such as this study on the relationship of vaccines and autism. Since science gets ahead in part through individual scientists with expertise in a certain domain challenging the scientific consensus in that domain, those who are scientists do not have to abide by the scientific consensus in areas where they have scientific expertise; for all others, since it is very rare for the scientific consensus to be accurately judged as wrong by external observers, going against the scientific consensus is a violation of the pledge. Note that while we encourage deferring to experts in any specific domain, due to people’s intuitive tendency to have excessive confidence in their own opinions and underestimate the value of expert opinions, we consider going against expert opinion a violation of the pledge only in the case of a clear scientific consensus.

No one is perfect, and we do not assume anyone will be perfect in sticking to the truth-oriented behaviors described in the pledge. That is why the pledge asks for your “earnest efforts” to pursue these behaviors, as opposed to perfection. We encourage all pledge-takers to support and encourage each other in pursuing truth-oriented behaviors, by highlighting opportunities for improvement in doing so by other pledge-takers and praising those who pursue such behaviors even despite obstacles. At the same time, we cannot read anyone’s mind and see whether they dedicated “earnest efforts” to these behaviors or not. What may be easy to some people may be incredibly difficult to others, for all sorts of reasons; what may be glaring lapses in pursuing these behaviors may be invisible to others. Thus, we do not consider situations where pledge-takers failed to engage in these behaviors as violations of the pledge. Still, we do need at least some clear and externally-verifiable standards of when people violate the pledge, something that all pledge-takers can agree on and externally verify. The three points above offer that opportunity for clear external verification that all pledge-takers agree to avoid: statements deliberately meant to mislead, going against credible fact-checking sites, or going against the scientific consensus.

Violations of the pledge only apply to statements made in and about the public sphere. In other words, it does not apply to private interactions, such as when a wife tells her husband his new shirt makes him look really muscular, regardless of what she really thinks. It does not apply to semi-private contexts, such as when a fisherman tells tall tales about the size of the fish he caught. It does not apply to religious or other values-based contexts, except in cases where the statement is misinformation about public discourse. It does not apply to cases that cannot be reasonably verified by an outside party and/or have to do with personal beliefs and spiritual experiences, such as when a politician or a pastor says “I support this policy because of God’s personal revelations to me,” or an environmentalist says “I support protecting the environment because otherwise the spirit of Mother Earth would suffer.” It does not apply to internal communications within an organization, unless these communications are about public discourse: for instance, the pledge would not apply to conversations about hiring, unless there is a claim made that an organization is hiring people because of changes in public policy. The pledge matters only in verifiable statements relevant to broader public discourse, such as when a private citizen shares a piece of viral deception online, or a journalist misquotes a source, or a pastor makes false claims about miracle healing and encourages parishioners to avoid going to doctors, or a scientist hides unfavorable experimental results relevant to public policy, or a business owner makes false claims about the value of the product they are offering or how a policy impacts their business, or a politician spreads falsehoods about her opponent or denies clear evidence based on the scientific consensus on a topic.

Brief Answer: 

All signers of the pledge benefit in building a more truth-driven public culture and cultivating socially beneficial habits of mind, word, and deed. The general public gains the privilege of being part of a nonpartisan community of people who support each other in abiding by the pledge in a compassionate, constructive manner. Public figures who take the pledge get the verifiable credibility of being constantly evaluated on how well they stick to the pledge by PTP advocates. An additional benefit for public figures who are competing with others, such as politicians, is that they can raise questions about why one’s opponent has not taken the PTP. We celebrate public figures who take the PTP in our newsletters and social media, offering them a reputational boost among an audience oriented toward the truth.

Full Answer: 

First, let us consider the individual rewards for different groups of pledge-takers:

Finally, there are a number of benefits that accrue to all who take the pledge. All pledge-takers gain the benefits of cultivating socially beneficial – what many would call more moral and ethical – habits of mind, word, and deed. All gain the pride and self-satisfaction of standing up for one’s ethical and moral convictions. All gain the benefits in building a more truth-driven public culture, and fighting the pollution of truth in politics. All gain the benefit of being role models for others, whether ordinary citizens or public figures. All gain the benefit of joining a network of and collaborating with other truth-oriented people.

A candidate for Congress, Michael Smith, took the Pro-Truth Pledge. He later posted on his Facebook wall a screenshot of a tweet by Donald Trump criticizing minority and disabled children. After being called out on it, he went and searched Trump’s feed. He could not find the original tweet, and while Trump may have deleted that tweet, the candidate edited his own Facebook post to say that “Due to a Truth Pledge I have taken I have to say I have not been able to verify this post.” He indicated that he would be more careful with future postings.

A US Army veteran and member of the Special Operations community, John Kirbow, took the pledge. He then wrote a blog post about how it impacted him. He notes that “I’ve verbally or digitally passed on bad information numerous times, I am fairly sure, as a result of honest mistakes or lack of vigorous fact checking.” He describes how after taking the pledge, he felt “an open commitment to a certain attitude” to “think hard when I want to play an article or statistic which I’m not completely sold on.” Having taken the Pro-Truth Pledge, he found it “really does seem to change one’s habits,” helping push him both to correct his own mistakes with an “attitude of humility and skepticism, and of honesty and moral sincerity,” and also to encourage “friends and peers to do so as well.”

A Christian pastor and community leader, Lorenzo Neal, took the Pro-Truth Pledge. He related in an email how he “took the Pro-Truth Pledge because I expect our political leaders at every level of government to speak truth and not deliberately spread misinformation to the people they have been elected to serve. Having taken the pledge myself, I put forth the effort to continually gather information validating stories and headlines before sharing them on my social media outlets.”

A former US intelligence officer, who retired from service after four decades but prefers to remain anonymous due to his profession, took the Pro-Truth Pledge. He later described how soon after taking the pledge, a piece of news “that played right to my particular political biases hit cable TV and then the Internet and of course my first inclination was to share it as quickly and widely as possible. But then I remembered the pledge I’d signed and put the brakes on. I decided to wait a bit to see how it played out (and boy-howdy am I glad I did.)… As it turned out the story was a complete dud, ‘fake news’ as they say. That experience has led me to be much more vigilant in assessing, and sharing, stories that appeal to my political sensibilities. I now make a much bigger effort to fact-check before I post or share.”

Bill Cunnigham is a prominent conservative talk show host who had Trump on his show, and is ranked 27 among “Most Important Radio Show Talk Hosts” in America by Talkers Magazine. We were invited to talk with Cunningham about Trump’s allegations that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in the 2016 presidential election. Using strategies informed by the Pro-Truth Pledge, we had a civil conversation and this strong supporter of Trump acknowledged that Trump behaved inappropriately in tweeting his allegations without providing any evidence.

We did an interview in October 2016 with the well-known Christian conservative radio show host Scott Sloan, who had previously had a friendly conversation with Trump during the election campaign. Using the tenets of the Pro-Truth Pledge, we discussed whether Trump or Clinton would make the US more secure. While others experienced great difficulties convincing Sloan to acknowledge facts, we provided evidence specifically targeted to prove convincing to Republicans. Namely, we showed that prominent Republicans who served in the national security apparatus thought Trump would make us less safe than Clinton. As part of doing so, we showed that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is not contributing to our security, due to the infinitesimally small chance of any given Muslim committing a terrorist attack. As a result, Sloan updated his beliefs and confirmed that from the perspective of safety, Trump is a worse choice than he previously thought.

The tenets of the Pro-Truth Pledge are sticky: people tend to remember them over time. For instance, after we did an interview in October 2016 with Sloan, we did another interview with him about a month afterward in November 2016. Sloan specifically recollected the October 2016 conversation where we talked about the low likelihood of any Muslim being a terrorist. He spontaneously stated that he remembered and re-affirmed that any individual Muslim is very, very unlikely to be a terrorist.

In January 2017, we had another radio interview with Sloan on why Republicans like himself should care about post-truth politics. After all, Trump won the presidency in part by using post-truth tactics, making it politically advantageous for Republicans to avoid calling out post-truth political engagement. We focused our conversation on key tenets from the Pro-Truth Pledge, and highlighted how post-truth politics would highly likely lead to corruption and authoritarianism. Since these issues are of major concern to Republicans as well as Democrats, Sloan agreed that Republicans should be concerned about post-truth politics and criticize lies, even by their own side. He subsequently showed greater willingness to acknowledge lies by Republicans, for instance on February 15, 2017 airing a segment about a Republican judge suggesting Trump should be impeached.

The 12 behaviors of the Pro-Truth Pledge can prevail even over very politically charged topics. The well-known Christian conservative radio show host Scott Sloan had a friendly conversation with Trump during the election campaign. We had a radio interview with Sloan two days after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, where we compared the evidence supporting Trump’s explanation for the firing and the explanation of leading Democrats. We talked with Sloan about how behavioral science findings result in those with certain partisan beliefs to prefer the explanations offered by those who share their perspective. However, we then discussed with Sloan how many mainstream Republican leaders expressed concerns over Trump firing Comey and aligned more with the Democratic explanation. Thus, we encouraged Sloan to update toward that explanation. At the end of the conversation, Sloan did indeed change his mind more to perceive the Democratic narrative as more closely aligned with reality, and affirmed his previous commitment to acknowledging and criticizing lies from Republicans.

Public figures want to know that they will get recognition and positive reputation if they sign the PTP. The PTP Updates provide them with that benefit. We plan to send one every couple of weeks, with new public figures who signed the pledge, and also ones who signed it earlier to share about how they behaved differently due to having signed the PTP. The PTP would have a significantly bigger positive impact if the public figures knew that many people were signed up to the these updates. It would be especially impactful if you read through the updates and then Tweeted/emailed and otherwise messages public figures whose messages you appreciated in the PTP Update, especially ones in your locale. Still, despite this benefit, we decided not to make PTP Updates obligatory, to enable people who have a strong distaste for additional emails to participate in the PTP.We need to put pressure on public figures who are in contempt of the pledge, and PTP Action Alerts are a vital way of doing so. Once a PTP mediating committee makes a determination that a public figure not simply made an innocent violation of the pledge, but engaged in an intentional deception and is unwilling to back away, it would issue an Action Alert to those who indicated they want to receive such alerts – either at the local, regional, or national level, depending on the stature of the public figure – for them to email/Tweet and otherwise message the public figure encouraging her/him to revise the relevant statements, and writing letters-to-the-editor about the situation. To have meaningful reputational pressure, we need as many people as possible signed up to receive PTP Action Alerts, and to take the steps necessary to mount this pressure. Still, despite this benefit, we decided not to make PTP Action Alerts obligatory, to enable people who have a strong distaste for additional emails to participate in the PTP.

As one example, see this peer-reviewed article, which shows the effectiveness of the pledge in changing the behavior of pledge-takers to be more truthful. Published in the academic journal Behavior and Social Issues, the article reports the results of a study evaluating the sharing of pledge-takers on Facebook by researchers who observed the behavior of study participants. Researchers examined the first 10 news-relevant posts one month after study participants took the pledge and graded the quality of the information shared, including the links, to determine how closely their posts matched the behaviors of the pledge. They then looked at the first 10 news-relevant posts 11 months before they took the pledge and rated those. The study found large, statistically significant improvement in pledge-takers’ adherence to the 12 behaviors of the pledge, such as fewer posts containing misinformation and including more sources. Another peer-reviewed study, published in the academic journal called Journal of Social and Political Psychology, found similar results using a different methodology, further strengthening the evidence for the effectiveness of the pledge as an effective tool in changing the behavior of pledge-takers.

Having your address enables PTP advocates to know how many in their locale signed up to the PTP, and use this as a data point to advocate for public figures to sign the PTP. This is especially salient for local and regional elected officials, who always want to see the specific addresses of constituents to know who in their district signed the PTP. Another benefit of giving the address is that it enables PTP advocates who have the function of local organizers to reach out to you and help you participate in various PTP-oriented activities, getting you plugged into both Pro-Truth activism and Pro-Truth community activities. Finally, it enables us to send you PTP-related marketing materials that you can use to promote the pledge. Again, this is not obligatory but highly beneficial.

Sharing that you took the pledge via your media channels enables others to have a greater confidence that they can trust you more and rely on you to keep your word. Moreover, it enables others who took the PTP help you abide by the pledge, and offer guidance and support when you might mistakenly go against the tenets of the pledge. Additionally, it can help motivate other people to take the pledge if they know that you took it.

Brief Answer: 

PTP advocates are people who want to contribute to advancing the PTP and other truth-oriented activities.  Being a PTP advocate involves any combination of the following six activities: organizing, public promotion, lobbying, evaluating, behind-the-scenes work, and financial support.  PTP advocates get support and training from the PTP core organizers as they lead by example.

Full Answer: 

PTP advocates are people who want to contribute to advance the PTP and other truth-oriented activities. We estimate doing so might take a couple of hours a month at the lower level of activity. Regarding the PTP in particular, being a Pro-Truth advocate involves any combination of the following six activities: organizing, public promotion, lobbying, evaluating, behind-the-scenes work, and financial support. PTP Advocates should make sure to model all aspects of the PTP, in real life and social media: for guidelines on the latter, see here. In all cases involving contributing their time, Pro-Truth advocates get various support and training from the PTP core organizers in their efforts, as well as various resources. For an example of the latter, here is a Google Drive folder with template email and Facebook drafts you can use to pitch the PTP; here is a Google Drive folder with marketing resources, such as flyers, business cards, sign-up sheets, and graphics; here is a Google Drive folder with materials for those who want to make public presentations on the PTP. For those who have financial difficulties impeding their ability to engage in the activities listed below, we provide reimbursements for the vast majority of your financial needs, see this blog for directions.

• If you do organizing, you would help recruit and coordinate other people in engaging in PTP-oriented activities. Being an organizer for the Pro-Truth Pledge involves organizing other people to ensure that the outcomes of the Pro-Truth Pledge are met, namely that: 1) The PTP is promoted to the public, getting more and more people to sign it; 2) There is effective lobbying of public figures, especially politicians, to get them to sign it; 3) There is effective monitoring of public figures who signed the pledge, evaluation of any potential pledge violations, behind-the-scenes efforts to get public figures to revise problematic statements, and if not, then public pressure on them to revise problematic statements. See the three sections below on the specific steps you would be recruiting people to do, and especially the first step on public promotion on how to help yourself recruit other advocates who you would then organize. You should also be able to jump in and do any of the three activities described below, so that you know how they are done and can step in if a volunteer needs a brief break, as well as have the familiarity with the tasks necessary to be able to manage volunteers doing any of the three. You need to find other organizers to help you have life balance and be able to step away for brief periods as life stuff comes up. Finally, you need to be able to form a virtual or in-person community for volunteers to help them feel motivated and engaged and invested in the project. More details at this link.
• If you do public promotion, you engage in finding venues to tell the public about the PTP and encourage them to take it. This may involve solely focusing on people in your locale. For instance, you can gather signatures by canvassing or tabling, the details for doing so are in this blog. You can also do public speaking, which is described in this blog. A super-easy way to promote the pledge in daily life is to purchase and wear PTP-themed merchandise, especially when you do PTP-themed activities, but also just out and about – it’s a great conversation starter. Alternatively, you can focus on local-level social media, and go to various local Facebook groups and other relevant social media to promote the PTP there. You can write blogs in local venues or letters-to-the-editor in local newspapers about the pledge. If you do social media, you can also go broader than the local level, say in specific online discussion forums or social media venues that you believe would be interested in the PTP. You can do a combination of all of the above, and any other things involved in getting the PTP out there. Then, as people get involved, you can either help organize them to promote the pledge, or connect them to another PTP advocate who does organizing.
• If you do lobbying, you would work to get various public figures to sign the pledge. This may involve approaching the minister of your church or secular group leader, or local journalists and academics, or your boss in the company where you work, and convincing them to sign the pledge. This may involve traditional lobbying, such as going to the office of a politician to get her/him to sign the pledge. After you go to meet with a politician several times and the politician still refuses to sign the pledge, you can go to friendly media contacts – ideally ones you got to sign the pledge earlier – and tell the contact about the situation, as well as show them the signatures of ordinary people asking the politician to sign the pledge. This may result in a news story that would both spread word about the pledge and put some pressure on the politician to sign it, or be perceived as having something to hide. Details on pitching public figures and organizations on the PTP are in this blog.
• If you do evaluating, you would keep track of public figures who took the pledge, and make sure they abide by it. You would read through their social media feeds and speeches, observe their actions, and browse their press releases. If you find something that smells fishy to you, you would investigate whether it violates the PTP. If you think it does, you would follow the process outlined above on holding people accountable. Those who have served for a while and successfully in monitoring may apply to mediating committees of vetted volunteers who make rulings in evaluate compliance with the PTP. Those who want to be PTP evaluators are welcome to check out the directions at this link, and follow the guidelines there for getting involved. If you have research and analysis skills, you would be a good evaluator.
• If you do behind-the-scenes activities, you would do things like programming, editing and writing, video and audio editing, administrative tasks such as inputting people who signed the pledge in person into the website, doing various research related to the pledge, and so on. The kind of behind-the volunteer activities available as part of this project are all described in this survey, which we invite you to fill out. The survey is for the nonprofit organization Intentional Insights, which runs the PTP project – indicate your focus on the PTP in the “What makes you excited about Intentional Insights?” section.
• The last way to help out is financial support. Plenty of people have insufficient time to help out on a consistent basis, and become checkbook advocates instead; likewise, many who contribute their time also contribute money. We support many people across the country through reimbursing their PTP expenses, as described at this link, along with expenses related to social media management, website hosting, video creation, and other needs. A donation of $20 a month will enable a PTP volunteer to get a month’s worth of materials and printing costs, $50 a month will pay for both printing materials and travel and parking costs for gathering signatures at community events, and $100 a month will cover all of these costs, as well as the fees for getting a table or booth at a community event. You can donate through this link to the account of Intentional Insights, the financial sponsor of the Pro-Truth Pledge. For the monthly donation option – which we especially appreciate, as it helps us make our financial plans going forward into the future – click the checkbox “monthly recurring donation.” If you want to write a check, you can make it out to Intentional Insights, and mail it to 450 Wetmore Road, Columbus, OH, 43214. Let us know by emailing info [at] protruthpledge [dot] org if you would like to make an ACH transfer or any other more complex form of financial gift, such as stocks or putting Intentional Insights into your will. These donations are tax-deductible against any income that you earn in the US, whether you are a US citizen or not. Choose an amount that would make you happy and proud to support the fight against lies and the promotion of truth to save our democracy.

If you are a private citizen, just email us and we will list you as having taken the pledge and later renouncing it. If you are a public figure, do the same, but keep in mind that any investigations will keep going. If we find a violation of the pledge, and you refuse to retract your statements, you will be listed as both in contempt of the pledge and also as having renounced it. This last clause is intended to make sure that public figures do not simply renounce the pledge when they have deliberately lied and want to renounce their taking of the pledge to avoid the negative reputation consequences of a ruling against them.

The PTP was created by a group heavy on social scientists and its implementation is organized by a non-partisan group of volunteers devoted to protecting truth and facts, and fighting our current climate of widespread misinformation, which we see as one of the worst problems for our global society in terms of how important, neglected, and solvable it is. In addressing this issue, we aim to use best practices in communicating and marketing both to get people to care about truth and to provide them with the tools and resources to use evidence and reason in making wise decisions that will benefit our society as a whole. The Pro-Truth Pledge is a subproject of Intentional Insights (InIn), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting rational thinking and wise decision-making in politics and other areas of life to bring about an altruistic and flourishing world. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, InIn does not engage in types of partisan political activity prohibited by the IRS, and the PTP is a form of citizen advocacy for the non-partisan value of truth in politics and other areas relevant to our public sphere. InIn is funded mainly by monthly donations of $25-50 from small donors who took the PTP: our single biggest donation ever was a one-time gift of $10K, and the next biggest was $5K. You can make your donation at this link.

Based on numerous questions about what influential public figures and organizations signed the pledge, we have a “particularly influential” category on the public figures and organizations page: simply go to that page, and click the “particularly influential” checkbox. Included in that category are all elected or appointed officials at the state (regional) level or above, and other public figures and organizations with at least 100,000 combined followers on social media profiles and email lists, or other demonstrable ways of easily influencing 100,000 people. Since the ability to influence easily 100,000 people is not always obvious, we welcome you to let us know if you think any existing public figure or organization should be in that category. Simply use the contact form to provide clear evidence of how that public figure or organization can easily influence 100,000 people – for example, as the head of an organization with over 100,000 followers – and we will either update the information or ask you for further evidence if needed.