[HN Gopher] Misinformation: The First Digital Drug
___________________________________________________________________
Misinformation: The First Digital Drug
Author : briancaw2
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-01-16 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ebenezermann.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ebenezermann.medium.com)
| ahepp wrote:
| I would classify this (and much of the current discourse about
| mis/disinformation) as "not even wrong".
|
| It's difficult for me to express my thoughts on the matter
| without writing a huge, unintelligible screed.
|
| The author, like many others, considers misinformation a disease
| that can be cured by using authority to administer objective
| information.
|
| I feel strongly that we no longer have any choice but to accept
| all information is based in trust. This is not meant to be a
| metaphysical statement. Perhaps at the metaphysical level,
| objective truth exists. Regardless, at the scale society needs to
| verify information, objectivity is inaccessible.
|
| Consider how long it took Russel's _Principia_ to add 1+1. For
| the claims we encounter in our everyday lives, an appeal to
| objectivity will only add another layer of obfuscation.
|
| In the case of current crisis in the US, the government claims
| that the crisis is an attack by the Russians. Perhaps this is
| true on a superficial level, but the attack is only possible
| because sources of power in our society abuse that society's
| trust so heavily. This isn't only limited to the government, but
| the entire structure of power.
|
| The Q conspiracy is on its face absurd and easily contradicted by
| reliable observations. Why do adherents engage in it? At some
| point when you're surrounded by lies on every side and no way to
| understand your environment, your brain just melts.
|
| Unfortunately there is no sign that society will even stop
| digging itself into this hole.
| muskox2 wrote:
| > Unfortunately there is no sign that society will even stop
| digging itself into this hole.
|
| I think that for things to change they will need to reach a
| breaking point. I hope and pray that we will be able to get
| through this breaking point and to the other side to a better
| civilization before some x-level threat destroys us.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| The article fails to make a distinction between misinformation
| (untruthful, false information that is spread, regardless of
| intent to mislead) and disinformation (dishonest, deliberately
| misleading or biased information). All disinformation is
| misinformation *, but not all misinformation is disinformation.
| And I don't see how a comparison with drugs is helpful.
|
| There are two things that can be done:
|
| One is requiring misinformation to be corrected, with penalties
| for disinformation. This won't be popular with free speech
| advocates, but maybe they should reconsider whether malicious
| lies (which have adverse consequences) ought to be protected.
| There's also the more practical problem that the disinformation
| might not be detected, or detected too late.
|
| The other is to ensure that people are educated from an early age
| to spot dubious information and fallacious reasoning, and learn
| how to fact-check sources. An understanding of science (along
| with its acceptance of being proven wrong), history, and folklore
| is also helpful.
|
| * There are rare exceptions to this.
| m_herrlich wrote:
| Some of the things people currently believe are so patently
| absurd and obviously made up that labeling them as false would
| not make much difference. It's would be just one more conspiracy
| vector.
|
| Even if it did, how could the regulators possibly keep up with
| the gish gallop of misinformation? There are those who seriously
| examine and rebut the claims of q-anon et al. but can you imagine
| a more thankless task?
|
| A better approach is to teach good informational hygiene to kids.
| Pull from a variety of information sources, weight the ones that
| correct errors, awareness and taxonomy of cognitive biases, stuff
| like that.
| zby wrote:
| Teaching will not solve the problem with incentives - QAnon is
| just more fun.
| jdsalaro wrote:
| > QAnon is just more fun.
|
| As a counter-example, to me being right or approaching truth
| consistently and in a repeatable manner is much more fun than
| believing whatever I want to believe.
|
| I know which beliefs I'd like to be true, but self-deception
| isn't as fun as being right; right as in claims made within
| an independently validated methodological framework that
| makes my claims reproducible.
|
| That's isn't inherent, I assume, but learned.
|
| > Teaching will not solve the problem with incentives -
|
| Citation desperately needed!
|
| The, arguably, oldest human system of hierarchical
| organization called Church would like to have a word with
| you: a system based purely on psychological and social
| incentives, nothing else, giving relevance to itself and
| propagating certain world-views, beliefs and thought-systems.
| wool_gather wrote:
| > > QAnon is just more fun.
|
| > Citation desperately needed!
|
| You might find this take on QAnon from a game designer's
| perspective interesting:
|
| https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-
| analy...
|
| > It uses many of the same gaming mechanisms and rewards
| [as ARGs and LARPing].
|
| > When players arrive at the "correct" answers they are
| showered with adoration, respect, and social credit.
|
| > ... the breadcrumbs [from Q] are not facts, they are
| [...] Puzzles and clues for the "investigators" to uncover.
| [...] solving puzzles is extremely rewarding from a
| biochemical standpoint and the thoughts we gain from them
| are special to us.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Informational hygeine is already part of the high school
| curriculum in every state I'm familiar with. Maybe we could
| make it better, but I struggle to think of any specific reforms
| that'd help.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| The current information hygiene and media literacy curriculum
| as I understand it leans heavily on using 'reputable
| sources'. This is well and good until those sources start to
| lose their reputability by publishing stories that stretch
| credulity (WaPo and the NYT with their 'anonymous
| intelligence sources familiar with the thinking of people
| near the matter'), become increasingly partisan, or simply
| appear too selective in their coverages with the benefit of
| hindsight. Noticing these things invalidates the majority of
| the curriculum in a student's mind, and leaves them
| unequipped to deal with the beasts wandering the information
| wilderness.
|
| If I were to reform this, I'd place greater emphasis on
| information composition, and source/author auditing.
| Acknowledge that mainstream publications often miss things
| that less reputable outlets will cover (albeit poorly), and
| teach students to think in degrees of certainty.
| amelius wrote:
| The problem with labeling a source with a "reliability
| score" is the ad hominem fallacy.
| slg wrote:
| >This is well and good until those sources start to lose
| their reputability by publishing stories that stretch
| credulity (WaPo and the NYT with their 'anonymous
| intelligence sources familiar with the thinking of people
| near the matter')
|
| It sounds like maybe we should add courses on journalism
| then too because there is nothing specific about this
| approach that stretches credulity if done properly. Unnamed
| sources are a crucial part of a lot of good journalism.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| They are, and some of the greatest journalists alive,
| such as Sy Hersh have built their very respectable
| careers on anonymous tips and having privileged
| information from those they can never cite.
|
| That being said, it's important to be exceedingly leery
| of them, and use them sparingly, preferably as supporting
| evidence for a larger story. Lacking the same degree of
| accountability, they just as easily can be used to
| launder political narratives to sympathetic journalists
| who will breathlessly parrot them as they can be used to
| inform the public of goings-on behind the curtains of
| corporation and state.
|
| Used too lightly as the primary crux of nearly
| inconsequential stories which hammer in too small a
| number of talking points, 'anonymous x familiar with y'
| can quickly become shorthand for 'this
| journalist/publication is in bed with a subfaction, and
| this is the new talking point'.
| slg wrote:
| Anonymous sources are a tool that is neither inherently
| good or bad. You singled them out in your previous
| comment as being linked to untrustworthy reporting.
| disrrrrruptives wrote:
| I'll try to cite some hypothesis, hope it helps...
|
| 'Within limted thought-processes; which can be owed by
| censorship, selfcensoring or _sure_ a lack of
| information, one thought may be proceeding linear. '
|
| "If you may give this one moment more, associating
| happens within a 'certain' time as well it may make 'a
| career' and runs on a limited tracks."
|
| Now you may imagine conflicts - as unexpected
| consequence, resulting in a quiet retreat, in its
| simplest form to shut up, hardened resulting in isolation
| - just to reenter a thoughtloop of to rest, to became
| keeping calm... now add promiscuous, rash, screenwork and
| you have qualified for obsession and addiction, maybe...
| ^^
|
| edited: _eh!_ ther was way too many chars and text to
| 'translate' to round the full -too drunk- picture in this
| little textbox...so... (-; _recursion_
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Properly used unnamed sources are a crucial part of good
| journalism, but much of the problem we've seen recently
| is that media outlets aren't using them properly. I'd
| point to the Miles Taylor essay as a good concrete
| example of what goes wrong:
|
| * They granted him journalistic anonymity for an opinion
| piece, which is very much not a common practice.
|
| * The NYT published no corroboration of Taylor's claims,
| and their descriptions of how the editorial got published
| suggest they didn't even attempt to find corroboration.
|
| * Their description of him as a "senior administration
| official" substantively misled people - the phrase is
| generally understood, and was understood at the time, to
| refer to people like agency heads or cabinet secretaries
| with direct accountability to the President.
|
| And this is from an uncommonly responsible outlet! Many
| others will happily publish detailed claims of fact
| attributed only to "one person with knowledge of the
| matter".
| ahepp wrote:
| Wow. I'm a huge consumer of news media and I never saw
| that this source was revealed. I'm only now learning the
| identity of the author, but you're absolutely correct
| that the portrayal was incredibly misleading and I'm
| infuriated at the attempted deceit.
| slg wrote:
| The Miles Taylor column was not a journalist citing an
| "unnamed source". It was a publisher allowing an
| anonymous opinion column. Those are different things. It
| is also important to realize the fundamental differences
| between reporting and opinion pieces including the
| expectations on fact checking.
|
| Once again, another reason people should learn more about
| journalism in school.
| ahepp wrote:
| This seems like an incredibly bad faith argument to me.
|
| Do you feel that the "Anonymous" op-ed was published in a
| manner that encouraged any sort of critical consumption?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think that's a fair assessment. I don't know if it's
| still true, but for at least the first decade after
| Wikipedia went mainstream, I did see a lot of schools
| compromising their credibility by insisting that it wasn't
| a "reliable source" so you shouldn't read it to learn about
| things.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| That's very interesting!
|
| I have a pet theory that Informational Hygiene is going to be
| one of the most important classes in the upcoming years,
| taking a similar place to sex ed.
|
| Are there any resources on classes in the space? I did a
| quick Google and didn't see anything that stood out.
| sicromoft wrote:
| > taking a similar place to sex ed
|
| That's a great analogy, and sadly why I don't think these
| classes will help as much as we'd like.
|
| The places where they are needed the most are the places
| that are going to alter the content of the classes to fit
| their agenda. Just look at sex ed classes in strongly
| conservative areas.
| kiba wrote:
| It's less than a single semester of content, and you don't
| really practice it, since you're pretty much guaranteed to be
| spoonfed authoritative information anyway.
| dkarl wrote:
| I think in any community that is gratified in some way by a
| belief, there's a spectrum from actually believing at one end,
| to enjoying the camaraderie and enjoying the belief as a
| conscious fantasy at the other end, and I think people who
| inhabit the "conscious fantasy" end can slide towards the "true
| believing end" via suspension of disbelief, like people do
| while enjoying a movie or a role-playing game.
|
| When the community is something like a sci-fi fandom community,
| people on the actually believing end of the spectrum would be
| considered mentally ill, while people on the camaraderie-and-
| fantasy end are considered well-adjusted. In a religious
| community, it's more complicated, and people on either end of
| the spectrum might be accepted or stigmatized depending on the
| religion itself and the point of view of the beholder.
|
| Either way, if you think of fandom communities and religious
| communities as analogues, you wouldn't expect these communities
| to go away until people can no longer get gratification they
| want from them. I don't know how that can be accomplished.
| dumb1224 wrote:
| I know it's sensitive times to comment anything but I can't
| help remembering all the ancient chinese idioms we used to
| learn and laugh about in class.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger
| https://zh.m.wiktionary.org/zh-hans/%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA%E8%A1...
|
| From 'learning from any 3 random wanders' to 'fear the tiger of
| 3'. Was that actual wisdom or cynical conclusion of human
| behaviour?
| carapace wrote:
| If you haven't studied hypnosis and something called
| Neurolinguistic Programming (the other NLP) you are basically
| out-of-the-loop when it comes to what's going on today.
|
| The simplest way to put it is that we're caught in "a war between
| rival gangs of hypnotists."
|
| (You know the old saw about poker? "If you don't know who the
| sucker at the table is, it's you."? Along the same lines, if you
| don't know what I'm talking about, you're the sucker at the
| table.)
|
| "Misinformation" isn't a drug, it's a kettle of viruses. Hypnotic
| programs. The messed up thing is that it doesn't matter if they
| come from alien or homegrown cultures: once the virus is here it
| (really "they": a virus is legion) becomes everyone's problem,
| and it can mutate.
|
| How do you fight hypnotists? I can't tell you in a brief post
| like this. (And I'm not actually qualified anyway.) But I can
| leave you with a simple spell that works pretty well:
|
| "A trance is only as deep as you are."
|
| Good luck, and God bless
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Most progressive thinking is moving towards more legalization
| and treatment, vs banning and punishment... Treat it like we're
| starting to treat drugs
|
| I'm all for the direction that drug policy is going (towards more
| treatment, less prison time - I live in Oregon and we're on the
| forefront of this in the US) but I'm not sure how this would work
| in regards to misinformation. How do we get conspiracy theorists
| into treatment? Won't they just figure that's part of the
| conspiracy to re-educate them? And a lot of this disinformation
| is coming from bad actors with intent to harm.
|
| The epistemic gap is, I think the most serious problem we face
| now. We can't address other serious problems like climate change
| or even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's
| disinformation. We seem to be completely unprepared to deal with
| this. The immune system offers an analogy - we need a societal
| immune system that attacks disinformation in some way. No idea
| how we get there, though.
| abernard1 wrote:
| > even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's
| disinformation.
|
| During the last year, we have seen the following claims from
| public health authorities affiliated with well-regarded
| scientific institutions: - Vitamin D does
| nothing - Vitamin D helps - You should wear masks
| - Masks are not actually that helpful - The Trump
| attempts to stop travel from China are racist and terrible
| (Schumer, Pelosi) - We need to shut down most
| transportation and not just airports - We need to
| lockdown all non-essential businesses - Hollywood is an
| essential business, but churches and restaurants aren't -
| Lethality of COVID-19 is 2-5% - Lethality of COVID-19 is
| ~0.2-0.4%
|
| And just in the last couple days (highly coincidentally with no
| bearing at all to politics), there has been a flood of reports
| that Chicago, NY, and San Francisco are using to justify full
| openings of their economy. Those scientific reports say that
| the lockdowns are at best useless.
|
| At what point have the "experts" been right this year? Which of
| those things should we have labelled misinformation? Attempting
| to install a technocratic version of truth has never worked,
| and we should have the grace to allow "wrong" things to be
| said. The experts, so-called, have been inconsistent and wrong
| through this whole debacle.
| throwaway9980 wrote:
| The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some
| sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It's
| not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences
| w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly
| emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The
| more hysterical people become advocating their point of view,
| the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When
| someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural
| skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se,
| rather because we know that when we are emotionally
| distressed it is more difficult to be rational.
|
| Basically: everyone needs to calm down.
| abernard1 wrote:
| > The more hysterical people become advocating their point
| of view
|
| All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very
| thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media.
| They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them
| was not stated). According to their _own_ standards, the
| experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The
| same people saying one thing and then retracting a few
| months later.
| cle wrote:
| This is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have
| isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little
| positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof,
| widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into
| their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug
| analogy, telling someone to "calm down" is like telling a
| junkie to "just quit". It's not going to break the feedback
| loop.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I think there's a very clear line between "Best guess"
| political policies with imperfect information and Q-anon.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Institutions and experts have always been inconsistent. Just
| look at nutrition science - we've gone from fats are bad, to
| no carbs are bad, to no wine is actually good. The
| expectation that the scientific community would find
| consensus on a novel virus in a matter of months is
| unreasonable. Personally I've taken @nntaleb reasoning on it
| - whether or not masks work with certainty is irrelevant; we
| have good enough data to suggest it works so we take the
| insurance and wear them. There is nothing wrong with a
| healthy amount of skepticism; and claims are often muddied
| through the low pass filter that is Twitter (ex. _experts_
| warned that singling out China was racist when American cases
| came from Italy; we needed far more policy than single out
| the Chinese).
|
| That said, there a mountainous gap between "we are unsure if
| masks work" to "the president is fighting an underground
| shadow cabal of pedophiles and blood drinkers." COVID deniers
| aren't suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are
| unsure of the effectiveness of vaccines - they are suggesting
| we don't take vaccines because _they are actually microchips
| by Bill Gates designed to track us_.
|
| There is a clear difference between misinformation and just
| plain being wrong - there's a difference between telling me
| LeBron James is going to win a championship next year and
| telling me LeBron is actually an alien from Mars who came
| here to trick us into watching basketball so they could steal
| all our water. If the President was wrong about LeBron James
| winning, he would be wrong. If the President was trying to
| convince me of the latter, then I think that is
| misinformation.
| joe_91 wrote:
| Some good points! I do think that most people are not used
| to how science can change over time and that what most
| science is is just what the majority of scientists have
| come to conclude from their independent studies. Most
| people have not had to deal with greys and prefer things to
| be black and white.
|
| We need a shift towards understanding that the best
| available information is better than nothing and that the
| information can change as more better information comes to
| light.
|
| Another thing we need to move away from is crucifying
| people for getting things wrong - this just doesn't help in
| the long run. People are fallible and make mistakes.
| Granted, don't let them make to many in a row but once in a
| while needs to be acceptable.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > most people are not used to how science can change over
| time
|
| We need more education on the scientific method and how
| it works.
| generalizations wrote:
| > COVID deniers aren't suggesting we don't take vaccines
| because they are unsure of the effectiveness of vaccines -
| they are suggesting we don't take vaccines because they are
| actually microchips by Bill Gates designed to track us.
|
| That is misinformation. It is absolutely the case that
| people are unwilling to take the vaccine because the
| effectiveness (and safety) is questionable. You're just
| throwing up a strawman.
|
| It's also possible you just don't know the reasoning behind
| any but the most vocal "covid deniers". That wouldn't be
| surprising, since the standard practice now seems to be to
| lump everyone who questions the 'official position' in with
| the most extreme theories, and that makes rational people
| shut up. Your generalization is only strengthening your
| echo chamber.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _It is absolutely the case that people are unwilling to
| take the vaccine because the effectiveness (and safety)
| is questionable._
|
| Effectiveness is one thing; I take the same exact
| reasoning for wearing masks - you take the insurance
| especially when it costs you nothing. However, you are
| welcome to enlighten me on well supported arguments
| against vaccine safety. You can't just tell me that I'm
| throwing up strawman, then make 0 actual arguments except
| "I'm not doing enough research". If you are asking me to
| doubt vaccine safety on no data except some vague claims
| on there being "less extreme" positions, then I would
| argue you are spreading misinformation; especially when
| there are decades of research showing the safety
| otherwise.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's certainly not a good idea to identify anything that
| deviates from the public expert consensus as
| "misinformation", but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem
| of verifiably wrong claims spreading. For example, Chicago
| and San Francisco have not fully opened their economy. I'm
| skeptical that the resolution to this problem looks anything
| like "information control", but it seems terribly naive to
| expect the problem will resolve itself when it's so easy to
| be ensnared by it.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Another log for your fire:
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/many-scientists-
| citi...
| generalizations wrote:
| > Won't they just figure that's part of the conspiracy to re-
| educate them?
|
| I mean, it would literally be re-education.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Re-education is a tainted word, sadly. If someone is
| indoctrinated and fed only lies and half truths then the only
| real solution is to be educated on truth. Learning from the
| work of others is easiest, but doing ones own experiments is
| certainly possible.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Took me too long to realize following: when a person says
| "there's too many lies in the media and I can't believe anything
| anymore", they do not have anything concrete about said _lies_
| but sheer volume of apocryphal narratives thrown at them is
| causing erratic behaviors.
|
| It's a known incorrect error message that human interpret
| statements as "baseless", "false" or "lie" in certain corner
| cases, like how some computer GUI shows "disk full" or
| "permission denied" or "irrecoverable hardware error" for running
| out of inodes or exceeding filesize limits. It should not be
| taken literally.
|
| I can't immediately point at a solution but overloading them
| further by giving more precise informations isn't one.
| amelius wrote:
| Well, fairy tales were the first digital drug I got, so this
| makes sense.
| agumonkey wrote:
| The cinetics were more balanced, less likely to overdose I
| believe.
| ve55 wrote:
| >The current situation in the US is challenging. Misinformation,
| disinformation, and conspiracy theories are rampant in every
| cohort of society.
|
| Most of the higher-quality longitudinal evidence I've seen does
| not show that there is an increase in believing in conspiracy
| theories or misinformation (or, as we used to call it, people
| simply being incorrect). It's simply much more visible now due to
| the Internet being widely adopted, whereas in the past you'd
| never know what people across the world (or even your own city)
| may have been thinking about.
|
| Since there is no stable nor global solution to the problem of
| deciding who gets to label/regulate information, nor any evidence
| showing that _even with the regulation of information_ , people
| actually change their beliefs to the 'correct' ones, I don't
| personally see merit in this path. The temptation to find a
| solution is sensible prima facie, but history and human
| psychology show us that this is a fool's errand.
| wool_gather wrote:
| It seems to me that higher visibility is all but guaranteed to
| lead to an increase in belief. Simple exposure is one thing:
| most people aren't going to _concoct_ new conspiracy theories
| on their own, but they may decide to go in for them when they
| _see_ them.
|
| Social persuasion/cohesion is another: we're all influenced by
| the views of the people around us (like it or not). When you
| see half a dozen people in one of your peer groups talking
| about $WEIRD_THING, you're naturally inclined to give it some
| time, and maybe some credence.
|
| I don't disagree about the deep problems with regulating it,
| though.
| trianglem wrote:
| You're going to have to back that up with some evidence,
| especially considering the specious claims you've been making
| over the last few weeks during the capitol terror attack etc.
| s5300 wrote:
| Definitely not just the internet.
|
| I have things like this showing up in my mailbox unsolicited.
| People believe what it says because it's coming from a group
| they're familiar with. I'd say there should probably be real
| legal action taken against things like this...
|
| http://prntscr.com/wweheo
|
| http://prntscr.com/wwexix
|
| http://prntscr.com/wwf2eg
| Krasnol wrote:
| Well I'd say that the shameless crowds marching to bullshit
| conspiracies on the streets as well as the support for their
| head figure who also was spreading shameless bullshit is a
| quite visible evidence outside the internet.
| rimiform wrote:
| > Most of the higher-quality longitudinal evidence I've seen
| does not show that there is an increase in believing in
| conspiracy theories or misinformation (or, as we used to call
| it, people simply being incorrect).
|
| Do you have a source for that? Not trying to dispute your
| claim, just curious.
| snapcore wrote:
| When I googled I found these claims:
|
| "There are no major comprehensive, longitudinal studies on
| Americans' attitudes toward conspiracy theories, mostly
| because it was not rigorously measured until about 10 to 20
| years ago."
|
| "...reviewed over 120 years of letters to the editor, from
| 1890 to 2010, for both The New York Times and the Chicago
| Tribune. In over 100,000 letters, this review showed
| absolutely no change in the amount of conspiracy theory
| belief over time. In fact, the percent of letters about
| conspiracy theories actually declined from the late 1800s to
| the 1960s and has remained steady since then."
|
| They cite: American Conspiracy Theories - Joseph Uscinski &
| Joseph Parent.
|
| Quotes from here:
|
| https://theconversation.com/are-conspiracy-theories-on-
| the-r...
| alfl wrote:
| The first "digital drug" moral panic I remember was ASMR... or
| maybe video games.
| briefcomment wrote:
| What about porn?
| nostromo wrote:
| And piracy.
|
| edit: in the sense of a moral panic
| ben_w wrote:
| Was that ever drug-like?
| EamonnMR wrote:
| In the mid 00s there was this myth that you could listen to mp3
| files with specially crafted 'binaural beats' which would
| supposedly mimic the effect of drugs.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I can't help the feeling that the old world, as slow and
| imperfect as it was, had a better sense of pace and filters.
| jaredwiener wrote:
| A big part of the issue is the economics.
|
| Disinforomation can be funded through all sorts of ways. The
| truth needs a patron.
|
| https://blog.nillium.com/news-was-never-meant-for-social-pla...
| golemiprague wrote:
| The core of the problem is that nobody can agree what is a drug
| and what is not when it comes to information. You can't even tell
| if people believe in what they say or it is just a war cry with a
| wink. I think the people who wrote the first amendment understood
| it well and decided to legalise it all, that's the only way to
| deal with it.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| I think the best way of combatting misinformation is with
| internet hygiene.
|
| Recently I've moved to a mostly text based internet. I've changed
| the sites I go to for entertainment (Reddit, Twitter) to
| basically only show text by default, and it's crazy how much less
| inundated I feel by the news. With less information, I feel much
| more equipped to separate out what is real and what is fake. I've
| also made an active attempt to separate news and information from
| entertainment.
|
| There are [studies](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13
| 423-012-0292-0 ) showing that people are generally ok at dealing
| with misinformation, but if you show them text on
| images(especially emotive), or show them misinformation when
| their guards are down, they are much more likely to believe it.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Good it worked out for you but it won't for the masses as
| they've been educated to consume (moving) pictures. So this
| can't be the answer. It doesn't have to be one too because
| there are many people out there who do not go so far and still
| mange to stay sane.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| I don't think it's as impossible as you might think. Plenty
| of people right now go in tech "diets" (i.e. going offline
| for some period of time). The difference is that usually
| isn't sustainable over long periods of time.
|
| I also think you're underestimating how hard it is to avoid
| basic misinformation. By basic misinformation, I mean stuff
| that's verifiably false with a couple of google searches.
| It's really easy to recognize misinformation when you already
| disagree with it. It's so much harder to do when you agree
| with the general sentiment. Even on HN, so much bs about
| Facebook gets upvoted and repeated without critical thought
| just because most people (and I agree with them) don't like
| FB. Images and memes ratchet this up by like 10x.
| zug_zug wrote:
| For victimless misinformation (e.g. "Earth is flat") I see no
| problem with this approach.
|
| For politically motivated misinformation (e.g. "Stop the steal")
| I think recent events show we should pretty clearly play it extra
| safe (e.g. ban the dealer) until we figure out how to reduce the
| risk of it being weaponized against democracy.
| ghkbrew wrote:
| It sounds like a good idea. But people are a fractious bunch
| who can't completely agree on anything. Certainly not on what
| is and isn't "misinformation".
|
| I don't think giving someone(s) the power to ban information
| they think is harmful is going to be the net win for democracy
| you want. The first amendment to the constitution seems to
| agree with me.
| dudeithinkBLM wrote:
| Uh no. A group of yahoos being let into the Capitol to take
| selfies is not a valid reason to endorse censorship and giving
| up our collective freedom of speech.
| jancsika wrote:
| A robust defense of free speech isn't helped using soft,
| silly-sounding words like "yahoos" and "selfies" to minimize
| the threat of a mob that beat an officer to death.
| carry_bit wrote:
| If misinformation is a drug by that definition, then truth would
| be a drug too. A potentially even more potent one at that.
|
| We've already seen some drugs be restricted for political
| reasons. Do we wish risking that with truth also?
| ben_w wrote:
| If truth was generally more potent than lies, people wouldn't
| have much incentive to lie.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Perhaps the first step should be to address the rot and
| corruption that pervades every major institution of our society.
| Once that's done we can see how much of a problem remains with
| misinformation. Just inventing more sophisticated ways to insist
| to people that "everything is fine and the only real problem is
| the people like you who won't buy into that party line" isn't
| going to get anywhere.
| enchiridion wrote:
| You are getting down voted, but this is part of the problem.
|
| For people skeptical of this point, look at mask
| recommendations in the US. There are only two reasons that
| masks were not recommended in February. Incompetence or
| deception to secure mask supply for health care workers.
| Neither options inspires confidence in the government.
| ryandrake wrote:
| OP is getting downvoted because this blanket, default
| distrust is not escapable once you adopt it. Yes, some
| institutions have a bad track record and can't be trusted.
| Others can be trusted. But OP extends distrust to "every
| major institution of our society" and then proposes we
| address the corruption. If your default position is that
| nobody can be trusted, how do you know that you've addressed
| the corruption? Trust someone to tell you that the corruption
| has been addressed? You can't because you default to
| distrust!
| carry_bit wrote:
| I think it's a manifestation of epistemic learned
| helplessness: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-
| epistemic-learn...
| enchiridion wrote:
| That was a good read. It's interesting that there are
| basically three groups that the author focuses on.
|
| 1. Smart people who have never been burned by a bad
| argument. 2. Smart people who have been fallen for a bad
| argument. 3. Average people who have been been tricked
| before.
|
| The first two groups as described defer to authority, but
| the first tends toward extreme ideas while the second
| relies on institutions as a filter.
|
| The third group is the most interesting in my opinion,
| tending toward ideas that "feel right". The important
| point here, that the author stops short of making, is
| that the second and third groups are very similar, just
| with different filtering criteria. The difference is
| that, with less education/training, the filtering of the
| third group is more easily undermined.
|
| Which brings me back to my original point. Given that the
| third group comprises the vast majority of the public,
| governmental institutions have an exceptional burden to
| not erode trust. If these institutions fail at that, it
| opens the door for epistemic learned helplessness.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I just don't think the problem of misinformation has much to
| do with trusting the government. Even people who distrust the
| government can, should, and often do avoid falling victim to
| misinformation.
| enchiridion wrote:
| That is a fair point, but I'm not sure what causes it to go
| off the rails.
|
| It seems like a certain degree is of apathy is necessary.
| As in, yes there are problems with ~INSTITUTION~, but
| changing it would be hard and it is good enough for now.
|
| Could be that conspiracies are trending so hard now because
| people do not have other worthwhile personal pursuits to
| focus on, due to lock downs.
| flyingcircus3 wrote:
| I think this comment is a prime example of why this problem is
| so difficult. Misinformation often caters to people's cynicism,
| creating a sort of positive feedback loop. How do you reach the
| chronically cynical person who's essentially trained to look
| for the most sinister explanation to all phenomena?
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| iDoser was the first digi-drug
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| " Media firms work backward. They first ask, "How does our target
| demographic want to understand what's just unfolded?" Then they
| pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize."
|
| From Matt Taibbi's https://taibbi.substack.com/p/we-need-a-new-
| media-system
| mancerayder wrote:
| How myopic. Insane beliefs have existed long before Internet-
| enabled information spread. Over half of the US believes that
| astrology is real. I remember reading in the early 2000's a
| survey showing a majority of Americans believing angels exist.
| Should we talk about religion?
|
| I'll tell you what's happening, here. Journalists are encouraging
| a Zeitgeist of censorship, prepping us all for Internet
| censorship to protect us from ourselves. That's because the young
| people who are behind Medium blogs and WP op eds and Vox articles
| are too young to have a collective memory of censorship in the
| West jn and before WWII, the McCarthy years, the wars to
| decriminalize porn, and much more.
|
| Because of myopia we want to go backwards in our liberal
| democracies. All this because you're worried that your neighbor
| will believe Alex Jones or not get a vaccine?
|
| I have bad news: History shows this will not go away despite all
| the censorship in the world.
| notahacker wrote:
| History also shows that a majority of people believing in
| astrology or moon landings not being real is much less harmful
| than a majority of people believing that the Jews are
| conspiring to enslave you, vaccines will kill you or even that
| if you don't force the VP to vote himself back into office, the
| President won't be able to stop children from being raped. And
| yes, religions can persuade some average people to do some
| great things or strange things or be incitement to blow
| themselves up in the middle of a marketplace or drink the Kool
| Aid. So keeping an eye on these things is probably a good idea,
| and if people decide certain stuff should come with content
| warnings or not be disseminated on their platform thats
| probably OK. Sure, there are slippery slopes when you start
| censoring stuff but there are slippery slopes when you _stop_
| too, particularly when the actual debate is less about
| silencing all discussion of misinformation and more about
| whether misinformation has an inalienable right to a megaphone.
|
| Porn is still censored extensively even in its most inoffensive
| forms and people under certain ages aren't allowed to watch
| films with rude words, and yet people are insisting that true
| liberty means that whilst corporations are entitled to decide
| boobies and f-bombs are inappropriate for their platform, they
| must be compelled to host Qanon. I'm not sure that was the
| lesson we were supposed to take from past battles over
| obscenity laws.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > if you don't force the VP to vote himself back into office,
| the President won't be able to stop children from being
| raped.
|
| Extreme framing that makes it easy to dismiss. There are
| people who think this recent election had some very fishy
| stuff going on, but are not buying the lunatic fringe, q-anon
| type of stuff.
| notahacker wrote:
| 'Extreme framing' represents the actual tipping point that
| resulted in the actual actions (and arguments) being
| criticised. (Same goes for other examples: Germany has
| actual laws rather than mere Facebook policies concerning
| holocaust denial because it views the slippery slope
| towards Naziism as more plausible and dangerous than the
| slippery slope towards a unified state version of history)
|
| As for people with concerns about 'fishy stuff', they've
| been granted plenty of prime time TV hours to talk about
| it, had fifty lawsuits thrown out by judges often
| politically aligned with them and are happily posting all
| over the Internet without fear of any consequences whilst
| elected officials loudly advocate their cause. Suffice to
| say this is not the experience of the average 1950s
| communist or pornographer.
|
| I'm not convinced that the existence of more nuanced
| arguments about elections means social media should be
| obliged to broadcast Donald Trump declaring that he won a
| landslide victory without challenge or Lin Wood making
| Trump look rational, which all too many 'free speech'
| arguments have been devoted to.
| kiba wrote:
| _Because of myopia we want to go backwards in our liberal
| democracies. All this because you 're worried that your
| neighbor will believe Alex Jones or not get a vaccine?
|
| I have bad news: History shows this will not go away despite
| all the censorship in the world. _
|
| Why wouldn't deplatforming and muting these sources wouldn't
| work? The only reason why they spread as well as they did was
| because the like of youtube and other social media decided to
| give these people megaphone.
|
| What if we stop giving them these megaphones and give it to
| someone else instead?
|
| It is wrong to think of these platforms as neutral. They are
| not. They are always choosing what to show to the public based
| on selection criteria.
| mancerayder wrote:
| A very rational set of questions, but it makes me depressed
| that the answers - in a problem space discussed since at
| least the 18th century - have not been taught and discussed
| in philosophy and ethics classes and thus need to be
| repeated.
|
| The problem is _always_ the same: NOT what value do we have
| in Alex Jones, conspiracy theories, liars, misinformation
| spreaders, etc. All the people that you and I already agree
| that there is a low value to misinformation that they spread.
| The question is truly: who decides what 's true and false.
| Today you might agree with the current Fact Checker group.
| What if tomorrow Trump decides to be the fact checker. Rudy
| Giuliani tried to ban certain art in NYC when he was mayor,
| because it offended his religion (Catholicism). McCarthyites
| in the 50's sought to ban anything unpatriotic (from the
| State Department removing books from libraries to finger-
| pointing and 'calling out' people accused of communism, to
| the visa entry forms that may still exist that ask if you
| were a communist).
|
| We defend the megaphones of the stupid and the fake as an
| insurance policy. We're wary of giving too much power to
| those who can yank megaphones away and pick winners and
| losers, because history itself shows us that the alternatives
| threaten all of us more than fake information.
|
| >It is wrong to think of these platforms as neutral. They are
| not. They are always choosing what to show to the public
| based on selection criteria.
|
| Oh, but the devil is in the details, here. How they choose is
| the critical question that we should be talking about,
| debating and thinking through.
| kiba wrote:
| All your examples involve government officials deciding to
| censor, with historically fewer media sources to comb
| through. This is different from social media with much
| wider input.
|
| _We defend the megaphones of the stupid and the fake as an
| insurance policy. We 're wary of giving too much power to
| those who can yank megaphones away and pick winners and
| losers, because history itself shows us that the
| alternatives threaten all of us more than fake
| information._
|
| Except people aren't entitled to megaphones of their own,
| nor their own newspapers or their own radio station, much
| less on a platform governed by an uncaring algorithm over
| literal million of people who might say something else.
|
| And misinformation really do real damage to people. You
| can't just pretend that conspiracy theorists don't exist
| and can't influence people to do real damage, regardless of
| who's in charge and who decides what is true or false and
| regardless of what damage censorship did or didn't do.
| mancerayder wrote:
| I'm not pretending anything with regard to "real damage."
| Incitement of violence is real and indisputable and no
| one is defending that. However, "conspiracy theorists"
| (misinformation) and damage is a slippery slope. _Who_
| gets to decide what 's damaging "information"? That is
| the question you're replying to, and you missed that
| piece - that is not a nuance, but _the_ critical question
| we should consider when we call for removal of
| megaphones, censorship and so forth.
|
| You mentioned government v. private platforms, and
| reminded me that those examples I gave of government
| don't apply. But again I wanted to point out the examples
| of the "who" part, and the same argumentation they had
| "this _ is harmful" where _ is art, or books, or speech.
| _Who_ bloody decides what is true and false, how do we
| choose them, and what credentials makes them the
| choosers? And what if today 's choosers and tomorrow's
| choosers have completely different notions of True and
| False?
|
| You're defending censorship using an ancient argument of
| "harmful information" that has dangerous downstream
| effects is the point I am driving at.
| kiba wrote:
| No? We're talking about the speeches of private social
| media platforms, and the fact they choose to promote
| certain speeches over others. That is not in anyway,
| neutrality, and they cannot be neutral actors.
| filoeleven wrote:
| The article title is a bit of a misnomer. Television has been
| with us for about a century now, and although it was not digital
| until more recently, TV likewise fits the definition of "a
| medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when
| ingested or otherwise introduced into the body."
|
| Misinformation has always been a part of television, whether
| knowingly or not. Most people will fall down when shot: not
| because a bullet actually knocks you over, but because you've
| learned that that's what happens from watching TV shows and
| movies.
|
| Even without that, the parallels are clear, especially if we take
| "drug" to mean a recreational or illicit drug. Terence McKenna
| (who had lots of wild ideas that must be individually evaluated;
| you can't trust him) said decades ago that if there was a pill
| you could take that encouraged you to sit on your couch for 4+
| hours a day and "blot out the real world," they'd have made it
| illegal ages ago.
|
| I am not dismissing the dramatic rise of misinformation over the
| past decade or so. To me, it looks a lot more like the spiking of
| heroin with fentanyl than the heroin itself. The addiction was
| already present; it's just gotten a lot more dangerous to
| consume.
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