[HN Gopher] 'Fake news' poses corrosive existential threat to de...
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'Fake news' poses corrosive existential threat to democracy - Study
Author : CharlesW
Score : 20 points
Date : 2022-07-29 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.birmingham.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.birmingham.ac.uk)
| h2odragon wrote:
| > Widespread internet access changed this situation, as citizens
| were confronted with vastly increasing sources of information,
| fewer shared experiences and the awareness that _others might
| share fewer fundamental beliefs with them._
|
| (Emphasis mine)
|
| Why do we have to share so many fundamental beliefs, then?
| Whatever happened to "we can work together for $Goal without
| having to agree on everything else"? what happened to the
| recognition of individual worth, that people are more than the
| caricatures we refer to as "they're Christian" or "they're LGBT"?
|
| The cure for this threat to democracy (boy those are abounding
| recently) isn't sanitizing the information sources and ensuring
| that the choir is all in perfect harmony: its in recognizing that
| we can and do share similar interests even when the rest of our
| opinions vary.
| t_mann wrote:
| > Why do we have to share so many fundamental beliefs, then?
|
| When it comes to beliefs like 'the government consists of a lot
| of different people with their own interests, but a lot of them
| still actually care about the greater good, and conspiring at
| massive scale to hide atrocities wouldn't even work for
| practical reasons if they tried, let alone at an international
| scale' then it can get a bit tricky if people disagree on
| those. Save for avoiding politics altogether, but that's only a
| solution to the workplace problem, not really to the bigger
| problem.
| bshipp wrote:
| I recently watched "We Were Apollo" and was struck by the
| contrast between the herculean effort to get a man on the moon
| --where everyone worked together regardless of origin, race, or
| creed--against the backdrop of desegregation in the 1960s and
| the rise of counter-culture. National public projects that
| capture the imagination and provide a sense of combined purpose
| can't fix all social problems but they can certainly overcome
| them and shine a brighter path.
| boxed wrote:
| Lots of people in Apollo fought against black people and
| women being included. So I think you're misrepresenting
| history.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Lets not forget the actual, literal Nazi and SS member Von
| Braun.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
|
| > Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's
| apolitical. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they
| come down? That's not my department, " says Wernher von
| Braun.
|
| > Some have harsh words for this man of renown, But some
| think our attitude Should be one of gratitude, Like the
| widows and cripples in old London town, Who owe their large
| pensions to Wernher von Braun.
| jfengel wrote:
| Not only were the famous "Hidden Figures" hidden, but they
| conspicuously canceled a program to include women among the
| astronauts. Women would have been perfectly capable, and
| being smaller would have made a lot of things easier to
| build. But they insisted on test pilots.
|
| The result was a set of men who looked basically identical:
|
| https://64.media.tumblr.com/02ce7b0737c5cc837a5bb537b67bddb
| 5...
|
| (That's a painting, which actually makes them look even
| more distinct. The Air and Space Museum in DC has a
| collection of portraits, and it's as if they just used a
| Xerox machine.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im skeptical.
|
| How would it be easier to design, build and test 2
| versions of everything than essentially copy the same
| thing 12 times.
|
| 12 clones would be even better to simplify work.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are missing the point. There were still a lot
| of black people and women supporting the program, despite
| the differences and conflicts. Women and black people tuned
| in and enjoyed the Apollo program, instead of condemning
| and boycotting it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| In what sense is this a study? What exactly was researched and
| how?
| CharlesW wrote:
| From TFA: "Publishing his findings next week in The Journal of
| Ethics and Social Philosophy, University of Birmingham
| researcher Dr Merten Reglitz asserts that online fake news is
| symptomatic of a larger problem yet to be fully understood --
| namely, the enormous impact of the internet on democratic
| processes."
| thanatosmin wrote:
| This is a peer-reviewed paper, but I also have trouble
| calling it a study. The underlying article makes a
| philosophical argument but is not a typical research study
| (which I take to mean the collection of original empirical
| observations).
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Bring back the FCC fairness doctrine. Eliminate all opinions and
| report the facts, with citations as much as possible.
|
| Don't tell me what to think, give me the information so I am
| informed.
|
| Infotainment is a black mark in our history and will likely be
| reflected on with great disdain.
| [deleted]
| nomel wrote:
| The problem I consistently see is that the authorities labeling
| something as "fake" never communicate, or seem to consider, the
| confidence they have in the truth for what they're labelling.
| They almost always to communicate with false certainty.
|
| This means they will label things incorrectly, and people will
| trust authorities less. In the last four years I saw the media,
| and other institutions, be blatantly incorrect more times than
| any other time in my life, which is probably related to the fall
| in confidence that's present [1].
|
| Why can't the explanation be that institutions that are supposed
| to be trusted are clearly being _untrustworthy_ , lowering the
| bar for all of society?
|
| 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-
| institutions-...
| rayiner wrote:
| The media has failed to reconcile with how much it failed over
| the past six years. My wife is a rabidly never-Trump
| Republican, so I followed every twist and turn of the saga
| through 2016-2019. Like every episode of the Rachel Maddox
| show, every NYT podcast, etc. The media just regurgitated every
| bit of rumor and innuendo for years. And they've refused to own
| up to it. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| features/russ...
|
| Imagine what the reaction to Watergate would have been like if
| the media had spent the preceding four years talking about how
| Nixon was a "literal Russian asset."
| jpadkins wrote:
| mRNA COVID treatment is a great example in the loss of trust in
| media, institutions, and each other. By suppressing and censoring
| information, I believe we have lost so much trust and good will.
| I know I have lost a lot of trust in medical authorities.
|
| We would have been a lot better off allowing all parties to
| publish data and analysis, and stress critical thinking skills to
| the public. Suppression and censorship lead to mistrust.
|
| Yes this means people will form their own opinions and we won't
| have uniform decision making. But what public policies actually
| need 90% compliance to be effective? I can only think of a few
| extreme examples.
| tresqotheq wrote:
| > I know I have lost a lot of trust in medical authorities.
|
| If you do some introspection, you ll find that you originally
| had no reason to trust them in the first place.
|
| You trusted them because you assigned attributes such as
| conscience, morality etc that can be reasonabily attributed to
| one human being. But these authorities are mobs, a group of
| humans, and you cannot never expect a mob to have a conscience.
| thanatosmin wrote:
| What exactly is the information "censored and suppressed" with
| regard to the mRNA COVID vaccines?
| akomtu wrote:
| Side effects of these vaccines is a big one. Their necessity
| is the other one.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| thanatosmin wrote:
| I genuinely asked in good faith and interest. If posting
| publicly is your concern my email is easy to find from my
| profile.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Why should anyone believe you won't pass that email,
| along with the address of the sender, to people with
| nefarious intent? Good faith would be to do a simple web
| search, or reflect on events in society for the past year
| and a half, that would give you at least some sense of
| the answer. No need for anyone to risk being on the
| incorrect side of the same mob that came for anyone who
| dared speak of the lab leak theory. Google, Bing, Yandex,
| and others are ready for your query.
| someNameIG wrote:
| boxed wrote:
| > But what public policies actually need 90% compliance to be
| effective? I can only think of a few extreme examples.
|
| I can think of one: a pandemic.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| According to Dr. Fauci, you only need 70%. Are you
| questioning his expert knowledge?
| alexklarjr wrote:
| freedom of speech is not an essential part of representative
| democracy, as well as three branches of government, 911, internet
| or zoning laws. Oh well, uk is not a democracy, what they even
| know about it.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I have an alternative, possibly controversial opinion that I'm
| still working through.
|
| I think talking about "Fake News" or "The Attention Economy" or
| "The Algorithms" robs us of our fundamental agency, pins blame on
| "others who are radicalized by technology" and "those who
| manipulate them", and prevents us from natural, easy steps to
| becoming more civil.
|
| The stories we tell ourselves matter, fundamentally, as any
| psychologist, stoic, mindfulness master, or person suffering from
| mental health issues can tell you. Whenever we, as individuals,
| let something dominate our mind, then we'll be more prone to
| seeking information about those negative stories, confirmations,
| communities built around them, etc. In this case, Fake News is
| just responding to market pressure that we're unable to stop
| creating.
|
| Cognitive behavioral therapy was _purpose built_ to help
| _individuals_ remove cyclic, persistent, negative narratives from
| their minds, mostly through positive reframing. It 's efficacy as
| part of a three-hit combo is pretty good. CBT, Mindfulness, and,
| if required, medication.
|
| The controversial bit is that I think we've allowed anti-social
| narratives to take hold, do not question the uselessness / lack
| of benefit of its hold over us, and have compounded this by
| telling ourselves there's nothing we can do about it because
| "Fake News" or "Attention Economy" or "Wokeness" etc etc.
|
| I think every single person can purge these anti-social
| narratives in themselves, starting with the part where we believe
| others are to blame, and others are irredeemably corrupted by
| what's on TV or where they were born, or how much money they
| have, etc etc.
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| As I like to play games, oftentimes I frame things in RPG
| terms, so the way I think about self-agency is that we all have
| that as a stat -- some have it higher or lower depending on
| many factors. Things like algorithm-fed infinite scroll
| dopamine hit feeds (FB, Tiktok, Reddit, etc.) apply a debuff to
| many people's ability to exercise self-control/discipline. Some
| people have a high enough self-control stat -- or they have
| some learned technique or tools (new skills gained from
| experience/leveling up, if you will) -- that they can roll to
| resist, while others fail and are seduced by the spell of the
| feeds. These things do seem specially designed to short circuit
| our self-control, after all.
|
| I think it takes foresight, good education, good parenting,
| good luck, and probably more, to set someone up to resist these
| products and messages. Some folks just aren't or weren't
| prepared for them.
|
| Sorry if this is a silly response to your post. It's just my
| two cents.
| bavell wrote:
| Love the analogy. I feel like my self-agency stat is pretty
| high compared to my peers and I attribute that to my aversion
| of some of the biggest debuffs - social media (only HN for
| me), partisan clickbait, us-vs-them mentality, etc.
|
| We all have many built-in heuristics for analyzing the world
| and some of them easy to hijack if you aren't paying enough
| attention. The In/Out group dynamic is a big one that is
| regularly taken advantage of.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Democracies are based on collective public decision
|
| Yes. And democracies also depend upon a healthy and reliable
| Fourth Estate.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
|
| We don't have that.
|
| That obligation and responsibility has been widely neglected.
| This isn't the internet's fault. The irony of those who are
| supposed to serve as The Fourth Estate looking everywhere but in
| the mirror should not be lost. These traditional pillars seem to
| be more interested in click bait-y coverage, manufactured news
| (i.e., just because they "print" it doesn't mean it is worth
| printing, in the true definition of news), and/or shamelessly
| parroting prevailing narratives. They're generally lazy. There is
| no such thing as lazy journalism.
|
| If this is a guideline, The Fourth Estate continues to fail. This
| isn't the internet's fault.
|
| https://kottke.org/20/01/jim-lehrers-rules-of-journalism-1
| chakkepolja wrote:
| The fourth estate continues to fall because it's, ironnically,
| run by the liberal arts _elite_. These people seem to be the
| ones who grew up in rich or upper middle class families, took
| up liberal arts for sake of a degree, spent most of their life
| in similarly 'elite' bubbles.
|
| The rigour of their study is limited to parroting few often-
| repeated words here and there.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Who is failing isn't important, yet. Step 1 is to get more
| people to understand we do have a problem, and that it's not
| limited to the internet. Adding who to the quest is a
| distraction, at least for now.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The fourth estate continues to fall because it's,
| ironnically, run by the liberal arts _elite_.
|
| No it's run by the same billionaires that run everything
| else. You're mistaking the employees for the employers.
|
| The reason they hire a certain subset of upper middle class
| liberal arts majors is because that's a group of people who
| study in order to learn their beliefs and gain their
| credentials, rather than to learn skills and accumulate
| experience. They'll have any opinion you tell them to have
| that isn't about an issue that affects themselves or their
| loved ones. Since they and their friends are upper middle
| class, very few things will ever affect them in a negative
| way other than disease, prejudice, or domestic violence. Oh,
| and mean people on twitter.
| hajdjvkrj wrote:
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