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Misinformation and its cousin, disinformation, is everywhere nowadays. It knows no political boundaries. People, young, old, and middle-aged, left or right, are all as equally susceptible to coordinated campaigns of disinformation, and pernicious, dangerous rumors that spread on social media. As a public librarian in a fairly left-leaning area, I'm most often confronted by members of the public who are terribly misinformed about certain topics, to such a degree that it even affects the wellbeing of their lives and those of others around them. For example, there are people who are absolutely convinced that electromagnetic waves are harmful, that wifi smart meters cause disease, that vaccines cause autism, and that contrails are actually chemicals sprayed into the air by the government. I am often confronted with the dilemma of wanting to give someone information that is true, versus satisfying them by giving them what they want. I often just give in by simply not mentioning anything at all, and letting them hear what they want to hear. It is so hard to disabuse people of notions that they've already predisposed themselves to believe -- the cognitive fallacy known as "confirmation bias". But such dangerous memes are actually harmful -- are in fact, causing harm right now -- all we need to do is look at the headlines about how measles, a disease that was supposed to have been eradicated, is coming back to haunt us. Well-meaning citizens, often even progressives with a healthy skepticism about the intentions of a government aligned to the interests of big business and wealthy oligarchs, end up working against progress by spreading environmental panic about GMOs, contrails, and EMFs -- all completely harmless. What can we do to fight these myths? How do you undo a self-ingrained cognitive bias? How do you counter the rampant misinformation that plagues Twitter and Youtube, allowing people to self-radicalize into insane positions with no grounding in actual science?
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May 14, 2019 01:09
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are people of every age group equally susceptible? i feel like at least intuitively, thats not the case
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May 14, 2019 04:01
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DrSunshine posted:Well-meaning citizens, often even progressives with a healthy skepticism about the intentions of a government aligned to the interests of big business and wealthy oligarchs, end up working against progress by spreading environmental panic about GMOs, contrails, and EMFs -- all completely harmless. It's exactly because they have that skepticism that they're so easily caught up in such beliefs. The thing about misinformation is that its victims are often predisposed to believe that misinfo before they even encounter it for the first time. They're skeptical about the intentions of a given entity, and are well-stocked on factoids about that entity's past bad behavior, so they're inclined to believe stories accusing that entity of current bad behavior. And if you challenge those stories without also acknowledging their distrust as justifiable (because it often is), they'll dismiss you as a clueless overly-trusting rube. GMOs, contrails, and EMF are all, as far as the general public knows, harmless. But for decades, the same was true of asbestos, tobacco, leaded gasoline, and opioids. And in each of those cases, the related industries learned of the dangers long before the public did and spent many years covering it up, often aided by government regulators who were either incompetent or actively colluding, as well as corrupt scientists who would happily churn out false or rigged data for the sake of the big companies funding their fake studies. Given that history, it shouldn't be surprising that some people are overly skeptical toward things that have become commonplace in our modern world because of the convenience and profitability they offer to businesses or the government. If you want to challenge the misinformation they've latched onto, you can't just target the fake info itself - you have to identify the underlying distrust that made them open to the fake info, acknowledge the basis for their skepticism, and convince them that things are different this time. You can't just say that GMOs are perfectly safe, you also have to tell them why that's more credible than it was when people said that tobacco was perfectly safe.
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May 14, 2019 14:25
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Or give them a different, more coherent framework through which to channel their skepticism.
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May 14, 2019 15:34
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Maybe get rid of the economic and social structures that stomp on the little guy who then has no incentive to trust other experts who are part of the 'establishment.'
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May 14, 2019 15:45
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Main Paineframe posted:It's exactly because they have that skepticism that they're so easily caught up in such beliefs. A good way to spot this is: "do your own experiments". From the flat earthers to the climate deniers most everybody wants to be "scientific", and that includes the nutty right and conservative Evangelical Christians.
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May 14, 2019 16:08
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BrandorKP posted:A good way to spot this is: "do your own experiments". From the flat earthers to the climate deniers most everybody wants to be "scientific", and that includes the nutty right and conservative Evangelical Christians. Hell there is a flat-earther that built a rocket to prove that the world is flat. Funny that he keeps delaying the launch repeatedly, though...
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May 14, 2019 16:18
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It starts with marketing. Wait wait, hear me out. My boss used to work for a business school and they put out a lot of marketing grads, but the thing he found most fascinating about it was, if you asked like 80% of the marketing grads if marketing worked, they'd tell you no.  We can make constant nudges and tweaks to our reality but as a society even the people in charge of it dont admit it. So as human beings, we generally need narratives to make sense of the world. Yesterday a Jehovas witness told me this story about how a guy from Africa moved to the US, got heavy JW lessons and then went back to his Africa and that was great because he had faith in Jesus now (for some reason his village rejected him and he couldnt stay there???) and that was all that mattered. We need positive narratives and stories for society, so the question is not how do you dismantle mis/dis, its how to you give it no porous surface in peoples lives to exploit in the first place?
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May 14, 2019 16:34
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I think a lot of people rightly wonder "what's in it for them?" because they know on some level that people are loving them over, but for some reason they go to stuff like satanic plots to take over the world and captain planet villain levels of being just a pointless rear end in a top hat, rather than just that there's a bunch of people out there who would murder millions gladly if it got them a bit richer.
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May 14, 2019 17:40
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DrSunshine posted:What can we do to fight these myths? How do you undo a self-ingrained cognitive bias? How do you counter the rampant misinformation that plagues Twitter and Youtube, allowing people to self-radicalize into insane positions with no grounding in actual science? You can't fix someone ignorant who wants to be like that. It sounds pithy but there's just a bunch of prewired biases in our brains and if someone wants to drink the kool-aid and have their world views reinforced instead of actually learning true information and discarding beliefs that don't stand up to scrutiny then there's not really much you can do about it. Verviticus posted:are people of every age group equally susceptible? i feel like at least intuitively, thats not the case It's the case. It's even worse than that iirc - your brain doesn't receive a piece of information and then judge veracity. It just assumes it is true and then if necessary goes about disproving it (whether consciously or subconsciously). Sometimes it doesn't; that's how a lot of idiot information gets spread. People hear it, it sounds more or less right, end of thought process. They don't critically examine everything that makes its way into the 'held belief' bucket. Even if you think you're a good skeptic you're very susceptible to something like disconfirmation bias (which Maine Paineframe describes above, basically). Aside from the usual biases you hear about there's also stuff like anchoring which... hoo boy. Studies around that suggest that people basically just believe whatever they are told (Gilbert, Krull, and Malone authored a good one). Most people are easily manipulated and led astray. It's not because they're stupid or naive necessarily, that's just how our brains are wired. 100,000 years ago not listening to the elders in the tribe meant you'd probably die fairly quickly. Doesn't really apply anymore obviously. They need to be taught critical thinking skills and how to parse information in the modern age from childhood but they aren't. Some would argue that is by design. The lens through which we perceive the world is itself flawed and some people just don't want to hear that either. If Jesus appears in front of them then that's a miracle not a medical emergency (after all it is much more likely that you are suddenly hallucinating). e: quote:(Study 2). In fact, merely comprehending a false proposition increased the likelihood that subjects would later consider it true 
Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 18:55 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 17:43
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Maybe what we should do is just do what Goebbels said and repeat something louder and more often, except instead it'd be the truth that we're repeating, rather than lies.
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May 14, 2019 19:22
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DrSunshine posted:Maybe what we should do is just do what Goebbels said and repeat something louder and more often, except instead it'd be the truth that we're repeating, rather than lies. Maybe so! Or maybe work on shorter "sound bites" to use in opposition rather than trying to debate every minor point in front of an audience that isn't going to care so much about the details. I will say that it takes just a moment to say something false that might take 10-20 minutes to unpack and explain. Kind of a losing battle in that context. Just look at Trump - by the time you've finished explaining why what he said was wrong he's moved on to 5-6 more wrong points down the line.
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May 14, 2019 19:32
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DrSunshine posted:Maybe what we should do is just do what Goebbels said and repeat something louder and more often, except instead it'd be the truth that we're repeating, rather than lies. The same people that would decry a concerted and coherent leftist messaging policy, love fox news. The war for hearts and minds already exists and its an exercise for the reader where you draw the line about what tactics are acceptable.
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May 14, 2019 19:36
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DrSunshine posted:Maybe what we should do is just do what Goebbels said and repeat something louder and more often, except instead it'd be the truth that we're repeating, rather than lies. Yeah, but you don't have to cite Goebbels. Repeating information is important to behavioral and cognitive therapy. Politicians stay on message because that works. Advertisers pay for product placement and mentions because information saturation boosts sales. Take the prevalence of tobacco use. It has mainly been a tug of war, with use currently on the decline. Part, but not all, of that effect has come from a propaganda campaign against tobacco. But also understand that reducing misinformation does not necessarily lead to social improvements. Belief in human caused climate change is very high. But effective actions to try to change or mitigate that haven't followed.
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May 14, 2019 21:04
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OwlFancier posted:I think a lot of people rightly wonder "what's in it for them?" because they know on some level that people are loving them over, but for some reason they go to stuff like satanic plots to take over the world and captain planet villain levels of being just a pointless rear end in a top hat, rather than just that there's a bunch of people out there who would murder millions gladly if it got them a bit richer. Because they all secretly wish to BE the billionaires loving everyone over and they just KNOW they could become one of them if only the Jews/Freemasons/Muslims/gays/whatever weren't ruining everything.
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May 16, 2019 19:30
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DrSunshine posted:Misinformation and its cousin, disinformation, is everywhere nowadays. It knows no political boundaries. People, young, old, and middle-aged, left or right, are all as equally susceptible to coordinated campaigns of disinformation, and pernicious, dangerous rumors that spread on social media. As a public librarian in a fairly left-leaning area, I'm most often confronted by members of the public who are terribly misinformed about certain topics, to such a degree that it even affects the wellbeing of their lives and those of others around them. For example, there are people who are absolutely convinced that electromagnetic waves are harmful, that wifi smart meters cause disease, that vaccines cause autism, and that contrails are actually chemicals sprayed into the air by the government. I am often confronted with the dilemma of wanting to give someone information that is true, versus satisfying them by giving them what they want. This situation isn't entirely accidental. Facebook and Youtube and other companies were intentionally trying to create an addictive and totally immersive experience that would keep users on their platforms for as many minutes out of every hour as they could possibly manage. Putting a handful of more or less unregulated private monopolies in charge of the most powerful media apparatus in human history and telling them that literally their only social responsibility is to maximize shareholder value was, predictably, a recipe for disaster. While it wouldn't solve the problem, breaking up the big tech companies and abandoning the insane idea that corporations don't have any social responsibility would be a good start. Longer term, aiming to decrease people's feeling of alienation and powerlessness and massively investing in public education would probably mitigate the problem to some degree. One thing we definitely shouldn't do is use this moral panic as an excuse to prop up dying old media companies or to justify more centralized control of the media or of what narratives are deemed acceptable for public discourse. Which is why that's almost certainly what will happen, and why I think it's a mistake to over hype this narrative about "disinformation", which has actually been a problem for a long time and which isn't some scary new phenomenon that only appeared after the internet.
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May 16, 2019 23:06
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"Skepticism" is also often based in ego; when people feel weak (which often happens when they aren't doing well in life, often, in this case, partially due to less general education), they latch on to conspiracies and things that aren't held by the mainstream just to feel superior to the masses who are doing otherwise better. It's kind of akin to gatekeeping. Gatekeepers of things normally never know the real depths of what they are gatekeeping (or they wouldn't do it), but do it only to feel elitist about things. People that go for every easily disproved conspiracy in the books are partaking in a cousin to that mentality, but don't actively *realize* why they are doing what they do.
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May 17, 2019 00:15
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There’s a always this approach:
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May 17, 2019 00:54
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Except insofar as their beliefs affect public health (antivaxxers mostly) there's no real need to do anything. You can't stop people from believing in stupid poo poo.
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May 17, 2019 03:57
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If we fight false information online we inevitably censor the internet. It’s a catch-22 really, I think it’s a battle not worth fighting unless we eventually just pull the plug on the internet in the next x years.
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Jun 2, 2019 13:50
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At the risk of going off on a tangent I'd like to say that pro-vaxxers sicken me. Always acting high and mighty and coming down on non-vaxxers as though they're guests on a Jerry Springer show whose tagline is 'are scum bringing down the decorum of health in this country?', yet their commitment to vaccination is always trivial. How many people who are pro-vaccination retake vaccines they've already had to boost their immunity to superimmune levels? How often do they scout ebay for vaccines from the developing world? Fact: I have superimmunity against 119 viruses and umpteen diseases, most of which are exotic. Do I get a cookie? Do I get some say in the matter? Because if I do then allow me to go on the record as a real vaccine head with you, the pro-vaxxer, an occasional juicer in comparison. Yet I don't complain that you don't have the same vaccinations as I do because I respect your personal choice not to have superimmunity, despite the danger your laxity poses to my descendants. Here's an anecdote about pro-vaxxers that basically explains their whole attitude: There once was a guy whose son had red marks all over his body. Parents in this guy's community tutted and glared at him in the street for not giving his child the measles vaccine, and they would mutter that his son is a virus incubator. It got so bad, the guy broke down and weeped while these pro-vaxxers said things like, "good, you should cry, vaccines are serious business, you should go to jail". The guy then explains that his boy doesn't even have chicken-pox, let alone measles, because he's completely virus immune. Those red marks were needle marks from 151 separate vaccinations taken on the same day guaranteeing him a healthy future. If the boy had actually had chicken-pox, they might have been in the right, but the truth was that he was the biggest vaxxer out of everyone yet didn't feel he had to show it. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 2, 2019 16:10
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Deep Thought posted:At the risk of going off on a tangent I'd like to say that pro-vaxxers sicken me. Always acting high and mighty and coming down on non-vaxxers as though they're guests on a Jerry Springer show whose tagline is 'are scum bringing down the decorum of health in this country?', yet their commitment to vaccination is always trivial. How many people who are pro-vaccination retake vaccines they've already had to boost their immunity to superimmune levels? How often do they scout ebay for vaccines from the developing world? Fact: I have superimmunity against 119 viruses and umpteen diseases, most of which are exotic. Do I get a cookie? Do I get some say in the matter? Because if I do then allow me to go on the record as a real vaccine head with you, the pro-vaxxer, an occasional juicer in comparison. Yet I don't complain that you don't have the same vaccinations as I do because I respect your personal choice not to have superimmunity, despite the danger your laxity poses to my descendants.
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Jun 2, 2019 17:34
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Here's the sad truth. We cant. Misinformation is here to stay, and it is only going to get worse the longer we live. Technology and the internet have ensured that. The best case scenario is that we all tune out and dont let the misinformation affect our voting, but the more likely scenario is that only the young tune out, and the old continue to drive us all off a loving cliff. Sorry for being a loving downer.
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Jun 2, 2019 17:37
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Also superimmunity isn't even a real thing in human health outside of marketing speak, you massive idiot
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Jun 2, 2019 17:40
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Misinformation has always existed, but now it just comes from multiple sources, so that people who listen to one form of misinformation (like the mainstream media that lies to support US wars, etc) are capable of recognizing the misinformation they don't participate in. In the past when the only sources of information were traditional television/print, that misinformation wasn't really viewed as misinformation because almost everyone believed it and trusted it. Now you have new sources of misinformation popping up (through the internet, or strongly partisan TV news), and people who aren't part of their target audience are capable of recognizing that because it's not from a source they trust or identify with (but these same people usually aren't capable of recognizing lies or distortions that come from, say, WaPo).
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Jun 2, 2019 18:31
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Darko posted:"Skepticism" is also often based in ego; when people feel weak (which often happens when they aren't doing well in life, often, in this case, partially due to less general education), they latch on to conspiracies and things that aren't held by the mainstream just to feel superior to the masses who are doing otherwise better. What is "gatekeeping" in the context you are using it?
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Jun 2, 2019 20:16
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loving cool, now the anti-vaxxers are trying to claim that sunscreen actually causes cancer rather than spending time out in the sun.
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Jun 23, 2019 16:40
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I saw some Texas representative calling vaccines 'sorcery' and full on using the " quotes around "science" as if it is just some other religion trying to take over Christendom or something. These dudes are fully anti-intellectual and proud of it. The whole world is just a test of their faith.
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Jun 23, 2019 17:42
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We vote for donald trump
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Jun 23, 2019 22:49
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Deep Thought posted:At the risk of going off on a tangent I'd like to say that pro-vaxxers sicken me. Always acting high and mighty and coming down on non-vaxxers as though they're guests on a Jerry Springer show whose tagline is 'are scum bringing down the decorum of health in this country?', yet their commitment to vaccination is always trivial. How many people who are pro-vaccination retake vaccines they've already had to boost their immunity to superimmune levels? How often do they scout ebay for vaccines from the developing world? Fact: I have superimmunity against 119 viruses and umpteen diseases, most of which are exotic. Do I get a cookie? Do I get some say in the matter? Because if I do then allow me to go on the record as a real vaccine head with you, the pro-vaxxer, an occasional juicer in comparison. Yet I don't complain that you don't have the same vaccinations as I do because I respect your personal choice not to have superimmunity, despite the danger your laxity poses to my descendants. I thought this was a new exotic case of vaccine decorum pharisee, but it has to be a deep cover anti-vaxxer trying to discredit vaccines by making their supporters sound insane. The vaccine story sounds like a repurposed "the cure is worse than the disease" narrative, and who uses the term pro-vaxxer? This post was more fun before I thought about it.
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Jun 24, 2019 01:22
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Ragnar34 posted:I thought this was a new exotic case of vaccine decorum pharisee, but it has to be a deep cover anti-vaxxer trying to discredit vaccines by making their supporters sound insane. The vaccine story sounds like a repurposed "the cure is worse than the disease" narrative, and who uses the term pro-vaxxer? This post was more fun before I thought about it. Vaccine Provacateur
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Jun 24, 2019 02:32
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Moridin920 posted:It's the case. yeah, i wasnt doubting this. that everyone is susceptible to misinformation doesn't mean that everyone is equally susceptible. i dont think i intend to use this to support a specific argument, im just not sure i agree that all age groups are equal in this regard
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Jun 24, 2019 09:13
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Yea, forum that spent more than a year fretting about Cuba's sonic brain melter beams, how do we prevent dangerous misinformation from spreading to ignorant rubes?
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Jun 24, 2019 11:14
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Verviticus posted:are people of every age group equally susceptible? i feel like at least intuitively, thats not the case If propaganda didn't work so well nobody would do it.
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Jun 24, 2019 13:43
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Woozy posted:Yea, forum that spent more than a year fretting about Cuba's sonic brain melter beams, how do we prevent dangerous misinformation from spreading to ignorant rubes? Well, I wasn't worried about them.  At any rate, I would not consider the rumors about it being sonic / electromagnetic superweapons to be dangerous misinformation per se. I would classify misinformation as dangerous if it causes people to behave in ways that are dangerous either to themselves or others. For example, the Rohingya massacres in Myanmar are being caused by dangerous misinformation spreading online on Facebook about the what that Muslim minority group is doing. And the measles epidemic is being caused by dangerous misinformation about vaccines. The more I think about it, the more I feel that we need to somehow contain these types of memes, because of the risks they pose to society. It's okay to be skeptical, but when people begin to doubt the very processes underlying what creates knowledge in the first place, such as the scientific process, or to doubt all experts and people in positions of expertise or authority, it opens up society to disarray. Democracy can't function if there is no consensus on what constitutes reality. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jun 24, 2019 |
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Jun 24, 2019 14:10
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DrSunshine posted:Well, I wasn't worried about them. You know the US used those “attacks” as an excuse to reserve the gains that has occurred in Cuban-US right? Btw, this whole thread is and will be “how to stop the spread of misinformation...from people I don’t like.”
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Jun 24, 2019 14:27
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Verviticus posted:are people of every age group equally susceptible? i feel like at least intuitively, thats not the case No, there's good data on this actually, the elderly are more susceptible to deception; the parts of the brain that catch suspicious activity deteriorate with age. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/aging-brains-become-less-able-to-detect-fraud.html quote:Spreng and his co-authors found that as we get older, changes to the brain occur in regions that help us decide whether or not to trust someone, leaving us less likely to notice deceit. Past that, the answer is we rebuild trust in public institutions. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Jun 24, 2019 |
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Jun 24, 2019 14:33
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Ardennes posted:You know the US used those “attacks” as an excuse to reserve the gains that has occurred in Cuban-US right? It's funny to recall how until recently western media portrayed the internet as a sort of unstoppable social contagion that would bring American culture and free speech to every oppressed corner of the globe, undermining every dictator and backward regressive cultural conservative in the process, and ensuring the ultimate triumph of democracy and free speech. The mainstream American liberal attitude toward the internet changed so quickly it's enough to give you whiplash.
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Jun 24, 2019 14:35
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Wait till the 2020 election and the Deepfakes that spawns. I hope you're ready to hear your chud associates ask how you can support the Democratic candidate when there's video of them saying they are the resurrection of Joe Stalin. When you point out the actual video of Trump saying something disgusting? "That's just a Deepfake."
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Jun 24, 2019 14:38
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Ardennes posted:You know the US used those “attacks” as an excuse to reserve the gains that has occurred in Cuban-US right? I'm not quite sure if I understand what you mean by "reserve the gains", and no, I wasn't aware of what the US has used the supposed sonic attacks to do. I've definitely read and followed the stories about the sonic attacks, but I was more curious about the mystery of what happened (I'm a big X-Files fan) than anything else. quote:Btw, this whole thread is and will be “how to stop the spread of misinformation...from people I don’t like.” Well, you'd agree that misinformation spread on the right has definitely led to actual violence, right? Pizzagate comes to mind, though fortunately no one was killed in that. Countering far-right extremism is a good, overall, I think we'd all agree.
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Jun 24, 2019 14:47
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