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The issue with suspension of disbelief is that while smart people do it, weaker minds on the left hand of the bell curve just internalize the notion that the fi

The issue with suspension of disbelief is that while smart people do it, weaker minds on the left hand of the bell curve just internalize the notion that the fiction they're watching is an accurate reflection of life. So when the movies and television shows portray mad geniuses who threaten to destroy life as we know it, it covers up the sad reality, which is severe schizophrenics are only a challenge to our sense of decency, and little else.

__jal 10y ago
Citation needed. I don't think it is anywhere nearly so simple as "dumb people believe fiction is real." There is a complicated interplay between lived experience, class, personality, education, desires and other priors driving how people process both fiction and nonfiction. Or as a brief counterfactual, sure is nice how the murder rate has dropped now that we've banned violent video games, amirite?
- int_19h 10y ago
  It's not because people are dumb. It's because they trust the blue screen - because, well, why wouldn't they? They don't know how it actually works. And it is a real problem wrt applying such acquired "knowledge" to the real world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect is a well-documented instance, and there are numerous reports by lawyers of juries making unreasonable assumptions (e.g. about the accuracy of DNA matches), or giving undue weight to "expert" evidence like bite mark analysis (which is fraudulent pseudoscience: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/07/white-house-science-council-bite-mark-matching-is-junk-science/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/07/...). All this stuff has effect on outcomes of real world criminal cases, sometimes literally with people's lives at stake. As Cory points out in this piece, the same is true for information security. It all ultimately translates to a very skewed public picture of what the threats are and how they can be mitigated, and that, in turn, affects public policy and laws. That is a real problem.
  - __jal 10y ago
    Honestly, I think we are saying something at least similar, but in the case of intersection with the legal system, I thin there's something else going on. Apologies, but I'm running with a tangent. Bite mark analysis is a great example. It isn't just that CSI: Market Segmentation Unit convinces people science can do something it can't. The legal world (outside of some lonely voices to which nobody listened until pretty recently) was telling juries it was valid. Defense attorneys might have taken the odd run at expert testimony in a particular case if it looked promising, but their job is to win particular cases, not take principled stands in general. Meanwhile, the rest of the attorneys in the room (people with reputations for being serious, whom you might expect to have carefully considered the value of different types of evidence, given their careers) were taking bite mark analysis seriously. What, exactly, is a juror in that situation to do? It is worth asking if the CSI effect is just a cultural feedback loop. Criminal law[1] has always wanted magic unassailable evidence. It just makes everything so much easier. Fiction sometimes still portrays fingerprint evidence as close to infallible, but who has spent generations treating it as such in the context it for which it matters most? So at the risk of sounding cynical, I'll note that doubts about bite marks, fiber analysis, and now even fingerprints are legally acceptable now that a new magic guilt-certifier is available. [1] I'm being somewhat flip with language. All of these topics are much more complicated than portrayed. Please take my broad generalities about legal topics in the spirit offered.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      But aren't prosecutors and lawyers really a part of the general public when it comes to forensics? They have an "expert" telling them that they have magic, and they have Hollywood telling them that this kind of magic exists (and, as you point out, they have a good incentive to believe in magic - but it's not just the lawyers, it's the jurors as well - it makes their life much easier, too!). But the same applies here! The general public wants to believe, for example, that if terrorists use encryption, some really smart guys from NSA or wherever can "hack" it somehow (but nobody else). Or at least that we could regulate encryption such that only the "hackable" varieties are available to terrorists. It makes them feel safer. And so you have 44% supporting legislation to mandate backdoors.

__jal 10y ago

Citation needed. I don't think it is anywhere nearly so simple as "dumb people believe fiction is real." There is a complicated interplay between lived experience, class, personality, education, desires and other priors driving how people process both fiction and nonfiction. Or as a brief counterfactual, sure is nice how the murder rate has dropped now that we've banned violent video games, amirite?

int_19h 10y ago
It's not because people are dumb. It's because they trust the blue screen - because, well, why wouldn't they? They don't know how it actually works. And it is a real problem wrt applying such acquired "knowledge" to the real world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect is a well-documented instance, and there are numerous reports by lawyers of juries making unreasonable assumptions (e.g. about the accuracy of DNA matches), or giving undue weight to "expert" evidence like bite mark analysis (which is fraudulent pseudoscience: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/07/white-house-science-council-bite-mark-matching-is-junk-science/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/07/...). All this stuff has effect on outcomes of real world criminal cases, sometimes literally with people's lives at stake. As Cory points out in this piece, the same is true for information security. It all ultimately translates to a very skewed public picture of what the threats are and how they can be mitigated, and that, in turn, affects public policy and laws. That is a real problem.
- __jal 10y ago
  Honestly, I think we are saying something at least similar, but in the case of intersection with the legal system, I thin there's something else going on. Apologies, but I'm running with a tangent. Bite mark analysis is a great example. It isn't just that CSI: Market Segmentation Unit convinces people science can do something it can't. The legal world (outside of some lonely voices to which nobody listened until pretty recently) was telling juries it was valid. Defense attorneys might have taken the odd run at expert testimony in a particular case if it looked promising, but their job is to win particular cases, not take principled stands in general. Meanwhile, the rest of the attorneys in the room (people with reputations for being serious, whom you might expect to have carefully considered the value of different types of evidence, given their careers) were taking bite mark analysis seriously. What, exactly, is a juror in that situation to do? It is worth asking if the CSI effect is just a cultural feedback loop. Criminal law[1] has always wanted magic unassailable evidence. It just makes everything so much easier. Fiction sometimes still portrays fingerprint evidence as close to infallible, but who has spent generations treating it as such in the context it for which it matters most? So at the risk of sounding cynical, I'll note that doubts about bite marks, fiber analysis, and now even fingerprints are legally acceptable now that a new magic guilt-certifier is available. [1] I'm being somewhat flip with language. All of these topics are much more complicated than portrayed. Please take my broad generalities about legal topics in the spirit offered.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    But aren't prosecutors and lawyers really a part of the general public when it comes to forensics? They have an "expert" telling them that they have magic, and they have Hollywood telling them that this kind of magic exists (and, as you point out, they have a good incentive to believe in magic - but it's not just the lawyers, it's the jurors as well - it makes their life much easier, too!). But the same applies here! The general public wants to believe, for example, that if terrorists use encryption, some really smart guys from NSA or wherever can "hack" it somehow (but nobody else). Or at least that we could regulate encryption such that only the "hackable" varieties are available to terrorists. It makes them feel safer. And so you have 44% supporting legislation to mandate backdoors.