4 ms·

I really take issue with these kinds of articles. Misinformation, fake news, propaganda all pretty much the same thing and they've all been around for a long t

by kneel 10y ago

I really take issue with these kinds of articles. Misinformation, fake news, propaganda all pretty much the same thing and they've all been around for a long time. Our media is a reflection of who we are. Confused, misled, naive and easily persuaded. Suspension of disbelief happens to even the smartest cookies, no one escapes. Until a automatic reliable semantic fact checker comes along with 99% accuracy we're all in this swirling pile of garbage together.

singingfish 10y ago
bah, you're right it's been going on for a long time. I would imagine the rate of information delivery (or even the potential rate), which for much of the population has increased exponentially in recent years along with the increased ability to form clusters at a greater rate might have an effect on this. It's an interesting research question not worthy of instant dismissal ;P
csydas 10y ago
I think the largest difference is just the volume of readily available information to support just about any point you want to make. The power of authoritative sources has eroded greatly as the increased access to information means you can argue about any point you wish and odds are there will be something online that supports your point of view - the reliability of said source of course will vary greatly, but that is irrelevant. Information access has improved and is now easier for people - this is wonderful. But this also comes with the fact that now we have far more information to process and more sources to keep discussions and arguments going far longer than they used to be. This isn't necessarily bad, but it also means that people are going to naturally be able to get more stubborn in the face of contrary evidence. News also has the ability to propagate far differently than it used to, and it has a much larger social stigma attached to it. Shares, likes, retweets, these are subtle but important influencers that news of the past didn't really have, and it's a lot easier to get someone to believe something if 20,000 other people seem to think it's kosher, especially if 20+ of those people are your close friends. I get what you're saying at it's core - this stuff has always existed, but our exposure to it, our ability to affirm our own beliefs and biases, and social pressure have basically shot up the fake news with meth and steroids to create a new type of monster to deal with. A piece of fake news only takes a few minutes to reach potentially millions of readers, while a properly researched response or answer takes much longer. When you have people used to responses and articles on a timeline of days or weeks, it's a bit easier to get that sort of properly researched response out. When people are used to a response in seconds or minutes, by the time you have a proper response ready, people have already moved on to the next scandal and have committed the previous news to memory as fact. it's the same material, but it's processed far differently than it used to be.
- slfnflctd 10y ago
  > When you have people used to responses and articles on a timeline of days or weeks Or minutes, or seconds...
  - csydas 10y ago
    The first time frame is how it used to be. The next sentence addresses what you're referring to, how it is now :p
charlesism 10y ago
> Until a automatic reliable semantic fact > checker comes along with 99% accuracy Maybe I'm being too "po-mo" about it, but I have doubts that "fake news" is a problem that has a "99% accurate" solution. Eg: This is a photo of a sleeping man. Are you 99% sure it's a man? Is there a 1% chance it might be a woman with masculine features? Could it be a cardboard cutout? Could it be digitally manipulated? Are you sure he's sleeping and not dead? Questions of "truth" are like "why" questions which fall apart as you peel back the onion.
- kneel 10y ago
  A semantic fact checker could work via the snopes model. Not sure that it would really focus on pictures of men/women but here's what I was thinking. You press a button and it analyzes all statements on the page, or maybe highlights subtitles in the case of video. text turns green: 'yes this is actually true' red text: 'no this is provably false' yellow: 'maybe depends on interpretation of a couple fuzzy words' black: 'no claims being made' It would be a good start to holding people accountable. Large blocks of yellow/red text would lead to mistrust. Information is coming at us too fast and we can't keep up but I see no reason why AI can't help. I understand I'm being a little hand wavey right now but I definitely think this is possible in the near future.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mseebach 10y ago
The vast majority of news (even knowledge in general) isn't centred around clearly delineated falsifiable facts. The Trump "biggest inauguration crowd ever, period" statement is an outlier, a far one, because it's so easily falsifiable. I enjoyed WaPos fact checking of the inauguration speech, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/20/fact-checking-president-trumps-inaugural-address/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/... What they do, for each statement, is opaquely deciding on a falsifiable interpretation of the statement, then proving it wrong. It's a devil-reading-the-bible thing (not that Trumps speeches really bear any comparison to the bible). They do not make a rigorous attempt to tease out all (or even most, or even more than one) reasonable interpretations of the statement, and figuring out which are more or less true. The first statement is illustrative. Trump said (abridged, see the link for the full quote) "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country". WaPo finds that growth in DC hasn't outpaced the rest of the country since 2006, and thus that there is no empirical evidence to Trumps statement. That's it. In the process of reaching this very clear conclusion, they do state that household income is one of the highest in the country (not offering any explanation for this observation) -- directly falsifying their own conclusion. There is, evidently, some empirical evidence of this. This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation -- it's not some crank blogging -- is epistemologically dubious to the extreme. Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.
- knz 10y ago
  > This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation... Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us. I'm torn on this. The truth, especially if it's from multiple sources, still matters. The challenge is to break through the partisan barrier and unfortunately I think that can only be done on a personal level. Personal credibility can break through partisanship far more effectively than any reposted article can.
  - mseebach 10y ago

by kneel 10y ago

singingfish 10y ago

bah, you're right it's been going on for a long time. I would imagine the rate of information delivery (or even the potential rate), which for much of the population has increased exponentially in recent years along with the increased ability to form clusters at a greater rate might have an effect on this. It's an interesting research question not worthy of instant dismissal ;P

csydas 10y ago

I think the largest difference is just the volume of readily available information to support just about any point you want to make. The power of authoritative sources has eroded greatly as the increased access to information means you can argue about any point you wish and odds are there will be something online that supports your point of view - the reliability of said source of course will vary greatly, but that is irrelevant. Information access has improved and is now easier for people - this is wonderful. But this also comes with the fact that now we have far more information to process and more sources to keep discussions and arguments going far longer than they used to be. This isn't necessarily bad, but it also means that people are going to naturally be able to get more stubborn in the face of contrary evidence. News also has the ability to propagate far differently than it used to, and it has a much larger social stigma attached to it. Shares, likes, retweets, these are subtle but important influencers that news of the past didn't really have, and it's a lot easier to get someone to believe something if 20,000 other people seem to think it's kosher, especially if 20+ of those people are your close friends. I get what you're saying at it's core - this stuff has always existed, but our exposure to it, our ability to affirm our own beliefs and biases, and social pressure have basically shot up the fake news with meth and steroids to create a new type of monster to deal with. A piece of fake news only takes a few minutes to reach potentially millions of readers, while a properly researched response or answer takes much longer. When you have people used to responses and articles on a timeline of days or weeks, it's a bit easier to get that sort of properly researched response out. When people are used to a response in seconds or minutes, by the time you have a proper response ready, people have already moved on to the next scandal and have committed the previous news to memory as fact. it's the same material, but it's processed far differently than it used to be.

slfnflctd 10y ago
> When you have people used to responses and articles on a timeline of days or weeks Or minutes, or seconds...
- csydas 10y ago
  The first time frame is how it used to be. The next sentence addresses what you're referring to, how it is now :p

charlesism 10y ago

> Until a automatic reliable semantic fact > checker comes along with 99% accuracy Maybe I'm being too "po-mo" about it, but I have doubts that "fake news" is a problem that has a "99% accurate" solution. Eg: This is a photo of a sleeping man. Are you 99% sure it's a man? Is there a 1% chance it might be a woman with masculine features? Could it be a cardboard cutout? Could it be digitally manipulated? Are you sure he's sleeping and not dead? Questions of "truth" are like "why" questions which fall apart as you peel back the onion.

kneel 10y ago
A semantic fact checker could work via the snopes model. Not sure that it would really focus on pictures of men/women but here's what I was thinking. You press a button and it analyzes all statements on the page, or maybe highlights subtitles in the case of video. text turns green: 'yes this is actually true' red text: 'no this is provably false' yellow: 'maybe depends on interpretation of a couple fuzzy words' black: 'no claims being made' It would be a good start to holding people accountable. Large blocks of yellow/red text would lead to mistrust. Information is coming at us too fast and we can't keep up but I see no reason why AI can't help. I understand I'm being a little hand wavey right now but I definitely think this is possible in the near future.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

mseebach 10y ago

The vast majority of news (even knowledge in general) isn't centred around clearly delineated falsifiable facts. The Trump "biggest inauguration crowd ever, period" statement is an outlier, a far one, because it's so easily falsifiable. I enjoyed WaPos fact checking of the inauguration speech, here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/20/fact-checking-president-trumps-inaugural-address/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/01/... What they do, for each statement, is opaquely deciding on a falsifiable interpretation of the statement, then proving it wrong. It's a devil-reading-the-bible thing (not that Trumps speeches really bear any comparison to the bible). They do not make a rigorous attempt to tease out all (or even most, or even more than one) reasonable interpretations of the statement, and figuring out which are more or less true. The first statement is illustrative. Trump said (abridged, see the link for the full quote) "Washington has gotten rich off the backs of the rest of the country". WaPo finds that growth in DC hasn't outpaced the rest of the country since 2006, and thus that there is no empirical evidence to Trumps statement. That's it. In the process of reaching this very clear conclusion, they do state that household income is one of the highest in the country (not offering any explanation for this observation) -- directly falsifying their own conclusion. There is, evidently, some empirical evidence of this. This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation -- it's not some crank blogging -- is epistemologically dubious to the extreme. Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us.

knz 10y ago
> This process, which is called fact checking, by one of the most esteemed newspapers in the nation... Trump may very well have a very dubious relationship with the truth, but I have no faith that "fact checking" is going to save us. I'm torn on this. The truth, especially if it's from multiple sources, still matters. The challenge is to break through the partisan barrier and unfortunately I think that can only be done on a personal level. Personal credibility can break through partisanship far more effectively than any reposted article can.
- mseebach 10y ago