4 ms·
Nutrition labels treat the symptom, not the cause. IMO the root cause is a neglected and underfunded education system, that does not adequately prepare people
by ruytlm 9y ago
Nutrition labels treat the symptom, not the cause.
IMO the root cause is a neglected and underfunded education system, that does not adequately prepare people for the levels of psychological manipulation the will experience in the form of marketing.
Sure, a nutrition label might help, but it's kind of passing the buck - "We don't need to fix our education system, people just need to be able to count to five so they know how many truth stars this article has, then they can make up their own mind!"
- sova 9y agoThink of grandma, man. Make life easy for grandma.
- silverbax88 9y agoI get what you are saying, but remember that the big, evil, powerful people in the world who are manipulating this system are mostly grandparents or old enough to be grandparents. I'm pretty sure it's not specific to age, but cognitive education.
- bllguo 9y agoYes.. even if you figure out a perpetually unbiased system to do the fact-checking and labeling, uneducated people will still be manipulated into distrusting the labels. Fact checking organizations already exist and people still think Fox is a beacon of truth.
- btilly 9y agoA major target of a lot of these efforts are white men over 40. If your prescription is a better education system, it will take years before it starts making a difference.
- kbenson 9y agoIt's not at an article level, it's at an institution level. If an institution is known to publish misleading article with half-truths or non-truths, a rating which indicates that (and links to a list with examples) would be beneficial. Institutions that want to be seen as credible will strive to be accurate and fix any mistakes. There are definitely problems with this, but the idea that we just need to fix our education system seems like just as much of a cop-out to me. The problem is hard, it plays into human cultural and cognitive pitfalls, and affects smart, well educated people too. It's not just a matter of education.
- peterlk 9y agoI disagree that education is a cop-out. Telling people what is credible and what is not is part if the mess that we're in now. If I can stand up a fancy looking "news" site, write my opinion as fact, and have people believe me, that is a problem of our education system. That principle of freedom of information is what the internet is built on. A large number of retweets does not make something factual.
- kbenson 9y agoIt's not about telling people what's credible and what's not, it's about telling them who has been caught being factually incorrect more than others, linking to additional info, and letting people use that to help them make their own choices. A centralized authority is less likely to be partisan, and whatever shortcomings it has will be widely publicized. Think of it like a credit bureau or a sock/bond ratings company, but without some of the perverse incentives that apply there, and kept from getting too partisan by government oversight. We investigate and prosecute people that commit fraud. I don't see why we can't at least note where news agencies are failing in a way that's harmful to the populace. It's not perfect, and it may fail, but it might also give us another useful tool to signal the quality of an information source.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- crazy1van 9y agoEducation might be the root cause and it might be neglected but in the US it certainly isn't underfunded. Source: http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb-bush/does-united-states-spend-more-student-most-countri/ http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoSometimes I wonder if not preparing students for psychological manipulation is actually a feature and not a bug of the educational system.