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There is going to be another Rwanda-scale genocide somewhere because of rumors on social media, eventually. Billions of people without the intellectual toolches

There is going to be another Rwanda-scale genocide somewhere because of rumors on social media, eventually. Billions of people without the intellectual toolchest to determine truth from falsehood, eventually it’s going to get out of control and a lot of people are going to get killed. One can argue it’s already happening to the Rohinga. I think we as a species need to make a serious effort to educate people in really basic critical thinking skills and teach people a healthy skepticism, and how to evaluate evidence and chains of reasoning. It’s counter to everything we’ve been teaching the masses up till now, which is to respect authority, because it’s easy to control them that way. Without centralized mass media, that’s no longer an option. Manufactured consent will no longer be available as a means to maintain stability in society, and we’ll have to figure out how to do it with everyone able to think and learn for themselves.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> There is going to be another Rwanda-scale genocide somewhere because of rumors on social media "A couple of hours outside Yangon, the country’s largest city, U Aye Swe, an administrator for Sin Ma Kaw village, said he was proud to oversee one of Myanmar’s 'Muslim-free' villages, which bar Muslims from spending the night, among other restrictions. 'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said. Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-ethnic-cleansing.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-rohing...
- dpflan 9y ago
  Thank you for sharing this excerpt. The subsequent text provides great detail about the information being shared and how it is swaying public opinion and how authorities are “educating” and “guiding” the public.
sopooneo 9y ago
I agree completely. However, I have a gut intuition that the best way to teach people "critical thinking" is a good, old fashioned, broad eduction in the arts and sciences. Math, Literature, Composition, Philosophy, Art, Physics, History, etc. We might not need to do anything new. Just do the old things well.
konschubert 9y ago
> I think we as a species need to make a serious effort to educate people in really basic critical thinking skills and teach people a healthy skepticism, and how to evaluate evidence and chains of reasoning. So, better education. Stop using education as a way to cement classes. Make sure every child goes to school. Pay teachers well. Involve the academic elite in the governance of the education system.
danmaz74 9y ago
Be careful what you wish for. Skepticism about official experts/science/the government is helping fake news a lot, eg here in Italy.
- gaius 9y ago
  Skepticism about official experts/science/the government They did kind of bring this on themselves, too much “fake news” of their own. A scientist doesn’t know any more about politics than you or I, an economist knows even less. People should be wary about trying to transfer credibility from one domain to an unrelated one.
- empath75 9y ago
  'healthy skepticism' My point was that teaching people to just trust what they read has lead them astray. They used to trust the 'mass media' who largely hewed to the 'the establishment' line. Now that the mass media isn't the only source of information for most people, they'll believe basically any nonsense. People should be skeptical of the establishment media. They should be skeptical of everything. What you need to teach people is how to properly apply skepticism to figure out what might or might not actually be true, and why.
api 9y ago
Wasn't the Rwandan genocide pushed through talk radio?
- empath75 9y ago
  Yep. And the next one will happen because of facebook or whatsapp or twitter.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
xoa 9y ago
>It’s counter to everything we’ve been teaching the masses up till now, which is to respect authority, because it’s easy to control them that way. Wait, what? I see this sort of opinion expressed a lot here and similar places, but it seems to be entirely the opposite of actual reality, at least in the USA. There has actually been a precipitous drop in respect for experts and authority, and the general teaching has been more towards "trusting one's own feelings" and "everyone's opinion is valuable" and other such "self empowerment". There are remaining reservoirs of trust amongst the public for certain classes of experts, but even then it's common that the public doesn't actually understand what the opinion of those experts is (ie., global warming denialists amongst the public may genuinely think scientific opinion is divided). In modern society what I think what might be strongly helpful for every citizen beyond a base level of knowledge (like probability and statistics, economics and political theory) and their own specific area of expertise is not general "skepticism" so much as more training in thinking about how to evaluate what authorities are trustworthy. It's impossible to move through a world where the total sum of human knowledge is going into or well into a J-curve without extensive use Argument From Authority, which remember is not a logical fallacy so much as the weakest but also most scalable form of argument. Any tech person should be very familiar with this because it's ubiquitous in our field, we have to depend on trust up and down the stack, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to test that. We use trees and webs of trust, sample verification, transparency, and so forth. That same sort of thinking though applies elsewhere. It's not about "control", respecting good authority is critically important. What's needed is to help people with techniques to figure out what is a "good authority", how to continually reevaluate that as necessary, and how to hold authority to account and how to swap out mistaken or degraded choices with superior ones.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> There is going to be another Rwanda-scale genocide somewhere because of rumors on social media "A couple of hours outside Yangon, the country’s largest city, U Aye Swe, an administrator for Sin Ma Kaw village, said he was proud to oversee one of Myanmar’s 'Muslim-free' villages, which bar Muslims from spending the night, among other restrictions. 'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said. Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-ethnic-cleansing.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-rohing...

dpflan 9y ago
Thank you for sharing this excerpt. The subsequent text provides great detail about the information being shared and how it is swaying public opinion and how authorities are “educating” and “guiding” the public.

sopooneo 9y ago

I agree completely. However, I have a gut intuition that the best way to teach people "critical thinking" is a good, old fashioned, broad eduction in the arts and sciences. Math, Literature, Composition, Philosophy, Art, Physics, History, etc. We might not need to do anything new. Just do the old things well.

konschubert 9y ago

> I think we as a species need to make a serious effort to educate people in really basic critical thinking skills and teach people a healthy skepticism, and how to evaluate evidence and chains of reasoning. So, better education. Stop using education as a way to cement classes. Make sure every child goes to school. Pay teachers well. Involve the academic elite in the governance of the education system.

danmaz74 9y ago

Be careful what you wish for. Skepticism about official experts/science/the government is helping fake news a lot, eg here in Italy.

gaius 9y ago
Skepticism about official experts/science/the government They did kind of bring this on themselves, too much “fake news” of their own. A scientist doesn’t know any more about politics than you or I, an economist knows even less. People should be wary about trying to transfer credibility from one domain to an unrelated one.
empath75 9y ago
'healthy skepticism' My point was that teaching people to just trust what they read has lead them astray. They used to trust the 'mass media' who largely hewed to the 'the establishment' line. Now that the mass media isn't the only source of information for most people, they'll believe basically any nonsense. People should be skeptical of the establishment media. They should be skeptical of everything. What you need to teach people is how to properly apply skepticism to figure out what might or might not actually be true, and why.

api 9y ago

Wasn't the Rwandan genocide pushed through talk radio?

empath75 9y ago
Yep. And the next one will happen because of facebook or whatsapp or twitter.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

xoa 9y ago

>It’s counter to everything we’ve been teaching the masses up till now, which is to respect authority, because it’s easy to control them that way. Wait, what? I see this sort of opinion expressed a lot here and similar places, but it seems to be entirely the opposite of actual reality, at least in the USA. There has actually been a precipitous drop in respect for experts and authority, and the general teaching has been more towards "trusting one's own feelings" and "everyone's opinion is valuable" and other such "self empowerment". There are remaining reservoirs of trust amongst the public for certain classes of experts, but even then it's common that the public doesn't actually understand what the opinion of those experts is (ie., global warming denialists amongst the public may genuinely think scientific opinion is divided). In modern society what I think what might be strongly helpful for every citizen beyond a base level of knowledge (like probability and statistics, economics and political theory) and their own specific area of expertise is not general "skepticism" so much as more training in thinking about how to evaluate what authorities are trustworthy. It's impossible to move through a world where the total sum of human knowledge is going into or well into a J-curve without extensive use Argument From Authority, which remember is not a logical fallacy so much as the weakest but also most scalable form of argument. Any tech person should be very familiar with this because it's ubiquitous in our field, we have to depend on trust up and down the stack, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to test that. We use trees and webs of trust, sample verification, transparency, and so forth. That same sort of thinking though applies elsewhere. It's not about "control", respecting good authority is critically important. What's needed is to help people with techniques to figure out what is a "good authority", how to continually reevaluate that as necessary, and how to hold authority to account and how to swap out mistaken or degraded choices with superior ones.