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The problem I see with tech like this is that it muddies the water for everyone. I find it very strange that technologies like the internet appear to have creat

by jcfrei 9y ago

The problem I see with tech like this is that it muddies the water for everyone. I find it very strange that technologies like the internet appear to have created a world with more ambiguity and less transparency than we've had before - mostly because people now can find support for any kind of belief online. Some people are either willing to learn or have learned how to get information from reputation based systems and some will just go rogue and create their own reality. I hope democracy survives this shift: Because not only will we have to discuss the facts, now we will also have to discuss: What are the facts?

toAnswerIt 9y ago
I think this is a fallacy. the olden days were way worse. to put in presepective Carrots improving vision is propaganda created by the british yet see how many people believed it. Humans inventing and accepting fake beliefs to comfort themselves was never a new thing. Governments gaslighting its own citizens is communist party 101. People always want to believe that yesterday was better and blame their problems on the new.
- gaius 9y ago
  Carrots improving vision is propaganda created by the british yet see how many people believed it. Not exactly propaganda, more misdirection, maskirovka our Russian comrades call it
vertex-four 9y ago
We've always had to discuss what the facts are - the extreme bias between newspapers and TV channels picking and choosing facts to provide to their users, even on the same news stories - news source A chooses not to provide background info, news source B chooses to provide background info from one primary source only, news source C chooses to provide background info from another source, news source D chooses to provide a general overview but with a slight bent towards assuming that its readers hold values X, Y and Z, etc etc. You can go back and read stories from the 1950s which have these issues and more. There has never been a time where all individuals involved in a democracy have understood all the facts. Popular politics has always been driven by newspapers and special interest groups. In my country, implementation of a certain policy has very clear correlation with a marked increase in suicide rates - the slow rollout of this specific policy across areas of the country provides an easy way to show this. Certain newspapers refuse to report on this - it doesn't match their ideology - after all, when pointed out, people holding this ideology will often point out that suicide is one's own decision and it's not the Government's problem.
- chillingeffect 9y ago
  >We've always had to discuss what the facts are - the extreme bias between newspapers That's an assertion, but others say otherwise. According to this video below, Americans have argued values in the past, but agreed on the facts. E.g. global warming. People agreed it was happening, but differed in what and whether to do about it. Today, we dispute its very factuality. https://youtu.be/XirnEfkdQJM https://youtu.be/XirnEfkdQJM
  - EGreg 9y ago
    That video of the past was faked. And the experts you cite that say it is real are in on it. It's the Establishment trying to suppress the truth. That's what they say today. With more technology, the underdog with AI can beat the Establishment in a few weeks. And there will not be any way to distinguish what's true anymore than you can distinguish a chess line played by AlphaGo vs any other really good chess line.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  You just set your credibility on fire with the phrase "the extreme bias between newspapers and TV channels picking and choosing facts". What you are describing is literally the opposite of how objective journalism is performed. That you believe this is how professional newsrooms function indicates you haven't worked in the industry.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    That you and vertex-four disagree not only on the facts, but on the nature of facts indicates that perhaps his point has some merit. ;-) FWIW, I've been that primary source for some major news stories, and the final story usually bears just a passing resemblance to reality as I experienced it. Assuming good faith on the part of the reporter, I have to assume that reality as I experienced it bears only a passing resemblance to reality as other primary sources experience it, which is congruent with other known facts like the difficulty of communication, the existence of cognitive biases, and the field of psychology. Objectivity is a myth; it's oftentimes a useful myth, but it's worth remembering that the reporter has his own biases and preconceptions as well, and as the person choosing what to report upon, these will necessarily make it into the final piece. The audience has their own biases as well, so they won't be reading exactly the same piece that the reporter wrote.
dredmorbius 9y ago
This is another means by which advance comms and info capabilities undermine social trust. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...
CM30 9y ago
I wouldn't say it's much of a shift as much as an arms race between hoaxers and investigators. In the olden days you certainly had less ways to fake footage (no image editing or digital forms of manipulation), but at the same time it was also much easier to trick people into believing falsehoods. I mean, look at the older stuff on the Museum of Hoaxes. It'd be shot down in minutes in 2017, since it's obvious the people involved did very little work to back up their claims. You could literally walk into a town where a famous guy's son when missing ten years ago and pretend you're him with no one any the wiser for months. Despite not looking anything like the missing guy and knowing very little about his life. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case Or pretend to be a missing Russian princess/foreign visitor/royal with no one being any the wiser. Or lie in newspapers about how Astronomers found a society of advanced humanoids on the Moon. Either way, while there were few ways to falsify information to the same quality as can be done now, it was made up for by how easy it was to trick people in a world without the internet, a decent press/journalists or easily hidden cameras. As history went on, obviously the amount of ways that you could falsify evidence increased, as did the convincingness of the trickery. However, at the same it also became much easier to debunk false claims too, so the quality of the fakers had to get better if they wanted to stand a chance of fooling anyone. Hence the arms race. The better technology gets at letting people forge evidence, the better it also gets at letting people debunk fakes.
- riffraff 9y ago
  Just as food for thought, being able to lie or con people is also not necessarily a bad thing: Giorgio Perlasca was able to save more than 5000 Jews from deportation by posing as the Spanish consul in Nazi-occupied Budapest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Perlasca https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Perlasca
  - CM30 9y ago
    That too. Lying isn't necessarily evil, and the fact it's possible has averted a lot of tragedies as well as caused others.
Veen 9y ago
> I find it very strange that technologies like the internet appear to have created a world with more ambiguity and less transparency than we've had before Any technology created by humans will be a mirror of human shortcomings. Techo-utopians believe that technology will make humanity somehow better. It won't. We'll just use it to do the same terrible shit we've been doing since the dawn of time.

by jcfrei 9y ago

toAnswerIt 9y ago

I think this is a fallacy. the olden days were way worse. to put in presepective Carrots improving vision is propaganda created by the british yet see how many people believed it. Humans inventing and accepting fake beliefs to comfort themselves was never a new thing. Governments gaslighting its own citizens is communist party 101. People always want to believe that yesterday was better and blame their problems on the new.

gaius 9y ago
Carrots improving vision is propaganda created by the british yet see how many people believed it. Not exactly propaganda, more misdirection, maskirovka our Russian comrades call it

vertex-four 9y ago

We've always had to discuss what the facts are - the extreme bias between newspapers and TV channels picking and choosing facts to provide to their users, even on the same news stories - news source A chooses not to provide background info, news source B chooses to provide background info from one primary source only, news source C chooses to provide background info from another source, news source D chooses to provide a general overview but with a slight bent towards assuming that its readers hold values X, Y and Z, etc etc. You can go back and read stories from the 1950s which have these issues and more. There has never been a time where all individuals involved in a democracy have understood all the facts. Popular politics has always been driven by newspapers and special interest groups. In my country, implementation of a certain policy has very clear correlation with a marked increase in suicide rates - the slow rollout of this specific policy across areas of the country provides an easy way to show this. Certain newspapers refuse to report on this - it doesn't match their ideology - after all, when pointed out, people holding this ideology will often point out that suicide is one's own decision and it's not the Government's problem.

chillingeffect 9y ago
>We've always had to discuss what the facts are - the extreme bias between newspapers That's an assertion, but others say otherwise. According to this video below, Americans have argued values in the past, but agreed on the facts. E.g. global warming. People agreed it was happening, but differed in what and whether to do about it. Today, we dispute its very factuality. https://youtu.be/XirnEfkdQJM https://youtu.be/XirnEfkdQJM
- EGreg 9y ago
  That video of the past was faked. And the experts you cite that say it is real are in on it. It's the Establishment trying to suppress the truth. That's what they say today. With more technology, the underdog with AI can beat the Establishment in a few weeks. And there will not be any way to distinguish what's true anymore than you can distinguish a chess line played by AlphaGo vs any other really good chess line.
knieveltech 9y ago
You just set your credibility on fire with the phrase "the extreme bias between newspapers and TV channels picking and choosing facts". What you are describing is literally the opposite of how objective journalism is performed. That you believe this is how professional newsrooms function indicates you haven't worked in the industry.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  That you and vertex-four disagree not only on the facts, but on the nature of facts indicates that perhaps his point has some merit. ;-) FWIW, I've been that primary source for some major news stories, and the final story usually bears just a passing resemblance to reality as I experienced it. Assuming good faith on the part of the reporter, I have to assume that reality as I experienced it bears only a passing resemblance to reality as other primary sources experience it, which is congruent with other known facts like the difficulty of communication, the existence of cognitive biases, and the field of psychology. Objectivity is a myth; it's oftentimes a useful myth, but it's worth remembering that the reporter has his own biases and preconceptions as well, and as the person choosing what to report upon, these will necessarily make it into the final piece. The audience has their own biases as well, so they won't be reading exactly the same piece that the reporter wrote.

dredmorbius 9y ago

This is another means by which advance comms and info capabilities undermine social trust. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...

CM30 9y ago

I wouldn't say it's much of a shift as much as an arms race between hoaxers and investigators. In the olden days you certainly had less ways to fake footage (no image editing or digital forms of manipulation), but at the same time it was also much easier to trick people into believing falsehoods. I mean, look at the older stuff on the Museum of Hoaxes. It'd be shot down in minutes in 2017, since it's obvious the people involved did very little work to back up their claims. You could literally walk into a town where a famous guy's son when missing ten years ago and pretend you're him with no one any the wiser for months. Despite not looking anything like the missing guy and knowing very little about his life. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case Or pretend to be a missing Russian princess/foreign visitor/royal with no one being any the wiser. Or lie in newspapers about how Astronomers found a society of advanced humanoids on the Moon. Either way, while there were few ways to falsify information to the same quality as can be done now, it was made up for by how easy it was to trick people in a world without the internet, a decent press/journalists or easily hidden cameras. As history went on, obviously the amount of ways that you could falsify evidence increased, as did the convincingness of the trickery. However, at the same it also became much easier to debunk false claims too, so the quality of the fakers had to get better if they wanted to stand a chance of fooling anyone. Hence the arms race. The better technology gets at letting people forge evidence, the better it also gets at letting people debunk fakes.

riffraff 9y ago
Just as food for thought, being able to lie or con people is also not necessarily a bad thing: Giorgio Perlasca was able to save more than 5000 Jews from deportation by posing as the Spanish consul in Nazi-occupied Budapest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Perlasca https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Perlasca
- CM30 9y ago
  That too. Lying isn't necessarily evil, and the fact it's possible has averted a lot of tragedies as well as caused others.

Veen 9y ago

> I find it very strange that technologies like the internet appear to have created a world with more ambiguity and less transparency than we've had before Any technology created by humans will be a mirror of human shortcomings. Techo-utopians believe that technology will make humanity somehow better. It won't. We'll just use it to do the same terrible shit we've been doing since the dawn of time.