10 ms·

Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News

117 points by richardhod 9y ago

IntronExon 9y ago
Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion. -Thornton Wilder That’s always seemed a bit cynical to me, but it seems to be more of an essentially realistic statement with every passing day.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  JFYI, Ambrose Bierce; Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
nlh 9y ago
This is not terribly surprising, but it’s nice to see some experimental confirmation. Here’s my question: Many will use this data to make themselves feel better (“See, I told you they were all idiots.”) How can this data be used to actually help the problem? Are there techniques that can be applied to help folks who lack high cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re being manipulated?
- SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
  > This is not terribly surprising, but it’s nice to see some experimental confirmation. Not really being serious here, but this made me chuckle a bit, on an article about fake news, etc. The sentence above literally reads like confirmation bias happening in real time, the way you phrased it. I'm not saying you are guilty of it here, the phrasing just jumped out at me - and is a good example of the kind of thought, that when we have it, ought to trigger our inner skeptic :P
- Null-Set 9y ago
  The article reccomends a PSA teaching the metacognitive skill of asking yourself why you believe something and if you know any reason it isn't true. It reminds me of the legendary Canadian House Hippo PSA. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE
  - trentmb 9y ago
    "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about stars to dispute it." Is usually my issue.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  > Are there techniques that can be applied to help folks who lack high cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re being manipulated? Or to help ourselves see that? I think it would be a mistake if everyone who read this assumed it was simply a problem with the other side (“See, I told you they were all idiots”). Nate Silver has made a good case that the media's focus on the Comey letter non-story was one of the main factors for Clinton's loss, and it's hard to not see a connection between their refusal to look at their own reporting and their sudden focus on "fake news." Just this week I ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas"[1] (in context, talking about immigration visas), when that seems to not be the case at all[2]. It's true that shoddy journalism is different from intentional manipulation, but the line between the two is often blurred. You also have the same issue with both - even when people are presented by the facts, they won't reconsider their positions. I've run into this issue in the past - when you present the original source and show how it contradicts a news report, it's not uncommon to get the reply "that can't be true, or else the media would have said so." [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the-union-address-annotated https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the... [2] https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    >Just this week I ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas"[1] (in context, talking about immigration visas), when that seems to not be the case at all[2]. How do you figure? The USCIS page talks about the program mentioned by NPR, where a limited number of visas are available for extended family of US citizens.
    - Chathamization 9y ago
      Here[1]: > A U.S. citizen can file a petition for the following relatives: • Husband or wife; • Children, married or unmarried A U.S. citizen who is at least 21 years or older may also petition for the following relatives: • Parents; • Brothers or sisters. From my understanding (and from everything I can find on the USCIS site and all other immigration sites), a U.S. citizen can sponsor immediate family members. They can not sponsor extended family members (cousins, uncles, in-laws, etc.). [1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A1en.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A1...
- tinymollusk 9y ago
  I'm reading Annie Duke's brand new (and excellent!) book called "Thinking in Bets". She suggests that placing monetary bets is a good way to force yourself (and possibly others) to reason about how they know what they know, consider what the other person knows that they don't, etc. In prospect theory, I think this is akin to triggering the Type II system (the "slow" thinking).
mberning 9y ago
Isn’t this blaming the victim in a way? How is it their fault that they are susceptible to “fake news”. They didn’t chose to be born dumb. Additionally, does it even matter? Intelligent people have their own blind spots and biases. The biggest being that because they are smart they must be right. I think the only rational thing to do is to take a skeptical view of any information presented and not internalize it too much. It really irks me when I read something from a “reputable” news source and the only source is “officials familiar with the matter”. I know people are lapping that garbage up, regardless of how smart they are.
- behindmyscreen 9y ago
  Just remember, Skepticism isn't rejecting information, it is withholding your acceptance/distension until you have more data. Rejecting information outright is cynicism.
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  Victim blaming requires actually blaming the victim, not just identifying and studying them. If this were an article about genetic predisposition to a particular disease, I don't think you'd call it victim blaming and point out that people without this predisposition get other diseases too. Victim blaming happens when you explain what they should have done to avoid being victimized. You get a lot closer to that with your final paragraph than the article ever does.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  No. This is more similar to finding out that x virus causes y symptoms: that doesn't blame the sick folks for having the virus. It simply explains some stuff that is happening. When we better know what causes something, we are better prepared to do something about it. We have some fact-based reasoning to base our actions on. It is, indeed, rational to be skeptical of information presented, especially when things are still developing, it is likely that we don't yet have all the facts, or during times of high stress or panic. It is rational to realize we all hold misinformation, and that some of the stuff we've learned is no longer true. But it takes some intelligence to realize this stuff. Furthermore, it takes a bit of energy to do so. Hence otherwise smart folks believing the fake stuff or not being able to pick out truth from the mess. Cognitive ability varies during the day, after all, and with situations (stress, being sleepy or chronic lack of sleep, hangovers, and various other things affect this stuff temporarily at least). I'll add that some folks that appear "smart" aren't any smarter than the rest of us. Rather, we just meet them in a context that shines the best light on them, they are good at memorizing facts, or their knowledge base differs from our own.
LeonigMig 9y ago
Reminds of Plato's thought that Socrates was like a doctor being judged by a jury of children. His conclusion was to turn against democracy to a vision of a polity ruled by enlightened 'philosopher kings'. So what are the implications for democracy in the Internet age?
- abecedarius 9y ago
  Plato was the opposite of a disinterested source on the trial of Socrates. The only other primary source is Xenophon, also his student. I wouldn't call Plato a propagandist, exactly, since that would imply writing on behalf of some organization or movement, but when I read him he seems a persuader in the guise of a truth-seeker. He's sort of the ur-Stephen Jay Gould.
Jeff_Brown 9y ago
Two practical takeaways: (1) The smart thing to do is shake off your first impression and reevaluate after receiving new information. (2) Pay special attention to the first impression you give to stupid people.
- scottcowley 9y ago
  Related to this, there is probably a psychological effect at play where people want to be consistent with what they have said in the past (see Cialdini and consistency theories), so just the act of asking the research participants to articulate their feelings about the person dug themselves into a hole. Talk less and you don't have to entrench.
  - kelukelugames 9y ago
    I apologized in a meeting yesterday when I realized I said something factually incorrect. I actually fact checked myself to discover the error. I wonder if that was a mistake. Given how our leaders act, I think we are more wired to trust people who never acknowledge their mistakes.
- coding123 9y ago
  What is a stupid person?
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    For purposes of these discussions, it is always conflated with "right of center". Academics accept this as a forgone conclusion, or, at best, use some self-referential circular argument for why the conservative political allegiance is the domain of the less-enlightened, e.g., fewer conservatives went to institutions that are overwhelmingly liberal for career training (university, especially when advanced degrees are considered), or fewer white-collar workers are willing to express conservative views. Neither of these things have much of anything to do with intelligence or stupidity. Rest assured, there are plenty of blistering idiots on both sides of aisle, in equal proportions that match the idiocy of the general public (roughly 95/5). The amount of people who have the right combination of raw intellect, disregard for social convention, etc., to make independent and objectively defensible arguments that aren't simple regurgitations of the party line is probably 5%. This is true for basically every group and subculture (possibly except those that are so small they don't qualify as their own group/subculture yet). Even among groups that attract primarily intelligent people in the absolute sense, like software or physics, most don't have the social courage to speak up when they disagree or to align themselves with someone who is clearly in the minority, nor do they have the interest to consider material in-depth and fully understand it in a way that allows them to internalize its principles and detect fakes or imposters. For the most part, they'll happily follow the crowd, no matter how silly the basis.
testingTheCraic 9y ago
what a load of rubbish. fake news & social engineering has always been around. it's just there are more channels for it nowadays, and due to the freedom of publish, those at top have to mix a lot of truth with a bit of nonsense, to keep control
- deevolution 9y ago
  So true. Fake news/social engineering has been around since at least The creation of the bible. But now fake news can reach people faster, spread more quickly, and be consumed in larger quantities because of facebook.
- acdha 9y ago
  That’s like writing off the green revolution because farming has been around forever. We have fewer barriers than before: a website is cheap to run compared to a newspaper or broadcast station and there’s no border restriction – no Moldovan teenager could send TV programs or newspapers to gullible Americans. That’s a huge difference: if a newspaper printed libel they could be sued and had physical assets to risk losing. Companies had reputations which took years to build or change. Now it’s just a sea of shell companies and disposable websites and if, hypothetically, a bunch of Republicans started caring that Breitbart was lying so routinely the same stuff would just pop up on a new domain a day later. That’s the other key point you missed: distribution and discovery are totally different now. If I set up a newspaper I still had to convince people to subscribe or stock it, TV stations took years to setup, etc. That encouraged moderation to maximize the number of customers. In contrast, now everyone is competing on Facebook and Google News, both of which hate the idea of paying for editorial review and will cheerfully display satire or propaganda on equal footing with established mainstream news sources. I’m not in love with the gatekeeper model – note that e.g. the 90s Balkan & Rwandan genocides relied on taking over the state media first – but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problems we’re seeing now, or that tech companies aren’t being incredibly reckless in their desire to make a slightly higher margin on ad revenue.
  - testingTheCraic 9y ago
    Didn't miss distribution & discovery. Distribution is different nowadays of course (hence the social engineering program is very clever and will feed you a lot of truth and grab you if you're seeking truth - i.e. all prominent 'alternative' sources). Discovery? Well, no not really. Discovery for the masses is at the will of the centralised social engineering program (Google, Facebook, etc) When anything significant happens in western politics you can better you bottom dollar it wasn't an un-staged occurrence. Trump was your man before election day. Brexit was the ultimate divisive illusionary 'you have a choice, you can make a difference' nonsense, despite the fact that having one less centralised corrupt level of power is of course worthy of a vote. Journalism is a dead as a dodo. Have you been psyop-d into attributing tin-foil hats to anyone who raises there head from the Orwellian / Huxley media sources and takes stock of history, and seeks alternatives from the mainstream, rather than the brain-rotting recycling 'news'. Does 'conspiracy theorist' make your alarm bells go off and want to cease all association? The thing to invest in is local. Turn away from centralisation for now, until the whole thing is open sourced and you can track your politicians lives into the intimate details, and you have a monetary system that's not debt-based. Once that day comes maybe local won't be your only avenue for hope.
daveFNbuck 9y ago
I'm curious how exactly cognitive ability is defined here. Is there some standard test used for this?
thisisit 9y ago
> Half of the statements were in fact true, such as Australia is approximately equal in area to the continental United States, whereas the other half were false, such as Zachary Taylor was the first president to die in office (it was William Henry Harrison) I don't know much of American history but isn't this a high bar for finding if people believe "fake news". I mean most people wont know general knowledge perfectly so expecting them to believe a particular lie is perfectly reasonable. What is concerning about fake news is people believing simpler lies like the stuff Trump says. An example about walls and whatnot.
- Wehrdo 9y ago
  I found that an odd choice of examples, too. I at least have some sense of the relative sizes of the U.S. and Australia, but without specific knowledge, have no idea about which president died in office first. It's likely I would be more willing to believe a fact if I have nothing to refute it with. I do hope the questions were randomized.
- mseebach 9y ago
  There's also something to be said for the importance of a certain fact. It's pretty harmless to be poorly informed about presidential history, unless you're a teacher of the subject or about to take a test. Significantly less so to be poorly informed about whether or not a presidential candidate is running a child sex ring out of a pizzaria.
strebler 9y ago
Let me flip this around / play devil's advocate (haha). I remember that "election dial" showing 80% chance of Hillary on (I believe) the NYT website. Was that grounded in reality? There was an uproar about the legality of Trump's travel bans, but followed by a 7-0 supreme court victory on the subject. Was the assessment he overstepped his bounds grounded in reality? Wasn't Brian Ross suspended for creating fake news? So, based on this study, only people with lower cognitive ability would to believe the CNN / NYT / etc assessments/articles of Trump? Oh, wait, no, they're saying Trump supporters are the ones with cognitive ability issues. The dialogue here has turned to: "you're fake news" vs "your supporters are dumb". Really, both sides have serious problems with bias and accuracy, and at this point they're just calling each other names. Either way, I really do yearn for a news organization where I could trust what's being written.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  I think calling Trump supporters dumb is a different problem from a poll being wrong. Rather are polls wrong if they X has a high chance of happening but then x did not happen?
  - jerkstate 9y ago
    The polls weren't even that far off, on a national level they were basically spot on, the organizations reporting on them just threw out the data that made it look like Trump had a pretty good chance. 538 did a slightly better job but the editorial bias in the presentation of the data was distinct across most of the media.
  - michaelscott 9y ago
    I don't think it's the polls on their own that are the problem. I think it's the media-driven furore around them that feeds into the public's pre-existing confirmation bias ("see, the polls prove he's an idiot with no chance at the presidency!"). It seems like most people on both ends of the political spectrum create a media-fed bubble of bias, and when the outcomes disagree with that bias (as in the case of Trump) it can create pretty damaging cognitive dissonance.
- 9y ago
kaiwen1 9y ago
I wonder how it relates to susceptibility to belief in religion?
zyxzevn 9y ago
The old word of "fake news" is propaganda. The western media is also full with it, usually because they are sponsored by big companies or are linked with political parties. Both sides use propaganda, and it is hard to trust the news today with anything. Currently everyone uses fake news to mark some information that they don't like. The article starts with a wrong position. "Fake news" was not invented by Trump, but it was introduced during the election by "PropOrNot". The website, which is probably propaganda by itself, stated that many independent media were Russian propaganda. This unfounded claim was used to help the democratic candidate, after wikileaks published material about pay-to-play and media-bias. Afterwards the russian propaganda idea was fake news, because there has been no evidence that the election has been strongly manipulated by Russian bots or operatives. Instead researchers find people who have strong opinions and have lots of time to post stuff. The article has a good point: "If you are convinced that some claim is true, ask yourself why. Is it because you have credible evidence that the claim is true, or is it just because you’ve encountered the claim over and over?" In this I see the media repeating the "Russian hacked the election" thing, for which there is no real evidence. The reports from all agencies only based this idea on rumours. The wikileak documents themselves seem to be downloaded on a USB drive, and not via the internetz. But can we withstand this "fake news", when there is so much support for it? And why is no-one talking about the pay-to-play problem. It is likely a problem of the political system, not just a candidate. I agree with the solution against fake news. We should have credible evidence. But these should not be "public service announcements". These are usually linked to sponsors or political parties. Most people already disagree on what sources can be trusted. For example I trust wikileaks a lot more than many other people. They stand for freedom of information, unlike their opposition who likes to destroy relevant information (like torture records or emails). And freedom of information is exactly what is needed for this whole problem. No information should be hidden in a democracy. And that is how we really should solve the fake news /propaganda problem: All relevant information should be available. Just like every experiment should be repeatable in science.
- th0ma5 9y ago
  I wonder about the technique of a "shit sandwich" where you surrounded your propoganda (The Russian investigation is BS) with otherwise reasonable content.
dphidt 9y ago
I'd be curious to know whether there was any context given with Nathalie's exoneration. For example, "it was invented by her jealous peer" rather than just "it wasn't true." Might the revelation of deception induce extra skepticism, inhibiting someone from believing the truth? Could a model explaining fake news could help people to better integrate the truth?
aaron695 9y ago
> This was true even after the researchers statistically controlled for the subjects’ level of open-mindedness (their willingness to change their mind when wrong) and right-wing authoritarianism (their intolerance toward others) Left wing people (ie Communists, SJW's) are not tolerant people. What's with this slant? Seems incredibly fucking biased. It goes back to the paper though but SA are aping it. If anything Libertarians are tolerant people. It's not a left or right thing.
pessimizer 9y ago
"Fake News" is a political PR term; can't they just talk about returning to baseline values after being given false information? Also, this is another bad toy problem like the trolley problem; when you hear false information about something from people that you consider trustworthy, after hearing that information corrected it's not altogether rational to return to a baseline judgment of that thing. When you hear information from trustworthy sources, you know that something attracted the trustworthy people to examine the subjects of that information, something about what the trustworthy people know about those subjects made them think that the information had a reasonable probability of being true, and the trustworthy people thought that information was important enough for you to consider that they communicated it to you. We want things in courts to be considered in isolation, because the courts are meant to be a final arbiter, and therefore the feedback effect of suspicion feeding suspicion would tend to make the first statement of an authority figure on a person the final judgment of the state on that person. Life is different; if you disregard rumors, and the context of statements (even when ultimately disregarding the content of statements) you're missing a lot. The problem here is who you trust, not what you trust, and the ability to update trust, not as much the ability to update judgments on things unobserved and unexperienced. I'd submit that people with lower "cognitive skills" would tend to trust the researchers more, and think that even if the researcher has withdrawn statements about events, they must have had a good reason for thinking them in the first place, and would have made a reasonable effort to avoid lying intentionally. On the other hand, people with higher "cognitive skills" would be more familiar with the format of experiments, and assume that the researcher was lying about everything, and that "Nathalie" didn't exist. tl;dr, basically, the researchers weren't wearing the right outfit to convince one of the groups.
caseysoftware 9y ago
It seems the conclusion here is that: Lies work even after being disproven, especially on people with lower cognitive ability. The first follow up I have is: How do they define 'lower' cognitive ability? Assuming they're using IQ score or similar tests that go into an IQ score, what is the transition point? Are we talking about people who are below the norm -1 SD (~85 IQ), around the average of 100, or +1 SD (~115)? The number of people in/below those ranges are progressively bigger and have a larger impact on things like the popular vote, market trends, etc. The second follow up I have is: Ok, so now what? Since this is "cognitive ability" and not "education" convincing people to go to college isn't a solution. Do you limit voting to people with certain advanced degrees? Do they propose an IQ (or equivalent) test for voting? Is that the case they're making?
giardini 9y ago
I've got a friend who, over the years, has consistently forwarded e-mails to me: many were funny and a majority were politically biased toward the conservative end of the spectrum. Last election his forwarding of articles that were factually incorrect increased severely to the point that I would read the subject and a few sentences and then discard them. I was surprised that he didn't check out his sources or information before forwarding information: snopes.com and other sites are so readily available and easy to use. I even suggested casually one day how he could check internet rumors with snopes, and he listened, but only muted his forwarding awhile. So I set up a rule routing his e-mail to a separate folder that I check occasionally. I keep the good jokes and flush the fake news. Nonetheless I find it useful for keeping a finger on him and others who are seriously misled or subject to rumors. That way, I know something of what they think and I can still talk to them w/o being shocked. I don't want to refuse someone as a person b/c they're not particularly bright or b/c they are unable to navigate the internet sufficiently to check what is true/false. This way I know a little of what they're thinking on current events and can approach them w/o offending them. And I get to hear the good jokes, which I cannot resist!
- 20180201 9y ago
  ... and why do you trust snopes?
  - kelukelugames 9y ago
    Snopes provides links to sources.
  - giardini 9y ago
    Because - Snopes is easy to use and - usually Snopes has an almost-identical article about each e-mail subject that my friend sends me. So he would, if he checked, see his own e-mail subject and content highlighted with a big banner that said "FALSE" and explained why/how/etc. e.g. https://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/ https://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/ I felt both of these would be necessary if he were ever to examine his sources.
- dominotw 9y ago
gr33nman 9y ago
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” -Socrates
gr33nman 9y ago
“We must stop glorifying intelligence and treating our society as a playground for the smart minority. We should instead begin shaping our economy, our schools, even our culture with an eye to the abilities and needs of the majority, and to the full range of human capacity.” https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/485618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/485618/
- Barrin92 9y ago
  I think that article addresses a different issue. Obviously we should not treat people with fewer cognitive abilities with contempt or cast them out of our society. But if you believe that there are such things as truths and falsehoods and that they can positively and negatively shape our society, we cannot ignore the effect that 'fake news' or other misinformation have on large parts of the population. We can't drop the pursuit of truth just for the sake of satisfying an angry majority. That's going to turn society into a clown-car.
- analogic 9y ago
  Been thinking about this a lot lately. The fantasy the modern society had somehow left the jungle has been crumbling for me as it's been becoming more and more clear that the unskilled/disadvantaged are truly fucked and becoming more so. I don't like it, but it really is a fucking jungle out there. Nature can be cruel and spreading fake news for personal gain is as viable a survival strategy as any other form of parasitism. Will continue to hold onto naive notions that human existence can have some sort of meaning beyond survival of the best adapted until the sun burns out, however, but it ain't easy. We weren't meant to live like this, dammit!
mistercow 9y ago
> Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told the information was false. I think this makes more sense if you consider instincts around forming alliances, rather than raw cognitive ability. In the real world, a successful belief adoption strategy is not merely one that leads you to correct beliefs, but one that leads you to successful beliefs. In many cases, correct beliefs are the most successful. But social implications can easily override that. For example, it seems obviously incorrect to believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, since it tells of his own death. But belief in non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch was not a successful one in 16th century Europe, since it was considered heretical. In this case, hearing negative information about someone provides evidence for at least four things: 1. The negative information is true 2. Other people believe the negative information is true 3. That person's social standing is insufficient to prevent this negative information from spreading 3. Assuming the information is false, someone else has reason to spread it Only the first one of those relates to the objective truth of the information, or has much bearing on the person's character. The rest have much more to do with social consequences of allying yourself with the person in question. Of course, people don't usually evaluate all of those factors consciously and then think "Well this person is probably good, but they're also a potential pariah who I should avoid associating with". Instead, we have instincts that lead us to better social strategies by shaping our beliefs. That's obviously not the whole story, since these researchers did find that cognitive ability correlated with attitude adjustment. But I think the social side of this is a crucial piece, and may interact with cognitive ability in ways which might be difficult to control for. For example, it seems plausible that a person with intellectual social status would be more willing to adopt contrarian views, which would make it easier for them to give less weight to the social implications, and more weight to the objective question.
- iamcasen 9y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head here. From my experience in life, pursuing the truth relentlessly leads to one becoming a social pariah. It's why I've always had a very difficult time labeling myself or my beliefs, because none of them fit into a bucket. I think a great example of your point is the politics surrounding guns. It's one of the few things I've seen highly educated, left-leaning folks spread/believe fake news about. My favorite fake news topic about guns is the classic "silencer" debate. So many prominent democrats have railed against "silencers" and how they can make mass shootings more deadly. It's absolute bologna, but it is believed and spread as truth none the less. Most people don't know that just firing a gun once without ear protection will cause permanent hearing loss. A suppressor will reduce the decibels to the point of it being still incredibly loud, but not as damaging to the ears. It's definitely not "silent"
throwaway0255 9y ago
In my opinion, fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality, but is presenting a radically skewed and biased narrative. That kind of dishonesty fools even people on the upper end of cognitive ability. Modern news cycles are edited together like reality TV shows. The bias is for sensationalism, and for supporting and validating the worldview of the journalists and financial backers involved. The media’s gestalt can be a massive deliberate lie and con on the entire population, and they can easily achieve that without ever telling a single individual lie. Which isn’t to say they don’t sometimes resort to flat-out lying, there’s a good amount of that too. But mostly what the “credible” news sources do is take a large selection of truths, and sum them up to a whole that’s deliberately engineered to deceive everybody for the sake of sensational, political and social bias.
- empthought 9y ago
  I think recent events (thanks in no small part to susceptibility to "fake news") have shown that the "radically skewed and biased narrative" of what many call the Washington consensus is far preferable to letting the Breitbarts of the world get away with their actual lies. Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    > Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. It makes it far worse. Very few people take Breitbart seriously but many will take CNN or NYT seriously. The mainstream media is far too powerful to ignore when they push a narrative. Smaller outfits on the far left/right don't pose the same existential threat to our society.
    - Barrin92 9y ago
      The consumption habits of people proof this statement wrong. Tabloid newspapers have higher circulation than anything else. In some countries a majority of people receive their news from facebook or other social media feeds. Television channels like fox news draw more viewers than cspan. The mainstream media is not that mainstream at all. The principle of 'the big lie' still works very well.
mythrwy 9y ago
I'm not in any way a supporter of "party" liberalism and would never vote for most mainstream Democratic candidates. And, the world is changing and anointed media outlets providing official agenda and biased spin as truth is apparently over as far as being effective. (Now that's out of the way): My father in law is a big conservative "fake news" fan. He also watches championship wrestling. I'm not on facebook and don't visit sites of the alt-right persuasion (or really any political persuasion) and so hadn't been exposed to what was happening. And I didn't think anyone really believed far fetched claims. Until we went up for a visit a year or so back and he proceeded to sit with his laptop at dinner proclaiming "Obama is going to jail! it's been proved. He is using someone else's social security number and it's this guy XXX!'. Oh and there was a lot more too! Things I would have believed a rational person of any political persuasion would have questioned. Quite an eye opening experience. Now, my father in law is not going to be acing medical entrance exams any time soon but he isn't stupid. So I wondered about this phenomenon for a long time. And here's what I concluded. People will willingly suspend rational belief if the payload is something they want to believe or confirms the world of wishes they have built. Smart people, dumb people, all kinds of people. I don't think there is any possible way someone of even a modicum of intelligence could believe championship wrestling is anything but a falsified show for instance. But he watches it. And he pretends it's real. Because he wants to. So for all the "smart people" thinking "Oh, I knew it! Only dumb people believe in fake news! And that's how Trump got elected!", different manifestation, same phenomenon. Trying to overcome this tendency is a step towards predictive power but whatever makes a person happy I suppose.
analogic 9y ago
Water is wet?
staunch 9y ago
Human brains are super hackable. Propaganda or "Fake News" is literally mind control. The Nazi Party infamously exploited this vulnerability. Fox News was created to be "Faux News" from its inception, and it's work just as planned. What has really upturned the world though, is people's realization that supposedly neutral institutions like CNN/BBC aren't much different from Fox News. The creators of Fox News were never really wrong about that, even if their reaction was to be even more biased and untruthful. The problem is that it's left people grasping for trust. Jon Stewart filled that role for many, but then he got burned out. The solution to propaganda is to restrict your intake of information to high quality sources. That means finding specific journalists, and never relying on a media brand like Fox News, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, or even Reuters. You simply cannot trust a brand, it's not a person. Wikipedia points to another solution, which is crowdsourced consensus-based information. Restricting your information diet to Wikipedia might actually be reasonable. The process is fairly rigorous and not easily abused without consequence.
m_herrlich 9y ago
Teaching meta-cognition abilities to the masses seems unlikely. How wrong would it be to use the principles in this article for "good" i.e. anti-propaganda propaganda?

117 points by richardhod 9y ago

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion. -Thornton Wilder That’s always seemed a bit cynical to me, but it seems to be more of an essentially realistic statement with every passing day.

jaclaz 9y ago
JFYI, Ambrose Bierce; Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

nlh 9y ago

This is not terribly surprising, but it’s nice to see some experimental confirmation. Here’s my question: Many will use this data to make themselves feel better (“See, I told you they were all idiots.”) How can this data be used to actually help the problem? Are there techniques that can be applied to help folks who lack high cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re being manipulated?

SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
> This is not terribly surprising, but it’s nice to see some experimental confirmation. Not really being serious here, but this made me chuckle a bit, on an article about fake news, etc. The sentence above literally reads like confirmation bias happening in real time, the way you phrased it. I'm not saying you are guilty of it here, the phrasing just jumped out at me - and is a good example of the kind of thought, that when we have it, ought to trigger our inner skeptic :P
Null-Set 9y ago
The article reccomends a PSA teaching the metacognitive skill of asking yourself why you believe something and if you know any reason it isn't true. It reminds me of the legendary Canadian House Hippo PSA. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE
- trentmb 9y ago
  "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about stars to dispute it." Is usually my issue.
Chathamization 9y ago
> Are there techniques that can be applied to help folks who lack high cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re being manipulated? Or to help ourselves see that? I think it would be a mistake if everyone who read this assumed it was simply a problem with the other side (“See, I told you they were all idiots”). Nate Silver has made a good case that the media's focus on the Comey letter non-story was one of the main factors for Clinton's loss, and it's hard to not see a connection between their refusal to look at their own reporting and their sudden focus on "fake news." Just this week I ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas"[1] (in context, talking about immigration visas), when that seems to not be the case at all[2]. It's true that shoddy journalism is different from intentional manipulation, but the line between the two is often blurred. You also have the same issue with both - even when people are presented by the facts, they won't reconsider their positions. I've run into this issue in the past - when you present the original source and show how it contradicts a news report, it's not uncommon to get the reply "that can't be true, or else the media would have said so." [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the-union-address-annotated https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the... [2] https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  >Just this week I ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas"[1] (in context, talking about immigration visas), when that seems to not be the case at all[2]. How do you figure? The USCIS page talks about the program mentioned by NPR, where a limited number of visas are available for extended family of US citizens.
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    Here[1]: > A U.S. citizen can file a petition for the following relatives: • Husband or wife; • Children, married or unmarried A U.S. citizen who is at least 21 years or older may also petition for the following relatives: • Parents; • Brothers or sisters. From my understanding (and from everything I can find on the USCIS site and all other immigration sites), a U.S. citizen can sponsor immediate family members. They can not sponsor extended family members (cousins, uncles, in-laws, etc.). [1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A1en.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A1...
tinymollusk 9y ago
I'm reading Annie Duke's brand new (and excellent!) book called "Thinking in Bets". She suggests that placing monetary bets is a good way to force yourself (and possibly others) to reason about how they know what they know, consider what the other person knows that they don't, etc. In prospect theory, I think this is akin to triggering the Type II system (the "slow" thinking).

mberning 9y ago

Isn’t this blaming the victim in a way? How is it their fault that they are susceptible to “fake news”. They didn’t chose to be born dumb. Additionally, does it even matter? Intelligent people have their own blind spots and biases. The biggest being that because they are smart they must be right. I think the only rational thing to do is to take a skeptical view of any information presented and not internalize it too much. It really irks me when I read something from a “reputable” news source and the only source is “officials familiar with the matter”. I know people are lapping that garbage up, regardless of how smart they are.

behindmyscreen 9y ago
Just remember, Skepticism isn't rejecting information, it is withholding your acceptance/distension until you have more data. Rejecting information outright is cynicism.
daveFNbuck 9y ago
Victim blaming requires actually blaming the victim, not just identifying and studying them. If this were an article about genetic predisposition to a particular disease, I don't think you'd call it victim blaming and point out that people without this predisposition get other diseases too. Victim blaming happens when you explain what they should have done to avoid being victimized. You get a lot closer to that with your final paragraph than the article ever does.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
No. This is more similar to finding out that x virus causes y symptoms: that doesn't blame the sick folks for having the virus. It simply explains some stuff that is happening. When we better know what causes something, we are better prepared to do something about it. We have some fact-based reasoning to base our actions on. It is, indeed, rational to be skeptical of information presented, especially when things are still developing, it is likely that we don't yet have all the facts, or during times of high stress or panic. It is rational to realize we all hold misinformation, and that some of the stuff we've learned is no longer true. But it takes some intelligence to realize this stuff. Furthermore, it takes a bit of energy to do so. Hence otherwise smart folks believing the fake stuff or not being able to pick out truth from the mess. Cognitive ability varies during the day, after all, and with situations (stress, being sleepy or chronic lack of sleep, hangovers, and various other things affect this stuff temporarily at least). I'll add that some folks that appear "smart" aren't any smarter than the rest of us. Rather, we just meet them in a context that shines the best light on them, they are good at memorizing facts, or their knowledge base differs from our own.

LeonigMig 9y ago

Reminds of Plato's thought that Socrates was like a doctor being judged by a jury of children. His conclusion was to turn against democracy to a vision of a polity ruled by enlightened 'philosopher kings'. So what are the implications for democracy in the Internet age?

abecedarius 9y ago
Plato was the opposite of a disinterested source on the trial of Socrates. The only other primary source is Xenophon, also his student. I wouldn't call Plato a propagandist, exactly, since that would imply writing on behalf of some organization or movement, but when I read him he seems a persuader in the guise of a truth-seeker. He's sort of the ur-Stephen Jay Gould.

Jeff_Brown 9y ago

Two practical takeaways: (1) The smart thing to do is shake off your first impression and reevaluate after receiving new information. (2) Pay special attention to the first impression you give to stupid people.

scottcowley 9y ago
Related to this, there is probably a psychological effect at play where people want to be consistent with what they have said in the past (see Cialdini and consistency theories), so just the act of asking the research participants to articulate their feelings about the person dug themselves into a hole. Talk less and you don't have to entrench.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  I apologized in a meeting yesterday when I realized I said something factually incorrect. I actually fact checked myself to discover the error. I wonder if that was a mistake. Given how our leaders act, I think we are more wired to trust people who never acknowledge their mistakes.
coding123 9y ago
What is a stupid person?
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  For purposes of these discussions, it is always conflated with "right of center". Academics accept this as a forgone conclusion, or, at best, use some self-referential circular argument for why the conservative political allegiance is the domain of the less-enlightened, e.g., fewer conservatives went to institutions that are overwhelmingly liberal for career training (university, especially when advanced degrees are considered), or fewer white-collar workers are willing to express conservative views. Neither of these things have much of anything to do with intelligence or stupidity. Rest assured, there are plenty of blistering idiots on both sides of aisle, in equal proportions that match the idiocy of the general public (roughly 95/5). The amount of people who have the right combination of raw intellect, disregard for social convention, etc., to make independent and objectively defensible arguments that aren't simple regurgitations of the party line is probably 5%. This is true for basically every group and subculture (possibly except those that are so small they don't qualify as their own group/subculture yet). Even among groups that attract primarily intelligent people in the absolute sense, like software or physics, most don't have the social courage to speak up when they disagree or to align themselves with someone who is clearly in the minority, nor do they have the interest to consider material in-depth and fully understand it in a way that allows them to internalize its principles and detect fakes or imposters. For the most part, they'll happily follow the crowd, no matter how silly the basis.

testingTheCraic 9y ago

what a load of rubbish. fake news & social engineering has always been around. it's just there are more channels for it nowadays, and due to the freedom of publish, those at top have to mix a lot of truth with a bit of nonsense, to keep control

deevolution 9y ago
So true. Fake news/social engineering has been around since at least The creation of the bible. But now fake news can reach people faster, spread more quickly, and be consumed in larger quantities because of facebook.
acdha 9y ago
That’s like writing off the green revolution because farming has been around forever. We have fewer barriers than before: a website is cheap to run compared to a newspaper or broadcast station and there’s no border restriction – no Moldovan teenager could send TV programs or newspapers to gullible Americans. That’s a huge difference: if a newspaper printed libel they could be sued and had physical assets to risk losing. Companies had reputations which took years to build or change. Now it’s just a sea of shell companies and disposable websites and if, hypothetically, a bunch of Republicans started caring that Breitbart was lying so routinely the same stuff would just pop up on a new domain a day later. That’s the other key point you missed: distribution and discovery are totally different now. If I set up a newspaper I still had to convince people to subscribe or stock it, TV stations took years to setup, etc. That encouraged moderation to maximize the number of customers. In contrast, now everyone is competing on Facebook and Google News, both of which hate the idea of paying for editorial review and will cheerfully display satire or propaganda on equal footing with established mainstream news sources. I’m not in love with the gatekeeper model – note that e.g. the 90s Balkan & Rwandan genocides relied on taking over the state media first – but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problems we’re seeing now, or that tech companies aren’t being incredibly reckless in their desire to make a slightly higher margin on ad revenue.
- testingTheCraic 9y ago
  Didn't miss distribution & discovery. Distribution is different nowadays of course (hence the social engineering program is very clever and will feed you a lot of truth and grab you if you're seeking truth - i.e. all prominent 'alternative' sources). Discovery? Well, no not really. Discovery for the masses is at the will of the centralised social engineering program (Google, Facebook, etc) When anything significant happens in western politics you can better you bottom dollar it wasn't an un-staged occurrence. Trump was your man before election day. Brexit was the ultimate divisive illusionary 'you have a choice, you can make a difference' nonsense, despite the fact that having one less centralised corrupt level of power is of course worthy of a vote. Journalism is a dead as a dodo. Have you been psyop-d into attributing tin-foil hats to anyone who raises there head from the Orwellian / Huxley media sources and takes stock of history, and seeks alternatives from the mainstream, rather than the brain-rotting recycling 'news'. Does 'conspiracy theorist' make your alarm bells go off and want to cease all association? The thing to invest in is local. Turn away from centralisation for now, until the whole thing is open sourced and you can track your politicians lives into the intimate details, and you have a monetary system that's not debt-based. Once that day comes maybe local won't be your only avenue for hope.

daveFNbuck 9y ago

I'm curious how exactly cognitive ability is defined here. Is there some standard test used for this?

thisisit 9y ago

> Half of the statements were in fact true, such as Australia is approximately equal in area to the continental United States, whereas the other half were false, such as Zachary Taylor was the first president to die in office (it was William Henry Harrison) I don't know much of American history but isn't this a high bar for finding if people believe "fake news". I mean most people wont know general knowledge perfectly so expecting them to believe a particular lie is perfectly reasonable. What is concerning about fake news is people believing simpler lies like the stuff Trump says. An example about walls and whatnot.

Wehrdo 9y ago
I found that an odd choice of examples, too. I at least have some sense of the relative sizes of the U.S. and Australia, but without specific knowledge, have no idea about which president died in office first. It's likely I would be more willing to believe a fact if I have nothing to refute it with. I do hope the questions were randomized.
mseebach 9y ago
There's also something to be said for the importance of a certain fact. It's pretty harmless to be poorly informed about presidential history, unless you're a teacher of the subject or about to take a test. Significantly less so to be poorly informed about whether or not a presidential candidate is running a child sex ring out of a pizzaria.

strebler 9y ago

Let me flip this around / play devil's advocate (haha). I remember that "election dial" showing 80% chance of Hillary on (I believe) the NYT website. Was that grounded in reality? There was an uproar about the legality of Trump's travel bans, but followed by a 7-0 supreme court victory on the subject. Was the assessment he overstepped his bounds grounded in reality? Wasn't Brian Ross suspended for creating fake news? So, based on this study, only people with lower cognitive ability would to believe the CNN / NYT / etc assessments/articles of Trump? Oh, wait, no, they're saying Trump supporters are the ones with cognitive ability issues. The dialogue here has turned to: "you're fake news" vs "your supporters are dumb". Really, both sides have serious problems with bias and accuracy, and at this point they're just calling each other names. Either way, I really do yearn for a news organization where I could trust what's being written.

kelukelugames 9y ago
I think calling Trump supporters dumb is a different problem from a poll being wrong. Rather are polls wrong if they X has a high chance of happening but then x did not happen?
- jerkstate 9y ago
  The polls weren't even that far off, on a national level they were basically spot on, the organizations reporting on them just threw out the data that made it look like Trump had a pretty good chance. 538 did a slightly better job but the editorial bias in the presentation of the data was distinct across most of the media.
- michaelscott 9y ago
  I don't think it's the polls on their own that are the problem. I think it's the media-driven furore around them that feeds into the public's pre-existing confirmation bias ("see, the polls prove he's an idiot with no chance at the presidency!"). It seems like most people on both ends of the political spectrum create a media-fed bubble of bias, and when the outcomes disagree with that bias (as in the case of Trump) it can create pretty damaging cognitive dissonance.
9y ago

kaiwen1 9y ago

I wonder how it relates to susceptibility to belief in religion?

zyxzevn 9y ago

The old word of "fake news" is propaganda. The western media is also full with it, usually because they are sponsored by big companies or are linked with political parties. Both sides use propaganda, and it is hard to trust the news today with anything. Currently everyone uses fake news to mark some information that they don't like. The article starts with a wrong position. "Fake news" was not invented by Trump, but it was introduced during the election by "PropOrNot". The website, which is probably propaganda by itself, stated that many independent media were Russian propaganda. This unfounded claim was used to help the democratic candidate, after wikileaks published material about pay-to-play and media-bias. Afterwards the russian propaganda idea was fake news, because there has been no evidence that the election has been strongly manipulated by Russian bots or operatives. Instead researchers find people who have strong opinions and have lots of time to post stuff. The article has a good point: "If you are convinced that some claim is true, ask yourself why. Is it because you have credible evidence that the claim is true, or is it just because you’ve encountered the claim over and over?" In this I see the media repeating the "Russian hacked the election" thing, for which there is no real evidence. The reports from all agencies only based this idea on rumours. The wikileak documents themselves seem to be downloaded on a USB drive, and not via the internetz. But can we withstand this "fake news", when there is so much support for it? And why is no-one talking about the pay-to-play problem. It is likely a problem of the political system, not just a candidate. I agree with the solution against fake news. We should have credible evidence. But these should not be "public service announcements". These are usually linked to sponsors or political parties. Most people already disagree on what sources can be trusted. For example I trust wikileaks a lot more than many other people. They stand for freedom of information, unlike their opposition who likes to destroy relevant information (like torture records or emails). And freedom of information is exactly what is needed for this whole problem. No information should be hidden in a democracy. And that is how we really should solve the fake news /propaganda problem: All relevant information should be available. Just like every experiment should be repeatable in science.

th0ma5 9y ago
I wonder about the technique of a "shit sandwich" where you surrounded your propoganda (The Russian investigation is BS) with otherwise reasonable content.

dphidt 9y ago

I'd be curious to know whether there was any context given with Nathalie's exoneration. For example, "it was invented by her jealous peer" rather than just "it wasn't true." Might the revelation of deception induce extra skepticism, inhibiting someone from believing the truth? Could a model explaining fake news could help people to better integrate the truth?

aaron695 9y ago

> This was true even after the researchers statistically controlled for the subjects’ level of open-mindedness (their willingness to change their mind when wrong) and right-wing authoritarianism (their intolerance toward others) Left wing people (ie Communists, SJW's) are not tolerant people. What's with this slant? Seems incredibly fucking biased. It goes back to the paper though but SA are aping it. If anything Libertarians are tolerant people. It's not a left or right thing.

pessimizer 9y ago

"Fake News" is a political PR term; can't they just talk about returning to baseline values after being given false information? Also, this is another bad toy problem like the trolley problem; when you hear false information about something from people that you consider trustworthy, after hearing that information corrected it's not altogether rational to return to a baseline judgment of that thing. When you hear information from trustworthy sources, you know that something attracted the trustworthy people to examine the subjects of that information, something about what the trustworthy people know about those subjects made them think that the information had a reasonable probability of being true, and the trustworthy people thought that information was important enough for you to consider that they communicated it to you. We want things in courts to be considered in isolation, because the courts are meant to be a final arbiter, and therefore the feedback effect of suspicion feeding suspicion would tend to make the first statement of an authority figure on a person the final judgment of the state on that person. Life is different; if you disregard rumors, and the context of statements (even when ultimately disregarding the content of statements) you're missing a lot. The problem here is who you trust, not what you trust, and the ability to update trust, not as much the ability to update judgments on things unobserved and unexperienced. I'd submit that people with lower "cognitive skills" would tend to trust the researchers more, and think that even if the researcher has withdrawn statements about events, they must have had a good reason for thinking them in the first place, and would have made a reasonable effort to avoid lying intentionally. On the other hand, people with higher "cognitive skills" would be more familiar with the format of experiments, and assume that the researcher was lying about everything, and that "Nathalie" didn't exist. tl;dr, basically, the researchers weren't wearing the right outfit to convince one of the groups.

caseysoftware 9y ago

It seems the conclusion here is that: Lies work even after being disproven, especially on people with lower cognitive ability. The first follow up I have is: How do they define 'lower' cognitive ability? Assuming they're using IQ score or similar tests that go into an IQ score, what is the transition point? Are we talking about people who are below the norm -1 SD (~85 IQ), around the average of 100, or +1 SD (~115)? The number of people in/below those ranges are progressively bigger and have a larger impact on things like the popular vote, market trends, etc. The second follow up I have is: Ok, so now what? Since this is "cognitive ability" and not "education" convincing people to go to college isn't a solution. Do you limit voting to people with certain advanced degrees? Do they propose an IQ (or equivalent) test for voting? Is that the case they're making?

giardini 9y ago

I've got a friend who, over the years, has consistently forwarded e-mails to me: many were funny and a majority were politically biased toward the conservative end of the spectrum. Last election his forwarding of articles that were factually incorrect increased severely to the point that I would read the subject and a few sentences and then discard them. I was surprised that he didn't check out his sources or information before forwarding information: snopes.com and other sites are so readily available and easy to use. I even suggested casually one day how he could check internet rumors with snopes, and he listened, but only muted his forwarding awhile. So I set up a rule routing his e-mail to a separate folder that I check occasionally. I keep the good jokes and flush the fake news. Nonetheless I find it useful for keeping a finger on him and others who are seriously misled or subject to rumors. That way, I know something of what they think and I can still talk to them w/o being shocked. I don't want to refuse someone as a person b/c they're not particularly bright or b/c they are unable to navigate the internet sufficiently to check what is true/false. This way I know a little of what they're thinking on current events and can approach them w/o offending them. And I get to hear the good jokes, which I cannot resist!

20180201 9y ago
... and why do you trust snopes?
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  Snopes provides links to sources.
- giardini 9y ago
  Because - Snopes is easy to use and - usually Snopes has an almost-identical article about each e-mail subject that my friend sends me. So he would, if he checked, see his own e-mail subject and content highlighted with a big banner that said "FALSE" and explained why/how/etc. e.g. https://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/ https://www.snopes.com/pizzagate-conspiracy/ I felt both of these would be necessary if he were ever to examine his sources.
dominotw 9y ago

gr33nman 9y ago

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” -Socrates

gr33nman 9y ago

“We must stop glorifying intelligence and treating our society as a playground for the smart minority. We should instead begin shaping our economy, our schools, even our culture with an eye to the abilities and needs of the majority, and to the full range of human capacity.” https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/485618/ https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/485618/

Barrin92 9y ago
I think that article addresses a different issue. Obviously we should not treat people with fewer cognitive abilities with contempt or cast them out of our society. But if you believe that there are such things as truths and falsehoods and that they can positively and negatively shape our society, we cannot ignore the effect that 'fake news' or other misinformation have on large parts of the population. We can't drop the pursuit of truth just for the sake of satisfying an angry majority. That's going to turn society into a clown-car.
analogic 9y ago
Been thinking about this a lot lately. The fantasy the modern society had somehow left the jungle has been crumbling for me as it's been becoming more and more clear that the unskilled/disadvantaged are truly fucked and becoming more so. I don't like it, but it really is a fucking jungle out there. Nature can be cruel and spreading fake news for personal gain is as viable a survival strategy as any other form of parasitism. Will continue to hold onto naive notions that human existence can have some sort of meaning beyond survival of the best adapted until the sun burns out, however, but it ain't easy. We weren't meant to live like this, dammit!

mistercow 9y ago

> Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told the information was false. I think this makes more sense if you consider instincts around forming alliances, rather than raw cognitive ability. In the real world, a successful belief adoption strategy is not merely one that leads you to correct beliefs, but one that leads you to successful beliefs. In many cases, correct beliefs are the most successful. But social implications can easily override that. For example, it seems obviously incorrect to believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, since it tells of his own death. But belief in non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch was not a successful one in 16th century Europe, since it was considered heretical. In this case, hearing negative information about someone provides evidence for at least four things: 1. The negative information is true 2. Other people believe the negative information is true 3. That person's social standing is insufficient to prevent this negative information from spreading 3. Assuming the information is false, someone else has reason to spread it Only the first one of those relates to the objective truth of the information, or has much bearing on the person's character. The rest have much more to do with social consequences of allying yourself with the person in question. Of course, people don't usually evaluate all of those factors consciously and then think "Well this person is probably good, but they're also a potential pariah who I should avoid associating with". Instead, we have instincts that lead us to better social strategies by shaping our beliefs. That's obviously not the whole story, since these researchers did find that cognitive ability correlated with attitude adjustment. But I think the social side of this is a crucial piece, and may interact with cognitive ability in ways which might be difficult to control for. For example, it seems plausible that a person with intellectual social status would be more willing to adopt contrarian views, which would make it easier for them to give less weight to the social implications, and more weight to the objective question.

iamcasen 9y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. From my experience in life, pursuing the truth relentlessly leads to one becoming a social pariah. It's why I've always had a very difficult time labeling myself or my beliefs, because none of them fit into a bucket. I think a great example of your point is the politics surrounding guns. It's one of the few things I've seen highly educated, left-leaning folks spread/believe fake news about. My favorite fake news topic about guns is the classic "silencer" debate. So many prominent democrats have railed against "silencers" and how they can make mass shootings more deadly. It's absolute bologna, but it is believed and spread as truth none the less. Most people don't know that just firing a gun once without ear protection will cause permanent hearing loss. A suppressor will reduce the decibels to the point of it being still incredibly loud, but not as damaging to the ears. It's definitely not "silent"

throwaway0255 9y ago

In my opinion, fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality, but is presenting a radically skewed and biased narrative. That kind of dishonesty fools even people on the upper end of cognitive ability. Modern news cycles are edited together like reality TV shows. The bias is for sensationalism, and for supporting and validating the worldview of the journalists and financial backers involved. The media’s gestalt can be a massive deliberate lie and con on the entire population, and they can easily achieve that without ever telling a single individual lie. Which isn’t to say they don’t sometimes resort to flat-out lying, there’s a good amount of that too. But mostly what the “credible” news sources do is take a large selection of truths, and sum them up to a whole that’s deliberately engineered to deceive everybody for the sake of sensational, political and social bias.

empthought 9y ago
I think recent events (thanks in no small part to susceptibility to "fake news") have shown that the "radically skewed and biased narrative" of what many call the Washington consensus is far preferable to letting the Breitbarts of the world get away with their actual lies. Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- malvosenior 9y ago
  > Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being better than other narratives. It makes it far worse. Very few people take Breitbart seriously but many will take CNN or NYT seriously. The mainstream media is far too powerful to ignore when they push a narrative. Smaller outfits on the far left/right don't pose the same existential threat to our society.
  - Barrin92 9y ago
    The consumption habits of people proof this statement wrong. Tabloid newspapers have higher circulation than anything else. In some countries a majority of people receive their news from facebook or other social media feeds. Television channels like fox news draw more viewers than cspan. The mainstream media is not that mainstream at all. The principle of 'the big lie' still works very well.

mythrwy 9y ago

I'm not in any way a supporter of "party" liberalism and would never vote for most mainstream Democratic candidates. And, the world is changing and anointed media outlets providing official agenda and biased spin as truth is apparently over as far as being effective. (Now that's out of the way): My father in law is a big conservative "fake news" fan. He also watches championship wrestling. I'm not on facebook and don't visit sites of the alt-right persuasion (or really any political persuasion) and so hadn't been exposed to what was happening. And I didn't think anyone really believed far fetched claims. Until we went up for a visit a year or so back and he proceeded to sit with his laptop at dinner proclaiming "Obama is going to jail! it's been proved. He is using someone else's social security number and it's this guy XXX!'. Oh and there was a lot more too! Things I would have believed a rational person of any political persuasion would have questioned. Quite an eye opening experience. Now, my father in law is not going to be acing medical entrance exams any time soon but he isn't stupid. So I wondered about this phenomenon for a long time. And here's what I concluded. People will willingly suspend rational belief if the payload is something they want to believe or confirms the world of wishes they have built. Smart people, dumb people, all kinds of people. I don't think there is any possible way someone of even a modicum of intelligence could believe championship wrestling is anything but a falsified show for instance. But he watches it. And he pretends it's real. Because he wants to. So for all the "smart people" thinking "Oh, I knew it! Only dumb people believe in fake news! And that's how Trump got elected!", different manifestation, same phenomenon. Trying to overcome this tendency is a step towards predictive power but whatever makes a person happy I suppose.

analogic 9y ago

Water is wet?

staunch 9y ago

Human brains are super hackable. Propaganda or "Fake News" is literally mind control. The Nazi Party infamously exploited this vulnerability. Fox News was created to be "Faux News" from its inception, and it's work just as planned. What has really upturned the world though, is people's realization that supposedly neutral institutions like CNN/BBC aren't much different from Fox News. The creators of Fox News were never really wrong about that, even if their reaction was to be even more biased and untruthful. The problem is that it's left people grasping for trust. Jon Stewart filled that role for many, but then he got burned out. The solution to propaganda is to restrict your intake of information to high quality sources. That means finding specific journalists, and never relying on a media brand like Fox News, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, or even Reuters. You simply cannot trust a brand, it's not a person. Wikipedia points to another solution, which is crowdsourced consensus-based information. Restricting your information diet to Wikipedia might actually be reasonable. The process is fairly rigorous and not easily abused without consequence.

m_herrlich 9y ago

Teaching meta-cognition abilities to the masses seems unlikely. How wrong would it be to use the principles in this article for "good" i.e. anti-propaganda propaganda?