7 ms·

Blindly trusting what you read on Wikipedia is like blindly trusting what you read on the media. And I don't think there's much we can do to avoid it. Because c

by fvjft 8y ago

Blindly trusting what you read on Wikipedia is like blindly trusting what you read on the media. And I don't think there's much we can do to avoid it. Because conventional wisdom says more education will fix it. But wasn't there a study that showed that even highly educated people believe anything that confirms their biases?

deathhand 8y ago
Trusting something is inherently different then being provided information. Lets say I pump a state's aquifers dry to bottle water and there is a scandal about it. If I remove that information from the common information repository about my company is that ok?
- fvjft 8y ago
  It's not okay, but that's not the point I'm making. What I'm saying is that people shouldn't take what they read in that "common information repository" at face value, because it can be edited by anybody. Hell, even if editing was restricted to a certain group of people, how do you know those people aren't being paid to lie or omit information? (i.e. what happens with the media)
thundergolfer 8y ago
Yes that's basically true about people being susceptible to bias, regardless of education level, though highly educated people still perform better at critical understanding. Education is still the way to go, obviously.
thegeomaster 8y ago
On the bright side, Wikipedia is great for learning about technical subjects because there's rarely (if ever) an agenda associated with that.
- roel_v 8y ago
  Lol. Technical articles are the worst, there is always someone who needs to push their open source/free software morals and agenda on anything software-related.
  - Dahoon 8y ago
    You behave very much like those you accuse.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  > because there's rarely (if ever) an agenda associated with that. I wouldn't be so sure about that. SLS (the upcoming government funded rocket) is mostly a product of politics and lobbying and as such a very political subject. Quantum physics seems like an objective field until we start discussing funding for the next particle accelerator. Discussions about PHP have never been sane, even without Facebook having vested interest one way or the other. The laws of thermodynamics seem largely undisputed until the perpetual motion crowd starts another edit war. It's easier to determine facts in technical subjects, making the work of good Wikipedia mods easier. But that doesn't mean they are free of agendas or that those agendas don't influence Wikipedia
pjc50 8y ago
Education is a lagging effect. What you put into the public school system today will take 50+ years to feed through to the pensioners with higher voter turnout. People have great difficulty operating in low-trust environments. It takes a lot of work and is mentally draining to check everything, to distrust your co-workers and family and correct them when they start talking about the flat earth. Far better to stop the falsehoods being dripped into the public sphere in the first place.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Education is a lagging effect. What you put into the public school system today will take 50+ years to feed through to the pensioners with higher voter turnout. My brother and I went to high school in different states. The obvious differences in the education we got about politically charged topics was disgusting. The state I went to school in basically omitted anything that could lead one to question the government's decision making the way religious schools sometimes "forget" to teach evolution. It wasn't like they neglected to mention the Indian wars or Japanese internment in the 3rd grade because those are heavy topics for 3rd graders, they just gave those sort of things got a quick mention and no assigned work specific to them or serious discussion. They repeatedly failed to mention (early grades) or downplayed any legitimacy (later grades) of any grievance with the government. In retrospect they conspicuously skipped the 14th amendment (you know, the one that protects people from state encroachment on rights) because there's a very short path from it to some tough questions. Edit: Come to think of it the one history teacher I had who actually promoted critical thinking grew up out of state.
  - badhatter 8y ago
    It goes both ways though. In blue states You have some kids that are taught nothing of world war 2 but are taught everything about the civil war and slavery. Among other trends in educating differences. There are many more. Extreme right / Extreme left are both bad. Any extreme anti-another ideology is just asking for problems.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
sam_goody 8y ago
The greater the agenda, the less you can rely on the data. But the agenda is not always obvious. I edited a technical subject [some 10+ years ago], and within minutes(!!) it had been changed again to a variant of what was originally there, I presume by a bot. Some further research taught me that the technical issue was actually a sensitive one for various new age groups. Since there is no way I could ever hope to manually compete with a team of scripted adversaries, I gave up. Taught me something about Wikipedia. Note: I have other edits that have been up for years, so not at all absolute.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  >Some further research taught me that the technical issue was actually a sensitive one for various new age groups. Please elaborate!
- gbear605 8y ago
  There’s a decent chance it wasn’t a bot. I have about a hundred pages on my Wikipedia watch list, and I get emails everytime a change is made to them. I check each one for whether it is a good change or not. An unfortunately high percentage are not (and by not good change, I mean unambiguous things like typing random gibberish).
- Diederich 8y ago
  Are you comfortable saying what the technical subject was?
cjslep 8y ago
I'm currently reading Manufacturing Consent which to me shows how dangerous blindly following the mass media can be in a rigorous manner without requiring one to become a conspiracy theorist. There's certain ways to effectively critically read newspaper articles that I was taught at a young age and it's definitely a learned skill that I wish the US education system did better with.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  > without requiring one to become a conspiracy theorist. People conspire all the time, so shouldn't any sane person suspect some conspiracies? Hijacking the word "conspiracy theorist" to mean nut job seems like exactly the twisting of reality you are advocating to avoid.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    counterconspiracy (noun) : a conspiracy to oppose or undermine something (such as another conspiracy) The big agencies are pretty well versed on this, look at the system approach they take on this one: https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Countering-Warren-critics-040167.pdf https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Countering-W... It is not the details of this specific conspiracy that is interesting, but the systematic approach to tackling it.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    In this context, I interpret "conspiracy theorist" as someone who thinks there are relatively large groups of people conspiring, without the majority of people being aware of that. A small conspiracy when playing Diplomacy is believable, but e.g. one in which everyone behind mass media has agreed to put forward a certain message is not. Thus (not having read it myself), Manufacturing Consent could show how emergent properties of mass media might lead to them pushing a certain incorrect world view, rather than proposing a theory that requires the teams behind them to all agree to conspire and none of them to make that public knowledge.
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
reshie 8y ago
even geniuses can be fooled though they are just more likely able to disern right information and think critically about what is being presented but people are not masters of everything nor have the time to disect everything. there are times also when there are not multiple sources and yet true. but you are right blind trust is a fallacy but trust to some extant is necessary. biases has nothing to do with education but one may be more aware of them but i think thats more of a understanding of self or the human condition the scientific method tries to promote undiased results though but they do of course seep in.
dredmorbius 8y ago
I stumbled across an 1874 editorial rewvise war between the British authors and American publisher of Chamber's Encyclopaedia, which provides rare insight into the disagreements over and politicisation of information and its dissemination. My commentary: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chambers_encyclopaedia_editorial_statement/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chamber... Source: https://archive.org/stream/chambersencyclo00unkngoog#page/n13/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/chambersencyclo00unkngoog#page/n1... The power to define narrative has always been immense.
- JProthero 8y ago
  That was an interesting read for me – thanks for the link. I'm interested in how the centuries-old debate about protectionism and free trade has reignited over the past few years, and I'm also concerned about how Wikipedia's editorial community and processes are evolving. It was a surprise to see the two subjects combined like this, but given what you say about the power to define narrative, I suppose it shouldn't have been.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Ha-Joon Chang, mentioned in my commentary, is probably among the best-informed modern scholars on the dynamics of the free trade debate. I'd shared the item with him. and he was kind enough to reply with thanks, though I'm not sure if he's made use of the example. The whole notion of narrative and its power, especially contrasted with discrete facts and fact-checking, is another area I've been exploring, arguably under the sscope of my blog's purview (intentionally both broad and vague, a blessing and curse). Douglas Ruskoff's "Team Human" blog explores this with George Monbiot here, quite well. Ep. 89 George Monbiot "Beyond Salvation and Disaster". Episode: https://shows.pippa.io/teamhuman/ep-89-george-monbiot-beyond-salvation-and-disaster https://shows.pippa.io/teamhuman/ep-89-george-monbiot-beyond... Media: https://feed.pippa.io/public/streams/58ad887a1608b1752663b04a/episodes/5b17df6eb3ae913450c0a2b7.mp3 https://feed.pippa.io/public/streams/58ad887a1608b1752663b04... The theme shows up both in the intro, at 4m30s, and in the conversation, starting at 11m30s, andcontinuing through the rest of the episode.
pmoleri 8y ago
I don't think that blindly trusting wikipedia is nearly as bad as blindly trusting media. Wikipedia, while not perfect, has a way to moderate itself. Media needs to deliver fresh and high impact news, this ends up being an incentive to replicate news from other media without fact checking or a minimum analysis. IMO while money can influence any of them, the incentives for poor content quality in media are worse.
- CM30 8y ago
  100% agreed with this. The 24 hour news cycle, the obsession with trends, the need for social media shares and the focus on 'get it out quick' over 'research the story well' has annihilated the quality of the media in general, and is responsible for about 80% of the problems facing journalism today.
fakehistory 8y ago
Education is a tricky one too, considering bad actors like Mcgraw-Hill (who probably created all of your children's textbooks for elementary school) whitewashing all the things.

by fvjft 8y ago

deathhand 8y ago

Trusting something is inherently different then being provided information. Lets say I pump a state's aquifers dry to bottle water and there is a scandal about it. If I remove that information from the common information repository about my company is that ok?

fvjft 8y ago
It's not okay, but that's not the point I'm making. What I'm saying is that people shouldn't take what they read in that "common information repository" at face value, because it can be edited by anybody. Hell, even if editing was restricted to a certain group of people, how do you know those people aren't being paid to lie or omit information? (i.e. what happens with the media)

thundergolfer 8y ago

Yes that's basically true about people being susceptible to bias, regardless of education level, though highly educated people still perform better at critical understanding. Education is still the way to go, obviously.

thegeomaster 8y ago

On the bright side, Wikipedia is great for learning about technical subjects because there's rarely (if ever) an agenda associated with that.

roel_v 8y ago
Lol. Technical articles are the worst, there is always someone who needs to push their open source/free software morals and agenda on anything software-related.
- Dahoon 8y ago
  You behave very much like those you accuse.
wongarsu 8y ago
> because there's rarely (if ever) an agenda associated with that. I wouldn't be so sure about that. SLS (the upcoming government funded rocket) is mostly a product of politics and lobbying and as such a very political subject. Quantum physics seems like an objective field until we start discussing funding for the next particle accelerator. Discussions about PHP have never been sane, even without Facebook having vested interest one way or the other. The laws of thermodynamics seem largely undisputed until the perpetual motion crowd starts another edit war. It's easier to determine facts in technical subjects, making the work of good Wikipedia mods easier. But that doesn't mean they are free of agendas or that those agendas don't influence Wikipedia

pjc50 8y ago

Education is a lagging effect. What you put into the public school system today will take 50+ years to feed through to the pensioners with higher voter turnout. People have great difficulty operating in low-trust environments. It takes a lot of work and is mentally draining to check everything, to distrust your co-workers and family and correct them when they start talking about the flat earth. Far better to stop the falsehoods being dripped into the public sphere in the first place.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Education is a lagging effect. What you put into the public school system today will take 50+ years to feed through to the pensioners with higher voter turnout. My brother and I went to high school in different states. The obvious differences in the education we got about politically charged topics was disgusting. The state I went to school in basically omitted anything that could lead one to question the government's decision making the way religious schools sometimes "forget" to teach evolution. It wasn't like they neglected to mention the Indian wars or Japanese internment in the 3rd grade because those are heavy topics for 3rd graders, they just gave those sort of things got a quick mention and no assigned work specific to them or serious discussion. They repeatedly failed to mention (early grades) or downplayed any legitimacy (later grades) of any grievance with the government. In retrospect they conspicuously skipped the 14th amendment (you know, the one that protects people from state encroachment on rights) because there's a very short path from it to some tough questions. Edit: Come to think of it the one history teacher I had who actually promoted critical thinking grew up out of state.
- badhatter 8y ago
  It goes both ways though. In blue states You have some kids that are taught nothing of world war 2 but are taught everything about the civil war and slavery. Among other trends in educating differences. There are many more. Extreme right / Extreme left are both bad. Any extreme anti-another ideology is just asking for problems.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago

sam_goody 8y ago

The greater the agenda, the less you can rely on the data. But the agenda is not always obvious. I edited a technical subject [some 10+ years ago], and within minutes(!!) it had been changed again to a variant of what was originally there, I presume by a bot. Some further research taught me that the technical issue was actually a sensitive one for various new age groups. Since there is no way I could ever hope to manually compete with a team of scripted adversaries, I gave up. Taught me something about Wikipedia. Note: I have other edits that have been up for years, so not at all absolute.

aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
>Some further research taught me that the technical issue was actually a sensitive one for various new age groups. Please elaborate!
gbear605 8y ago
There’s a decent chance it wasn’t a bot. I have about a hundred pages on my Wikipedia watch list, and I get emails everytime a change is made to them. I check each one for whether it is a good change or not. An unfortunately high percentage are not (and by not good change, I mean unambiguous things like typing random gibberish).
Diederich 8y ago
Are you comfortable saying what the technical subject was?

cjslep 8y ago

I'm currently reading Manufacturing Consent which to me shows how dangerous blindly following the mass media can be in a rigorous manner without requiring one to become a conspiracy theorist. There's certain ways to effectively critically read newspaper articles that I was taught at a young age and it's definitely a learned skill that I wish the US education system did better with.

wongarsu 8y ago
> without requiring one to become a conspiracy theorist. People conspire all the time, so shouldn't any sane person suspect some conspiracies? Hijacking the word "conspiracy theorist" to mean nut job seems like exactly the twisting of reality you are advocating to avoid.
- omeid2 8y ago
  counterconspiracy (noun) : a conspiracy to oppose or undermine something (such as another conspiracy) The big agencies are pretty well versed on this, look at the system approach they take on this one: https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Countering-Warren-critics-040167.pdf https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Countering-W... It is not the details of this specific conspiracy that is interesting, but the systematic approach to tackling it.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  In this context, I interpret "conspiracy theorist" as someone who thinks there are relatively large groups of people conspiring, without the majority of people being aware of that. A small conspiracy when playing Diplomacy is believable, but e.g. one in which everyone behind mass media has agreed to put forward a certain message is not. Thus (not having read it myself), Manufacturing Consent could show how emergent properties of mass media might lead to them pushing a certain incorrect world view, rather than proposing a theory that requires the teams behind them to all agree to conspire and none of them to make that public knowledge.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago

reshie 8y ago

even geniuses can be fooled though they are just more likely able to disern right information and think critically about what is being presented but people are not masters of everything nor have the time to disect everything. there are times also when there are not multiple sources and yet true. but you are right blind trust is a fallacy but trust to some extant is necessary. biases has nothing to do with education but one may be more aware of them but i think thats more of a understanding of self or the human condition the scientific method tries to promote undiased results though but they do of course seep in.

dredmorbius 8y ago

I stumbled across an 1874 editorial rewvise war between the British authors and American publisher of Chamber's Encyclopaedia, which provides rare insight into the disagreements over and politicisation of information and its dissemination. My commentary: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chambers_encyclopaedia_editorial_statement/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4xe2k1/chamber... Source: https://archive.org/stream/chambersencyclo00unkngoog#page/n13/mode/1up https://archive.org/stream/chambersencyclo00unkngoog#page/n1... The power to define narrative has always been immense.

JProthero 8y ago
That was an interesting read for me – thanks for the link. I'm interested in how the centuries-old debate about protectionism and free trade has reignited over the past few years, and I'm also concerned about how Wikipedia's editorial community and processes are evolving. It was a surprise to see the two subjects combined like this, but given what you say about the power to define narrative, I suppose it shouldn't have been.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Ha-Joon Chang, mentioned in my commentary, is probably among the best-informed modern scholars on the dynamics of the free trade debate. I'd shared the item with him. and he was kind enough to reply with thanks, though I'm not sure if he's made use of the example. The whole notion of narrative and its power, especially contrasted with discrete facts and fact-checking, is another area I've been exploring, arguably under the sscope of my blog's purview (intentionally both broad and vague, a blessing and curse). Douglas Ruskoff's "Team Human" blog explores this with George Monbiot here, quite well. Ep. 89 George Monbiot "Beyond Salvation and Disaster". Episode: https://shows.pippa.io/teamhuman/ep-89-george-monbiot-beyond-salvation-and-disaster https://shows.pippa.io/teamhuman/ep-89-george-monbiot-beyond... Media: https://feed.pippa.io/public/streams/58ad887a1608b1752663b04a/episodes/5b17df6eb3ae913450c0a2b7.mp3 https://feed.pippa.io/public/streams/58ad887a1608b1752663b04... The theme shows up both in the intro, at 4m30s, and in the conversation, starting at 11m30s, andcontinuing through the rest of the episode.

pmoleri 8y ago

I don't think that blindly trusting wikipedia is nearly as bad as blindly trusting media. Wikipedia, while not perfect, has a way to moderate itself. Media needs to deliver fresh and high impact news, this ends up being an incentive to replicate news from other media without fact checking or a minimum analysis. IMO while money can influence any of them, the incentives for poor content quality in media are worse.

CM30 8y ago
100% agreed with this. The 24 hour news cycle, the obsession with trends, the need for social media shares and the focus on 'get it out quick' over 'research the story well' has annihilated the quality of the media in general, and is responsible for about 80% of the problems facing journalism today.

fakehistory 8y ago

Education is a tricky one too, considering bad actors like Mcgraw-Hill (who probably created all of your children's textbooks for elementary school) whitewashing all the things.