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The worst thing about widespread fake information is the ease with which you can convince yourself that everything you don't like is fake. We don't really have

The worst thing about widespread fake information is the ease with which you can convince yourself that everything you don't like is fake. We don't really have a defense against it that allows for people with opposing perspectives to coexist. I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Not a truth checker; that's far too dangerous and easily abused. But a system that just checks for consistency, combined with a "web of trust" where you can see the connections to people with different perspectives who you know are NOT liars/can connect to events you KNOW are true. That might help people trust information from outside of their comfort zone and identify problems with their own outlook. There's precedent for that kind of a thing in the math world. MetaMath is an example of a system that verifies proofs based on substitution rules alone, plus whatever axioms you add to the system. Natural language news stories that need to correspond to reality are obviously a much different beast, and maybe it's impossible to do something equivalent with knowledge that isn't as rigid/formal as math, but it's tempting to try. Could easily backfire and make the problem worse if done improperly, though. The risk is that such a system could be taken over/hijacked my ideologically motivated individuals to reinforce their own ideas and hide inconsistencies rather than shine a light on them.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
My solution is to just hang out in meatspace, and assume everything I can't physically observe doesn't exist. This has been a surprisingly effective solution.
- creato 7y ago
  This seems like it is how (non-ironic) flat earthers come to be.
  - jdance 7y ago
    The motions of the sun and seasons (my personal experience) are much easier explained by the "round" model :) The truth from ground level is more like "I can't actually know if it's round or not, because the scale is invisible from here". I readily admin I have not seen a round earth and can't say that I know for sure (in the end not even my own memory can be trusted, so I can never really know). But even with that the flat model is really horrible. My point being, I'm sure theres some more weird psychological phenomena that makes people want to believe in a flat earth, rather then hanging out in meat space.
randomsearch 7y ago
The worst thing about widespread disinformation is that it convinces many people to vote in a way that conflicts with their interests.
knzhou 7y ago
> I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Bad news: the political narratives of whatever party you don't like are self-consistent, and perfectly consistent with the facts that they hear about. The people you think are ignorant are already seeking out news from sources they know and trust, and they already evaluate new information in the context of whatever they already believe. The issue is just not as simple as you suggest.
- didericis 7y ago
  Don't get me wrong, in no way am I suggesting this is an easy problem to fix. I'm aware of how good people are at cramming huge amounts of knowledge into a siloed yet consistent narrative (and I am not claiming myself to be completely innocent of this either, though I think I try fairly hard not to). I'm also well aware of the extreme difficulty in making a system that can automatically check for consistency in the way I'm describing. However, there are chinks in ideological armor which, if given the right light, can cause breaches and get people to collaborate and understand one another better. I would argue that the current lack of any form of reliable, extensive consistency checker that people can trust (ie, a SYSTEM they can trust rather than a group of people) leads people to silo themselves into small, isolated networks. They don't operate outside of their network, even though there might be information out there somewhere that's valuable and would cause their worldview to expand, because they know there are at least some nefarious actors putting out inconsistent/untrue information, and it's too hard to identify. If there were some way to automatically "expand" your axioms and see how much of the world they can explain while maintaining their consistency, it could theoretically be a non biased, trustworthy way of testing your assumptions of the world outside of your own, small, limited network, and might help people recognize what parts of the world it is and isn't explaining.
  - pixl97 7y ago
    I'm not sure any human system is self consistent. Our entire society is built on incomplete information.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

My solution is to just hang out in meatspace, and assume everything I can't physically observe doesn't exist. This has been a surprisingly effective solution.

creato 7y ago
This seems like it is how (non-ironic) flat earthers come to be.
- jdance 7y ago
  The motions of the sun and seasons (my personal experience) are much easier explained by the "round" model :) The truth from ground level is more like "I can't actually know if it's round or not, because the scale is invisible from here". I readily admin I have not seen a round earth and can't say that I know for sure (in the end not even my own memory can be trusted, so I can never really know). But even with that the flat model is really horrible. My point being, I'm sure theres some more weird psychological phenomena that makes people want to believe in a flat earth, rather then hanging out in meat space.

randomsearch 7y ago

The worst thing about widespread disinformation is that it convinces many people to vote in a way that conflicts with their interests.

knzhou 7y ago

> I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Bad news: the political narratives of whatever party you don't like are self-consistent, and perfectly consistent with the facts that they hear about. The people you think are ignorant are already seeking out news from sources they know and trust, and they already evaluate new information in the context of whatever they already believe. The issue is just not as simple as you suggest.

didericis 7y ago
Don't get me wrong, in no way am I suggesting this is an easy problem to fix. I'm aware of how good people are at cramming huge amounts of knowledge into a siloed yet consistent narrative (and I am not claiming myself to be completely innocent of this either, though I think I try fairly hard not to). I'm also well aware of the extreme difficulty in making a system that can automatically check for consistency in the way I'm describing. However, there are chinks in ideological armor which, if given the right light, can cause breaches and get people to collaborate and understand one another better. I would argue that the current lack of any form of reliable, extensive consistency checker that people can trust (ie, a SYSTEM they can trust rather than a group of people) leads people to silo themselves into small, isolated networks. They don't operate outside of their network, even though there might be information out there somewhere that's valuable and would cause their worldview to expand, because they know there are at least some nefarious actors putting out inconsistent/untrue information, and it's too hard to identify. If there were some way to automatically "expand" your axioms and see how much of the world they can explain while maintaining their consistency, it could theoretically be a non biased, trustworthy way of testing your assumptions of the world outside of your own, small, limited network, and might help people recognize what parts of the world it is and isn't explaining.
- pixl97 7y ago
  I'm not sure any human system is self consistent. Our entire society is built on incomplete information.