49 ms·

We found a lot of lies during the UK election last month. Not difference in opinions, not beliefs about whay may or will happen, easily proven lies, posted acro

• tengbretson 7y ago
  You might find that the people you see posting and repeating these lies see the things that you post and repeat as lies.
  • organsnyder 7y ago
    And one of the sides has to be right. Sometimes the facts are difficult to ascertain, but so many of the lies spread via social media are easily disproved by consulting primary sources.
    • bilbo0s 7y ago
      >And one of the sides has to be right Not necessarily. In the US one of our presidents taught us a long time ago that "both may be" wrong, and "one must be" wrong.
    • DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
      Perhaps the following is obvious, but other possibilities may exist: - both sides are wrong - the participants are unwittingly talking past each each other Etc.
    • JackFr 7y ago
      But the thing is, while facts are objectively true or false, a policy choice can't be objectively right. What you often see is, policy masquerading as facts. "If you accept X then we need to do Y." "I don't think we should do Y" "Then you reject facts." Something everyone seems to have forgotten is that intelligent, well-informed, people of good will can look at the same facts and come up with different policy prescriptions.
      • claytongulick 7y ago
        As I've gotten older, I've started to doubt the idea that there are any objective facts at all, or at least if there are, the human brain has a limited capacity to comprehend and communicate them. (Edit) This doesn't mean I don't believe in truth, right/wrong etc... it means that I'm constantly balancing what's most likely to be trueish - subject to higher quality information at a later time.
      • anigbrowl 7y ago
        a policy choice can't be objectively right A policy choice is the linkage of a fact to a particular goal; while few policy choices are so simple as to admit of a binary choice, you can certainly rank them on a gradient. Of course, it helps if your goal is clearly definable and you maintain awareness of consistency. Otherwise, a goal of, say, improving life expectancy might be satisfied by a eugenics policy which made unpersons of those with medical conditions that would lower life expectancy.
        • JackFr 7y ago
          But a goal cannot objectively be right or wrong. It could be agreed upon, but it can never be true in the sense that objective facts are true. To go even further, people may agree on the 'what' of a goal, but disagree on the 'why' of a goal, which very much inform what policy choices they are amenable.
    • claytongulick 7y ago
      Even more than this- the desire to silence and destroy those who disagree, sometimes physically. Some have called this increased polarization. I see it as a slide towards violent authoritarianism.
    • ideonexus 7y ago
      > but so many of the lies spread via social media are easily disproved by consulting primary sources. I wish this were true. I used to post snopes links and primary sources to Baby Boomer posts on Facebook, but it's hopeless. They either don't trust the fact-check, can rationalize it away, or just don't care. One of the most shocking realizations of my adult life has been learning that a very large portion of my otherwise high-functioning friends will believe anything, no matter how crazy or self-contradictory, if it reinforces their sense of self-righteousness.
      • organsnyder 7y ago
        Oh, no doubt. Easily disproving something is very different than convincing someone that it's disproven.
      • meheleventyone 7y ago
        And a whole bunch of people that see the minority or unpopular opinion as more valid because of it.
      • pnako 7y ago
        Why exactly should they trust Snopes in particular, as opposed to Washington Post, Fox News, RT, the North Korean news agency, etc.
  • gbrown 7y ago
    They frequently do see things in that way - and they're wrong. In fact, they're worse than wrong, because many people see the dueling assertions of fact and give up on knowing the truth of a situation altogether. This is a classic disinformation technique. We do have the ability to determine truth from fiction, it just takes more work than cynically throwing up your hands and smugly concluding all sides are lying.
    • etangent 7y ago
      The desire to "correct" other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • dragonwriter 7y ago
        No, the desire to correct other people who are wrong is the fundamental impulse of pedantry. The desire to compel others to conform to one’s ideal of correctness is the fundamental impulse of authoritarianism. ...but also libertarianism, for a particular aspect of correctness.
        • claytongulick 7y ago
          Huh? Can you explain? My understanding is that the core value / principle of libertarianism is individual liberty. How do you derive compelling others from that?
          • Jamwinner 7y ago
            Yeah, I agreed until his comment went off the rails there. I have noticed a movement to try to brand libs as 'crypto-republicans' recently for whatever reason. Its okay, and rational to not only think along 2 (or 3 or 5) party lines.
          • dragonwriter 7y ago
  • iso1631 7y ago
    The biggest problem from the last 10 years is the spread of "everyone's entitled to an opinion". It seems that objective truth no longer exists in the eyes of the population. This is both a cause and a consequence of the defunding of journalism and the change of the profession from news to views.
    • claytongulick 7y ago
      Erm... defunding journalism by who? Private funding is making the situation worse. Public funding is the instrument of authoritarian regimes- state sponsored media. I think the root cause is lack of objective, critical thinking skills, and the glorification of "how it makes you feel" being more important than "is this reasonable". I.e. emotion driving reason, rather than reason driving emotion.
      • iso1631 7y ago
        By society. We don't want to fund people to separate fact from fiction, yet we lack the time and ability as a population to do it ourselves, so we latch onto outlets (especially celebrities) that seem to match our world view, and we treat what they say as gospel.
        • lukifer 7y ago
          I think the vast majority of humans are simply disinterested in objective truth, except to the extent it's actionable in our day-to-day lives; otherwise, our sense-making is driven largely by the utility of social signaling: https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ See also: Donald Hoffman's experiments in truth-maximizing vs. fitness-maximizing: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25450
    • quotemstr 7y ago
      Isn't everyone entitled to an opinion though? What you're hitting on, I think, is that the so-called "toxicity" of the internet is just broad disintermediation. Previously, a few people controlled the public narrative. Now, everyone does. Turns out most people don't very much like the worldview that the media elite pushes. Journalism is dying because it's become not only useless as a means of information dissemination --- new media is better at that --- but also because journalists have become contemptuous of the public. They have only themselves to blame.
  • watwut 7y ago
    In the root, there are people who knowingly lie. Hitler knowingly lied. Stalin knowingly lied. Many many people lie being fully aware they lie. The hell, average maanger lies.
• xiphias2 7y ago
  The problem with lies in politics for me is that every politician needs to do them to stay competitive. Also every party has politicians with different objectives, which makes things even harder. Also a good leader should be well compensated, at the same time people are envious of politicians who make a lot of money legally, which makes corruption for politicians necessary. The only improvement I see is decentralization, which is a very slow, but powerful process. The Gutemberg printing press showed that it is possible, and Bitcoin is doing the same thing right now, but I think superior technology for organizing people and resources is the only solution.
• bilbo0s 7y ago
  I don't know if ignoring lies is necessarily a problem. Because what are the realistic chances that anyone responding to non factual information, is responding with factual information? Probably pretty low on the net if we're being honest. That said, yes, we absolutely cannot ignore the toxicity in its entirety. Ignoring it entirely is how little old ladies at church bible studies wind up dead. There are certainly classes of toxicity that it's just military sense not to ignore. Religious and ethnic extremism, etc. Basically anything that is going to cause issues with physical violence. To my mind, violence is the line.
• bjt2n3904 7y ago
  > Ignoring them doesn't fix the problem. "The problem". What problem are we talking about again here? Is the problem that people are believing wrong things, or the spread of polarization and toxicity? I don't care if people believe "wrong things". How's that old song go? "All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest"? People will always believe whatever they want to, regardless of "evidence", regardless of history, regardless of persuasion. "Post-truth" society is such a ludicrous term. There was never a "truth society" to begin with. Never. If someone doesn't want to change their mind, you're tilting at windmills. Doubly so if this person is an anonymous account. What I care about is stopping the spread of toxic and divisive stereotypes. Look at the front page of Reddit. Every other post is a screenshot of an outrageous anonymous tweet, or a picture of a receipt with a nasty note on it, or a text message conversation. Look at how the public receives this: "Who cares if it's real or fake? The point is that it reinforces my stereotype of 'them'. We know 'they' exist, and we must do something about 'them'." That's what's driving polarization and toxicity. The urge to respond with outrage to anonymous trolls. This is a problem we can fix by down voting and moving on.
  • mwcampbell 7y ago
    > I don't care if people believe "wrong things". But those beliefs lead to actions, which have negative consequences, which can affect us all.
    • banads 7y ago
      Indeed, but attacking that with anger, outrage, and witch hunts rather than tact is not only ineffective, it may even create a positive feedback loop.
      • anigbrowl 7y ago
        Actually, it is rather effective. Your immune system doesn't rely on tact once a particular foreign body proves to be hostile or dangerous; rather tt initiates inflammation and countermeasures.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• nitwit005 7y ago
  I have trouble seeing responding as much of a fix, although it depends a bit on the platform. On Reddit, Facebook, and the like, there is a pattern where you have highly upvoted/liked posts, where the top comment is about how the thing is obviously wrong. Most people just glance at headlines, image, or whatever, and don't read articles or examine comments. Those comments about it being wrong only help inform the subset of people who bother to look at comments.