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This is absolutely right. I've become frustrated with people trying to fight misinformation by just telling anonymous strangers "facts". Algorithms are not goin

This is absolutely right. I've become frustrated with people trying to fight misinformation by just telling anonymous strangers "facts". Algorithms are not going to help win the argument. There are a lot of people who hate those who they perceive to be "elite technocrats". And its not completely unwarranted! Its a really tricky challenge. The "steady state" of conversations online is mutual distrust. Unless we handle this underlying issue, clever algorithms like this will be ignored.

slg 6y ago
I'm reminded of the Jonathan Swift quote: >Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired The problem that specifically deepfakes and generally fake news highlights is that the general public does not have the aptitude, knowledge, time, or motivation to be a true arbiter of facts. We have traditionally outsourced that role to journalists. As a society we have lost faith in journalistic institutions so the onus is now back on the individual. We need a way to offload that truth-finding responsibility back onto a third party that can be trusted. Any system which requires more aptitude, knowledge, time, or motivation from the general public is unlikely to work because lacking those is exactly what got us into this mess.
- biophysboy 6y ago
  The key part of your sentence being "a third party that can be trusted." A trustworthy third party is NOT the group that is "the most smart". People trust locals that they relate to. If we are going to offload responsibility, I personally think it needs to be in the old fashioned democratic pluralism style that we had half a century ago. Local leaders know the people in the area better, and they have the time and motivation to hear the interests of more people.
Swizec 6y ago
> trying to fight misinformation by just telling anonymous strangers "facts" It’s even worse when you realize that most mistruths are factual. You can very easily lie with facts. The texas sharpshooter falaft is a great example. You get 500 samples, take 10 good samples, and say “Look! An objective truth in 10 samples we have success!”. You omit the other 490 You never said a lie, facts only, but the interpretation you lead people towards is a lie. Or a more common example: Thing Y increases your risk of X by up to ten times!!! Risk goes from 0.0001% to 0.001%. It’s completely irrelevant and you got a nice scary clickbait with objective facts.

slg 6y ago

I'm reminded of the Jonathan Swift quote: >Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired The problem that specifically deepfakes and generally fake news highlights is that the general public does not have the aptitude, knowledge, time, or motivation to be a true arbiter of facts. We have traditionally outsourced that role to journalists. As a society we have lost faith in journalistic institutions so the onus is now back on the individual. We need a way to offload that truth-finding responsibility back onto a third party that can be trusted. Any system which requires more aptitude, knowledge, time, or motivation from the general public is unlikely to work because lacking those is exactly what got us into this mess.

biophysboy 6y ago
The key part of your sentence being "a third party that can be trusted." A trustworthy third party is NOT the group that is "the most smart". People trust locals that they relate to. If we are going to offload responsibility, I personally think it needs to be in the old fashioned democratic pluralism style that we had half a century ago. Local leaders know the people in the area better, and they have the time and motivation to hear the interests of more people.

Swizec 6y ago

> trying to fight misinformation by just telling anonymous strangers "facts" It’s even worse when you realize that most mistruths are factual. You can very easily lie with facts. The texas sharpshooter falaft is a great example. You get 500 samples, take 10 good samples, and say “Look! An objective truth in 10 samples we have success!”. You omit the other 490 You never said a lie, facts only, but the interpretation you lead people towards is a lie. Or a more common example: Thing Y increases your risk of X by up to ten times!!! Risk goes from 0.0001% to 0.001%. It’s completely irrelevant and you got a nice scary clickbait with objective facts.