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Our Problem Is Gullibility, Not Disinformation
- adamnemecek 6y agoThis feels like a rehash of "guns don't kill people, people kill people".
- kwhitefoot 6y agoNo it is more like 'guns kill people but a lot of people don't believe that and we need to educate them so that they will understand it'
- _qulr 6y agoThe major difference is that your own brain can stop disinformation, but it can't stop a bullet.
- adamnemecek 6y agoWhy does propaganda work if it's so simple then?
- _qulr 6y agoWho said it's simple? It's simpler than literally dodging a bullet, but that doesn't make it simple.
- adamnemecek 6y agoRight so you can't really stop it right?
- _qulr 6y agoHeh, right. Because there's no degree of difficulty that exists between simple and Neo from The Matrix.
- xkcd-sucks 6y agoMost examples cited in this article seem like problems of faith, in that they concern matters that individual Deplorables cannot (practically) observe themselves. Or of "misplaced" faith, in the case of Jesus, demons and ghosts. Which is not too surprising - people have gotten screwed by faith forever: Uncritical belief of the Church, the State, the salesman or prophet, etc. often leads to the believers' exploitation for the basest of ends. Which is not to say that killing bullshit once and for all is impossible or an unworthy goal, but it's high effort and messy.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> matters that individual Deplorables cannot (practically) observe themselves. During this pandemic, the deplorables continued to farm and deliver food, keeping us alive while the elites burned our cities down. (Dr. VDH.) The deplorables voted in Trump because the elites couldn't be bothered enforcing immigration (the wall) or maintaining factory jobs in the USA (outsourcing to China.) (Dr. VDH.) So I would suggest you develop an understanding of how our country was hollowed out before criticizing the very people the elites destroyed financially. Regarding religion, at the moment, our young people worship Tinder hookups and Instagram selfies, the twin gods of narcissism, instead of Jesus, resulting in the total destruction of the family unit. How's that working out? (RPMH) FYI: you sound exactly like the coastal elites that got us into this mess. The California HSR is a perfect example of how worthless they are - all hot air, no rail. When Trump wins his second election by a landslide, you can refer to this post for the reasons why.
- dmerks 6y agoThe patch to gullibility is critical thinking. Rudimentary critical thinking in any field requires general knowledge of it. Citizens of democracies need to think critically on many topics, hence they need to know a lot in many fields, and to learn ongoingly throughout their lives. Education becomes important. But Education costs a lot... Maybe the solution is to gradually make learning as accessible, inexpensive and beneficial as possible.
- notduncansmith 6y agoI think you’re spot-on with making learning as accessible as possible to have a more informed populace, but making the information available is only half of getting people to take it in. Trauma blocks critical thinking and internal honesty, and we have a massive trauma and PTSD problem, to the point where poverty and food insecurity meaningfully reduces effective IQ. Thankfully MAPS is working on treating PTSD at scale. I have set up a recurring monthly donation and I encourage anyone who values intellectualism to do the same, so that we may swell our ranks with those who are currently too hurt to think clearly.
- spicybright 6y agoCan you be more specific with this "mass trauma" idea? Never heard of it before.
- jdietrich 6y ago>we have a massive trauma and PTSD problem Do we, or are the diagnostic criteria of PTSD so broad that the disorder is being massively over-diagnosed? https://sci-hub.tw/10.1002/da.20586 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1002/da.20586 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.09.006 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.09.006 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/1745691613504115 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/1745691613504115
- pbronez 6y agoCan you provide some more information about MAPS?
- growlist 6y agoCan't we all just trust Snopes though? /s
- jl2718 6y agoEducation? A non-gullible student would not graduate high school. What most people, seemingly author included, consider to be 'knowledge' is no better than rote. Consider that one person can have the exact same experience, and come out of it with exact opposite beliefs. The difference is whether they are told to believe it, movie versus news, novel versus history book. Just try to verify you kids' history lessons with observable non-narrative evidence. If you do have evidence, does it actually prove the entire narrative, or does it simply bolster a tiny piece within a mosaic of myth? In science and law, the standard of proof is massively greater than the standard of disproof. Any 'knowledge' tested by a different standard is at best a guess, most likely dogma, and at worst, propaganda, intentional disinformation. High school teachers assign Orwell, "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past.", and somehow believe that this is a warning about somebody else, that they are not the primary agents of the second statement, and that they are themselves immune to such manipulation. Has a student ever been asked who controls and manipulates them and received a passing grade by pointing the finger right back at the teacher themselves? No; it's always some boogeyman that they have never met, but must girder themselves against with the dogma taught within these walls. And if you don't believe it, not only will the boogeyman get you, but we will fail you and destroy your life. It's for your own good; you'll understand someday. I will choose the most basic fact on his list. I want to see the author prove that the earth is a sphere by his own observations. I can almost guarantee that no mandated high school curriculum teaches even how to do this, nonetheless asks students to do so. The standard of belief is 'rational' narrative, as in, a story that contains no major contradictions within itself, and for expediency, is not subject to cross-examination. Dogma. If I recall correctly, this question was asked in an astronomy PhD seminar at MIT, and nobody knew how to do it. So smug is the author in his ignorance. 'Not believing' should be the default. Narratives should be understood as culture, good to know, possibly true, and likely imperfect, but ultimately just a story that may be learned from just like religion or myth, whether true or not. I have a sense that ancient people understood this better than we do today. His criticism of others is nothing but tribalism. He's not educating in the sense of providing evidence toward a rational conclusion, or even bolstering his own narrative. He's simply labeling other people as lesser than himself. And, to head off any accusations of hypocrisy, to some extent, so am I with him. The point here is that so-called 'knowledge' is an ancient battleground rooted in disparate sets of values. People should know that they are being indoctrinated, and also that it's nearly impossible to survive among other humans without choosing some flavor of that. But it does have implications for your life, whether your own beliefs serve you, harm you, or shames you into serving someone else.
- ZeroGravitas 6y agoI disagree. Taking the religion example. If you look around the world, most people follow their parents faith. It seems likely that many have been exposed to other faiths. Do we think that those other faiths seem less credible and so people are seeing through them on some logical basis? Or has their parents/local community's faith simply spent a lot longer on convincing them it's true. Similarly, the ideas that the author seems to consider dangerous didn't grow in vaccum. I dont think a russian agent could bet his colleagues that he'd get Americans to believe anything they named, like George Washington invented the grilled cheese sandwich. Buy they don't need to convince people of anything specific, just amplify existing messages like: Scientists are lying to you about covid. Which feeds off extensive prep work from "scientists are lying to you about climate change" which is probably the best funded disinformation campaign in history. And is further reinforced by authority positions in their communities, repeating the disinformation. The GOP in it's current incarnation can't exist without disinformation, and so they'll fight any attempt to educate their base, and if they fail they'll just disenfranchise the ones that wise up.
- scsilver 6y ago> Or has their parents/local community's faith simply spent a lot longer on convincing them it's true. As I get older, I dont think its about people really thinking it's true, but more about the consequences of opposing the "truth" that your community, your friends, family, have merged into their identities. If you look it it through network effects, virtue signaling, social status, adopting the communal view of the world will have more benefit to their every day lives than taking a rational view of the world. If the people around me were convinced the sky was orange, and they determine my status, my access to community, my job, my safety net, I would think maintaining their trust in me as more important than proving to them and myself the sky was actually blue. Our human needs are much more immediate than science and facts. Even science faces these communal effects, needing new generations that arent tied into that network to push forward true revolutionary ideas.
- nfjfk9393 6y ago“The saddest part is that we’re not even talking about the problem. We’re just talking about how people are taking advantage of the problem.” Ok so now that you’ve established who is taking advantage of the problem and how, now what?
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoUnfortunately, if you have a subconscious, you have some degree of gullibility / susceptibility to propaganda.