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The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. Now that anybody ca

• gameswithgo 6y ago
  I don't think you can effectively inoculate the average person against this stuff with education. But I hope I am wrong. Is there any evidence it is possible?
  • base698 6y ago
    I don't think you can educate an above average person either. Unless you've done in depth study of the techniques, and most educated people haven't either. In addition, some of the techniques work even if you know them.
  • quasse 6y ago
    Finland has specific curriculum in schools teaching kids how to critically evaluate information they find online: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fict... They study historical propaganda campaigns, how to lie with statistics, and critical thinking. I can say that having been through a similar curriculum in high school (implemented on the initiative of a very thoughtful literature teacher) it has been one of my most valuable mental tools I possess throughout my adult life. Being able to understand and identify logical fallacies has helped me critically evaluate the information I consume many times over. Of course, any program like this has the problem that it needs to be implemented by a trusted source, or it will be attacked as "indoctrination" (whether or not that is the truth). I can see that as a major challenge in the US where 50%+ of the population is convinced that the government is out to get them at any one time.
  • colechristensen 6y ago
    It’s like a more complicated version of teaching people to recognize phishing attacks, I think a belief that the median human isn’t capable of learning about their weaknesses seriously underestimates humans. You just need to frame it correctly.
  • throwaway2245 6y ago
    > I don't think you can effectively inoculate the average person against this stuff with education. A lot of school curriculums ostensibly include critical thinking skills because this is seen as important, but don't tend to teach this in practice. Classes tend to focus on how to jump the hoops of getting good grades (without accepting any critical analysis of the grading system). Are you then really teaching children to be critical, or really teaching them that it's best to conform to what they are told? It becomes difficult to teach children critical thinking skills, because of the way schools are presented to them as an objective authority. I think this work can be done, however - and is most often done by lone wolf teachers acting alone and outside of classroom norms. That's certainly my experience.
  • wobbegongz 6y ago
    It has been done studies of education and gullibility. Sadly enough people who has some education, like a masters degree, was more gullible then people who lacked education. It was first at PhD-level that education seemed to help. The explanation was that people with some education become prideful and believed they know more then they did, easy targets for gullibility. But people lacking education had often street smarts and was less susceptible. And the ones with phd:s had learned how complicated things really are and was often reluctant to take a hard opinion about things they did not know much about.
• busterarm 6y ago
  It's worse than that. We're seeing the teaming up of governments and giant corporations to control the narrative and tell people what's true and what isn't. It's the literal definition of fascism. And you see it being championed by people as defending against "the greatest threat to our democracy".
  • lilactown 6y ago
    That's not the literal definition of fascism but it's also Not Good(tm).
    • busterarm 6y ago
      If you think that's the case, you don't know your history. It's exactly the tactic of Mussolini. Edit: And when he did it, most of the western world/press fawned on him and praised him as a genius until he went and allied himself with Hitler.
      • ketzo 6y ago
        I mean, since this is an argument about semantics > a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader is the definition of fascism. This is a tool often deployed by fascists.
        • busterarm 6y ago
          And saying that something is "the (very) definition of" something is a colloquialism drawing comparison that dates back at least to James Madison and the Federalist Papers. No. 47, if you'd like to read it.
      • eloff 6y ago
        That's still not how you use the word "literally". It is a technique used by fascist regimes, communist regimes, dictatorships (basically totalitarian regimes of all stripes.) It is a separate concept from fascism. EDIT downvoters seem to have weak English skills...
• chrisco255 6y ago
  You've failed to make the case that the government is not a "bad actor". They've used all sorts of manufactured consensus techniques to get us into unjust wars or to give up our liberties (i.e. mass surveillance, lockdowns, etc) for over-blown threats. We aren't going to get education from the government. Open debate and discussion are really the only cure for propaganda.
  • whoisburbansky 6y ago
    Not disagreeing with most of what you're saying here, just wondering if you mean manufactured consent, like the Herman and Chomsky book, not consensus.
    • chrisco255 6y ago
      Yes, I was referring to Chomsky's "manufactured consent", but I suppose consensus works as well here.
  • CrazyPyroLinux 6y ago
    > Open debate and discussion are really the only cure for propaganda. I think "cure" is too strong a word; certainly it is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient. (See: the state of most debate and discussion.) I don't know what would be a cure, or even if that's even possible. Censorship definitely seems to be the wrong approach. Since it's hard to improve what you can't measure, perhaps this attempt to measure censorship will be helpful.
    • Clubber 6y ago
      It takes time, but it does cure it. The biggest problem with censorship is it locks a state into conservatism. What is conservative now was liberal 20-50 years ago. When you censor new ideas, you're stuck 20-50 years ago.
    • Pokepokalypse 6y ago
      . . . for example: "open debate" will accomplish nothing, if we are continually spending time debating whether or not racism and genocide are immoral. We fought wars over this. I am very much for "free speech" - but at some point, you have to shut certain topics out of reasonable debate, because at the end of the day, if we have to keep debating things like this, we've learned nothing.
• square_square 6y ago
  The reasoning course should start at first grade
• AussieWog93 6y ago
  >The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques I don't know where you're from, but it's part of the Victorian (possibly Australian) curriculum for all year 12 students. And we still ended up with Rupert Murdoch.
  • naringas 6y ago
    just because it's in the curriculum doesn't mean it will be taught well. consider (for example) k-12 mathematics pretty much anywhere...
    • jml7c5 6y ago
      Ah, but that was intentional! We didn't want people to really understand statistics, because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. ;-)
    • CodeMage 6y ago
      You hit the nail on the head there. And it's not just K-12 math, either. I don't know about Australia, but I can see what it's like here in the US. I moved here 7 years ago, and my son has gone through a public elementary school and is currently in the last year of a public middle school. If it was just one year or just one teacher or even just one school (or one district), I could write it off to bad luck. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that the whole system is abysmal.
    • AussieWog93 6y ago
      Agreed on k-12 maths, but the analysis of persuasive techniques was actually taught quite well and comprehensively, at least when I went through school (finished in 2011).
    • falcolas 6y ago
      As someone currently tutoring an 8th grader in math: The curriculum is not really much different than what I went through in the 80's and 90's. They're still learning Algebra going into High School, and lots of work with fractions, percentages, interest rates, area, volume and so forth leading up to it. The kids still loathe word problems. The basics are just being taught differently.
• tobr 6y ago
  Can I ask for some kind of documentation or reference for the causal relationship you are asserting here? Specifically a documented example of a democratic government that has deliberately restricted education on manipulation techniques because it might make their own use of it less effective.
• d23 6y ago
  Did you or the responders read the article? This reads like an assumption that the article is about tech companies in the United States and their effects to combat election misinformation. It's not. The part about the United States says this: > While the United States saw a small uptick in blocking, mostly driven by individual companies or internet service providers filtering content, the study did not uncover widespread censorship. And you say: > Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information in hope that bad actors will not influence the public. The first major heading in the article is this: > Poland blocked human rights sites; India same-sex dating sites Not exactly the same thing as individual companies trying to combat misinformation. Even if those things could be twisted as good faith efforts, how would this help make politics more honest? Having a conversation about the United States is fine, I suppose, but I'd much rather understand how actual governments are censoring things around the world. It's at least what the article is mostly about. If nothing else, it'd be nice for discussions here to actually have some relation to the article rather than being something people quickly upvote and jump in to espouse whatever preconceived opinion they had.
  • Der_Einzige 6y ago
    HN really needs a way to force people to have at least clicked on the article before posting. Maybe something where the article has to be clicked on, and then a X minute timer is started so that people will be strongly incentivized to read the article before commenting.
    • gruez 6y ago
      Then I'll just click the link, read some memes on reddit, then come back once the timer runs out.
      • Der_Einzige 6y ago
        Of course you will, but the point is that many people like you will find such a process more of a hassle than it's worth. My solution would reduce the amount of this happening significantly, even if it won't stop every do-badder...
• newguy1234 6y ago
  Agree. Another big problem I've noticed is that there are so many partisan news sources. If you are liberal, you go to CNN which has a liberal spin to it. If you are conservative, fox news. The problem is each one is adding their own biases to it. I saw this clear as day when I was watching live streams during the Portland federal courthouse protest. I would watch these for several hours per day as a form of entertainment. When I read the news articles written the following day, I was completely shocked at how much bias was present in the mainstream news media. During these protests it essentially went like this: during the day, the protest was 100% peaceful, hardly any police. Literally a perfect 100% peaceful protest. As night came, the crowd would shift. The peaceful people would leave and then a new group would start showing up, dressed in all black and start doing full blown violence against police. Starting fires, destroying private property and many similar illegal and dangerous stuff. The following day I read articles on CNN that said there was very little violence and it was almost entirely peaceful. This was false because there was tons of violence at the night. When you read articles in fox news they say the protest was mostly violent. This was also false because the day time protest was 100% peaceful. This type of news reporting is pushing division politics and social media further fans the flames because people can confirm their narrative and also get false reporting from idiots on twitter/facebook which spreads misinformation. I could also tell this is heavily influencing people's view on the world because I would debate people on reddit. For liberal people, they would link me CNN and washington post articles to support their arguments. If I argued with conservatives, they would link me fox news and breitbart articles. This is what they're linking to me as their "proof" to support their argument. If I responded by saying that fox news/cnn is biased reporting, they would jump to personal attacks at me, almost like this was their favorite football team I was bashing.
  • WalterBright 6y ago
    This is hardly new. "60 Minutes" was infamous in the 1960s for the egregious slanting of their segments. It was so bad that the smarter people being interviewed by them would demand that the interview be simultaneously filmed by their own people. As for riots, my dad remarked to me that the TV media would represent the crowds as large or small simply by where they pointed the camera and the zoom level used. And they would, depending on their agenda. Mass media has always been heavily agenda based.
• antris 6y ago
  It's a real shit situation. The fact that we cannot agree on facts in politics is truly frightening and I cannot see an easy way out of it. Perhaps in 20-30 years we will see social media as something akin to smoking. Something super dangerous, addictive and a mind virus. That's my most optimist hope. Around the time of Snowden leaks, I decided to cancel my Facebook, Instagram, etc. accounts. I am still a YouTube junkie, it's hard to give up. But right now I think that's my only "AI algorithm curated wormhole" type of content that I consume. Even partly doing a "social media diet" has significantly improved my well-being. I was really surprised to see how much my mentality changed from the experiment. Haven't looked back since.
• bitwize 6y ago
  ⓘ Claims about censorship in the United States are disputed. Click here for more info: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
  • easterncalculus 6y ago
    I will never understand why people feel like reasonable conversation is something to be only techically legal and limited in every capacity possible, instead of something we should try and pursue. I've seen this argument come up all the time as justfication for the destruction of ideas in good faith and rarely ever for actual harassment or intimidation. It's ironcially almost always linked in bad faith, to misrepresent the weight of whatever being replied to.
    • bitwize 6y ago
      > I will never understand why people feel like reasonable conversation is something to be only techically legal and limited in every capacity possible, instead of something we should try and pursue. Because we've learned in the past decade or so that the "marketplace of ideas" fallacy is false. Ideas aren't traded like market goods; rather, they spread like disease. And the way to prevent dangerous ideas like Nazism from threatening society is the same as the way we prevent diseases like COVID from threatening society: containment. Isolate the afflicted, and implement measures to limit the exposure of everyone else.
      • raxxorrax 6y ago
        Crude ideas are like snakes and the more you struggle against them, the more allure they have for others. Or just use some Nietzsche quote, I don't care. People disputing the marketplace of ideas want to be authoritative voices in my experience. If we had been a little more relaxed in the face of objection, we might have fared better. Anyway, if you are correct, we would need an authority on truth and I see a lot of problems already. Frankly, literature is full of examples why this is a bad idea, but don't let me stop you.
• api 6y ago
  > The problem is that we didn't teach people about manipulation techniques because that was governments' favourite tool to control the masses. Now that anybody can reach anyone with any information, bad actors use these techniques to control people to their advantage. Governments' are now in an awkward position - ramp up education in these areas and forever give up a tool that worked for ages, or censor the information in hope that bad actors will not influence the public. That is by FAR the best summary of the issue I have read. Analogy: It's as if we've been living behind castle walls and now those walls are gone. We can now be directly attacked by enemy armies, whereas before we could only be practically reached by our own government's police and military. Having been sheltered for so long, we don't know how to hold our own without those walls.
• idlewords 6y ago
  I'm curious—who prevented you from reading the article, which has nothing to do with your comment?
• zyxzevn 6y ago
  I made a small article about how to investigate the truth about something. https://saidit.net/s/Solutions/comments/50i5/how_to_investigate_the_truth_fact_checking_the/ https://saidit.net/s/Solutions/comments/50i5/how_to_investig... The first steps are: 1) logical fallacies 2) the scientific method .. And I think that these should be part of basic education. Then we have 4) possible fraud/crime 5) bias 6) Unknowns. Which help to understand the limits or problems with different conclusions. And 7) solutions. is how to work towards a common acceptable solution