15 ms·

Information overload helps fake news spread

179 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

goalieca 6y ago
I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess. Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive.
- colordrops 6y ago
  That's been true since journalism began as a profession.
- partiallypro 6y ago
  I've always felt that instead of J School, journalists should have majors in topics they are covering and a minor in journalism. When I was in college and worked for the school newspaper I tried hammering this to people, but all the journalism/media professors felt it was a bad idea, probably because it is such a threat to their profession.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    > but all the journalism/media professors felt it was a bad idea, probably because it is such a threat to their profession. Why is it a threat to their profession? We'll still need journalists. and they'll still need training. This seems more like a hiring/staffing problem. Media outlets should start hiring more grads with double majors or non-journalism majors who can write.
  - SkyMarshal 6y ago
    That would be ideal, but many people who major in those topics would likely go into careers doing those things, rather than journalism. However, journalism might make an excellent choice for when they retire but still want something socially impactful to do that leverages their long experience.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    I feel the same way about computer science majors. (At least, the vast majority of them who go into programming, rather than pure theoretical computer science.) Aside from a tiny minority who get to write infrastructure, whose customers are other programmers, the vast majority of programmers will be employed in some domain. I'd rather see programmers have any outside experience... even literature or music or one of those other fields we often deride. The people who majored in that field are likely to be our customers, and when we don't know how they work, we won't be able to serve their needs. At the very least, every programmer should have a minor in some other field. (And ideally not everybody going into the same physics or math fields.)
- timr 6y ago
  "I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess." Same. This year, with the coverage of Covid (an area where I have a certain level of expertise), I've been bombarded with the extremely low quality level of essentially all of the major news providers. They are more than willing to amplify the most speculative voices, credulously, without even basic fact-checking. The ones that depend on advertising are the worst, overall. Writers with no subject-matter expertise will take a scary quote from a single source, won't bother to make even the simplest of efforts to verify the claim, and will publish it just to get the scoop. I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted, but there are some extremely high-profile "scientific" media figures who are constantly broadcasting utter nonsense. And because they heard it from a "scientist" on the news, people will attack you if you rebut it. I am old enough to remember when journalists were skeptical of the people they interviewed, and the rule was that no fact was published without independent verification (read "All the President's Men" for example). 2020 is the year where the news media fell apart for me -- it is all simply entertainment now, which is unfortunate.
  - glennpratt 6y ago
    > I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted Unfortunately, I don't know you or trust you, so this post seems like more noise.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    > I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted Interesting choice you're making there - social acceptance prioritised over journalistic accuracy and scientific advocacy.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      I think its better characterized as making the meta-level point without specifics as various people's disagreements on the object level would drown out the meta-level point. FWIW, I think he made the right decision.
- damnencryption 6y ago
  > Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive. This has been widely studied and seems to be surprisingly effective. When there is lack of expertise or objective metrics, people default to social proof or whatever misleading thing they could use as a measure. Many sales people abuse this and it is written in those manuals as well.
- deepnotderp 6y ago
  Gell Mann amnesia
- esja 6y ago
  Your first paragraph describes the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
- paulz_ 6y ago
  Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote about this experience calling it "Gell-Mann Amnesia." >“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton I've noticed I have this sort of meta Gell-Mann effect where every time I think of that annecdote the news seems much more dubious. Then a short while later I go back to not thinking about it and reading the news as I otherwise would.
  - jasonv 6y ago
    Reading HN though, every assertion from someone who knows something can become a thread of dispute, disagreements and "yeah, but" digressions. So, maybe, who knows anything..
    - onecommentman 6y ago
      “Who knows anything” sounds dangerously close to nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism The problem is nihilists never produce anything of lasting value. Or of any value. It seems to be the posture of those who feel like failures, and justify that perceived failure to themselves by telling themselves that nothing is worth anything. Perhaps others hold that position too. It seems like a dead end in a lot of ways...
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        A lot of Nihlism is about recognizing that even if everything is without intrinsic meaning and arbitrary subjectivity, that you can assert yourself to a meaningful life in spite of it all. I find that a compelling argument personally.
- beefield 6y ago
  Generally, I have tip my hat to The Economist Here. Even on the things I think I know something about, they seem to get their facts straight.
  - m-ee 6y ago
    That’s funny because the first time I saw someone make the OPs comment it was in reference to the Economist. I want to say there was even a catchy term for it but I’m struggling to find it Edit- It was Gell Mann amnesia as described in a comment further down
  - carabiner 6y ago
    I've caught errors about my field (engineering, not software) in other publications, even Popular Science, but the handful of Economist articles on the subject have been spot-on correct on details/nuances. I remember an old hiring ad of theirs. They were looking for "science writers," and they emphasized "scientists who can write, not the other way around."
  - loufe 6y ago
    I have to agree. I've been a weekly reader for over 5 years now and I always find their analyses of my own country (Canada) more eloquent and poignant than our own media. I do recommend carefully choosing which articles to take in without a grain or tablespoon of salt. They have excellent practices but they still have an agenda and a world-view through which they frame things. Sometimes I think I'm being smart and reading between the lines but as the thread's target article aptly points out: I'm so swamped with information I never really go down the rabbit hole of proving/disproving my thoughts on articles. I see the paper as a friend who I find annoying in a few ways but that I nevertheless appreciate and generally trust.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
    Likewise for Ars Technica. They're a specialized source covering technical topics, and they're almost always quite good at it.
- forest_dweller 6y ago
  You are describing the Geil-Mann amnesia effect. > He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
- jancsika 6y ago
  What you are experiencing is called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, named for the author who confirmed the phenomenon in a famous neurological study. There's a short story my Michael Crichton about it you can probably find on Google.
newacct583 6y ago
I sympathize with people who want to see a technological basis for this, I really do. I just don't buy it. We just saw a press conference an hour ago by the executive office of the most powerful nation in the world allege with a straight face that the recent election was tainted by Canadian election machines running malicious software written by Venezuela, Cuba, "likely" China, and directed by George Soros and (from the grave -- I swear I'm not making this up) Hugo Chavez. And obviously evidence was provided for none of this. People are going to believe that. LOTS of people are going to believe that. And it's not because of "information overload". It's just a lie. It's a lie that (1) is tempting for people to believe and (2) that someone is willing to tell. The internet didn't make our brains more susceptible to fake news. It just made our leaders (some of them) more able to get away with lies.
- zygotic 6y ago
  Whole heartedly agree. Nailed it and sailed it.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  The question for me is whether these people are huffing their own product, or they know they are lying. If Sydney Powell sincerely subscribes to the idea that Hugo Chavez, who died seven years ago, hacked the 2020 US election, then that has broad implications about the way we've underestimated the whole Boomer lead poisoning thing.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > And obviously evidence was provided for none of this. what kind of evidence would you expect to see if it was true?
  - loopz 6y ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is just hijacking criticism of authority, to start an authoritarian cult of lies, bullying and manipulation.
    - 6y ago
nprz 6y ago
This constant pushing of stories about Fake News and Misinformation makes it really feel like there's a concerted effort to alter public opinion on censorship and free speech.
- tmp5690 6y ago
  An effort which is as old as history itself.
- theplague42 6y ago
  Maybe the authors think that misinformation is currently a bigger issue than censorship?
  - goalieca 6y ago
    Where to draw the line between misinformation and the government approved version of the truth. The facts of any matter are not always so simple and lies by omission can be as misleading as any falsehood. Our justice system tries to resolve this through an adversarial system. It’s not perfect but I can’t imagine allowing any single entity to determine what the truth is.
    - yokaze 6y ago
      How about drawing the line at the government? My understanding is though, that this is a bit of a straw-mans argument. There is no credible proposal to only allow the government approved version of truth. I thought the marketplace of ideas was a popular concept in the US.
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        you are misinformed: "But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?" -Richard Stengel, Biden Transition Team Member
zyxzevn 6y ago
Most information, also in scientific publications, is full with logical fallacies and other inconsistencies. This again causes people to jump to conclusions on the basis of limited information/evidence. I tried to give a guideline on how to do critical thinking and how to investigate the truth about something. 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 Here is the full guideline: 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... Feel free to comment / add to it.
- ethanwillis 6y ago
  But what's number 3??
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    He covered that under number 6) Unknowns.
- sjg007 6y ago
  I think the phenomenon of unconscious bias is one of the most important concepts to understand because it is so pervasive in our thinking. It's basically part of our think fast / think slow system. It's right up there with circumstantial evidence.
vorpalhex 6y ago
I'm really conflicted over this article because it makes some really good points but is missing the forest through the trees. Information overload is very real, and people are very prone to making mistakes when digesting information from social media. The answer isn't to kill social media or force users to solve CAPTCHAS before posting. It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information. Social media algorithms are harmful, but they're ultimately dumb likelihood solutions that do naive grouping - it just turns out that more partisan/outrageous content tends to be more exciting and elicit more key value actions. The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't).
- damnencryption 6y ago
  Average person in developed countries spend more than few hours consuming media every day even more so in the US. Why do we think this is sustainable? I have always wondered the second order effect of binging so much media and it kind of shows these days with people being dumbfounded/superficial and making connections where none exists.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't). In other words, empower people. I agree but this is part of the struggle. All the con artists tell you they want you to be empowered to make the correct decisions yourself and the other guy is a con artist who bullshits you into thinking he is trying to empower you.
- agentdrtran 6y ago
  > It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information. You can not apply personal solutions to systemic problems.
  - Veen 6y ago
    Another (less fashionable) way of putting it: you can't fix human nature, so you need institutions that mitigate the worst effects.
nillium 6y ago
Shameless plug, but this is something we are working on right now. Social media is a terrible medium for news. Aside from the ability for anyone to post anything, which can easily lead to misinformation, it also sets up the absolute worst incentives. If news organizations are expected to share their reporting for free, and only be able to monetize when someone clicks through to their page -- you end up with clickbait. It also means that virtually all local news is silenced. Almost by definition, local news appeals to a narrow audience, which doesn't lead to the scale social algorithms favor. We're trying to take the convenience and brevity of social news updates, but use them to build a new platform that helps reporters and surface trustworthy, local news. We make tools for newsrooms that then syndicates out to the consumer platform, before an article or video is ever even made. (We are to news what OpenTable is to restaurants.) And through rev-shares, our partners succeed when we do. https://www.forthapp.com https://www.forthapp.com is our consumer side, https://www.nillium.com/newsrooms https://www.nillium.com/newsrooms for the newsroom SaaS.
- garraeth 6y ago
  I hope it works out! I tried registering for updates but got a Cloudflare 502. HN "hug of death"? Once it's sorted out, I'll give it another shot. Quick request: can you please add more details to a faq or something? eg. how much it'll cost for us users, will there be a desktop interface, etc. Thanks!
  - nillium 6y ago
    Thanks -- I will have a look to see whats going on. We definitely want to have you on board! There will be a free ad-supported tier for users, along with some form of paid add on, that we are working on now. At the moment, the main consumer offering will be mobile, but if there is interest, of course that is not set in stone.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nillium 6y ago
    Should be good now, an annoying configuration issue on a day that we got some unexpected interest! I also think we probably have the signups, even if it didn't display a nice confirmation.
pcj-github 6y ago
Apropos that this post appears to be submitted by a bot account, posting 10-20 links per day.
- Balgair 6y ago
  There does seem to be a person behind it, as their comments are not entirely automated, just mostly. But yes, it seems to be a bot account as of the last few months.
jeffbee 6y ago
I don't want to hear anything about information overload on the web when Americans aged 65+ are averaging more than 7 hours of TV every day.
Nacdor 6y ago
I think one of the root causes of this is the increasingly partisan behavior of the "mainstream" media. People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them, they're sick of media outlets that all push the same narratives 24/7 (Russiagate, anyone?), and they're desperately searching for any outlet that will objectively report "all the news that's fit to print" (as the NY Times likes to say). In the past year we saw Andrew Sullivan leave New York Magazine[1], Bari Weiss leave The New York Times[2], Matthew Yglesias leave Vox (which he founded) [3], and Glenn Greenwald leave The Intercept (which he founded) [4]. All of them had one thing in common that Greenwald summed up well: "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles." The mainstream media has created an information vacuum, and the spread of disinformation is a direct result of that. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-you-next-friday.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-... [2] https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-a... [4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
- fokinsean 6y ago
  > People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them I'm fairly sure my family's opinions come straight from the media.
  - dtho 6y ago
    That's the problem he's pointing out. The media doesn't attempt to portray reality objectively or truthfully whatsoever. They have gotten quite good at influencing our opinions without rationalizing those opinions.
- redisman 6y ago
  Substack is a great development. Mostly news consumers seem to be drifting to much worse and even more partisan news "sources" if they leave the mainstream media.
NullIsland 6y ago
This article is interesting, I see the echo chambers of all ideologies. I have the time to look at both sides of a given issue and do not fall on either side of any political or social group. I attempt to post moderate reasonable ideas that are well vetted. But this gets me called a fence sitter. But what is scarier, in my opinion, is the idea of censorship. I would rather wad through crap than see anything censored, aside from clear incitement to commit violence.
dsign 6y ago
The world is complicated and very difficult to understand. Worst, most people have no motivation whatsoever to even try... and it's not just about politics or social policies. I wonder if we would be better off by building incentives for people to qualify themselves during their entire lifetime or at least for as long as they have a right to vote.
tehjoker 6y ago
In the experiment a participant can either create or share a meme, but what about doing neither if the quality level is too low?
jellicle 6y ago
The current largest reasons for the spread of "fake news" are: 1) Fox network profits from doing so 2) Facebook Corp. profits from doing so Neither of those two reasons are "information overload". You know how every once in a while, some email spam network gets shut down and all of a sudden, the global email spam volume gets cut in half? Just from one network? That's what would happen if Facebook and Fox were shut down.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
I think we need some system resembling double-entry book-keeping. Government should do something (actually do a lot) to prevent the spread of fake news, it should label them as such. But somebody must also control what the government is doing. Corporations have solved the problem of needing accurate information with the system of double-entry book-keeping and also with the idea that finances are managed by two parties the "Controller" and the "Treasurer" who are each watching each other.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
I think here's a good suggestion from the article: "... make it more difficult to create and share low-quality information. This could involve adding friction by forcing people to pay to share or receive information. Payment could be in the form of time" This could mean a simple rule such as: "You can only post once a day (for free)"
patcon 6y ago
This also feels like a argument for why telepathy will be exceedingly rare as an evolved trait in the universe ;)
vrperson 6y ago
The article seems to be all over the place and mixes interesting phenomena like human biases and fallacies with pure speculation, like claiming "bots can easily ruin social networks" which they infer from merely running simulations. Obviously their simulation doesn't prove anything about the nature of networks of real humans (as one example). Afaik their Botometer tool is also highly disputed, supposedly having way too many false positives. They also use supposed "independent fact checkers" for reference, when those "independent fact checkers" on Facebook and Twitter are decidedly left leaning. This in turn casts doubt on their conclusions on the differences between Democrats and Republicans (for example something like Republicans are more likely to believe fake news as verified by independent fact checkers - or maybe left leaning fact checkers are more likely to label "conservative news" as fake news). Ironically, the whole article is too long to comment on it all, kind of supporting the title of it (information overload helps spread fake news). I find it very concerning how people start to overly rely on "studies". It really needs to become common knowledge that a "study of this" or a "study of that" really doesn't prove anything just yet. Those studies need to be scrutinized and verified and replicated, and properly interpreted.
- travisporter 6y ago
  I found the article pretty straightforward. Biases are amplified by social networks. The article attempts to simulate some aspects of social networks and explain some biases. I'm not sure how you mean fact checkers are leaning one way or another. Sure, there are different ways to interpret things, but I don't believe it's enough to bias towards either end of the spectrum. To your last point, you are already looking critically at the studies they mention, so why wouldn't everyone?
  - vrperson 6y ago
    You should occasionally fact check the fact checkers. There are no real fact checkers, that is just a self assigned marketing label that some journalists or media outlets have assigned to themselves. Once you have caught them doing it wrong several times, you may understand. As for looking critical at studies: the article didn't look critically at the studies they cited. The article being "straightforward": the problem is that it all sounds plausible, so readers are less likely to question the details.
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Hot take: Social media is the only place to get accurate news. It requires a different approach to filtering and assessing new information. It would be more socially beneficial to better equip people to think critically than it is to give platforms even more power to distort the perception of reality — any locus of concentrated power becomes a tempting target for capture by already powerful interests. The commercial media isn't just biased toward sensationalism and laziness because of the profit motive, it's also a front for intelligence services captured by the security state. Does that sound crazy? offend your sensibilities? This used to be well understood on the political left. Consider how the New York Times was used the manufacture consent for the Iraq War.

179 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess. Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive.

colordrops 6y ago
That's been true since journalism began as a profession.
partiallypro 6y ago
I've always felt that instead of J School, journalists should have majors in topics they are covering and a minor in journalism. When I was in college and worked for the school newspaper I tried hammering this to people, but all the journalism/media professors felt it was a bad idea, probably because it is such a threat to their profession.
- triceratops 6y ago
  > but all the journalism/media professors felt it was a bad idea, probably because it is such a threat to their profession. Why is it a threat to their profession? We'll still need journalists. and they'll still need training. This seems more like a hiring/staffing problem. Media outlets should start hiring more grads with double majors or non-journalism majors who can write.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  That would be ideal, but many people who major in those topics would likely go into careers doing those things, rather than journalism. However, journalism might make an excellent choice for when they retire but still want something socially impactful to do that leverages their long experience.
- jfengel 6y ago
  I feel the same way about computer science majors. (At least, the vast majority of them who go into programming, rather than pure theoretical computer science.) Aside from a tiny minority who get to write infrastructure, whose customers are other programmers, the vast majority of programmers will be employed in some domain. I'd rather see programmers have any outside experience... even literature or music or one of those other fields we often deride. The people who majored in that field are likely to be our customers, and when we don't know how they work, we won't be able to serve their needs. At the very least, every programmer should have a minor in some other field. (And ideally not everybody going into the same physics or math fields.)
timr 6y ago
"I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess." Same. This year, with the coverage of Covid (an area where I have a certain level of expertise), I've been bombarded with the extremely low quality level of essentially all of the major news providers. They are more than willing to amplify the most speculative voices, credulously, without even basic fact-checking. The ones that depend on advertising are the worst, overall. Writers with no subject-matter expertise will take a scary quote from a single source, won't bother to make even the simplest of efforts to verify the claim, and will publish it just to get the scoop. I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted, but there are some extremely high-profile "scientific" media figures who are constantly broadcasting utter nonsense. And because they heard it from a "scientist" on the news, people will attack you if you rebut it. I am old enough to remember when journalists were skeptical of the people they interviewed, and the rule was that no fact was published without independent verification (read "All the President's Men" for example). 2020 is the year where the news media fell apart for me -- it is all simply entertainment now, which is unfortunate.
- glennpratt 6y ago
  > I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted Unfortunately, I don't know you or trust you, so this post seems like more noise.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  > I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted Interesting choice you're making there - social acceptance prioritised over journalistic accuracy and scientific advocacy.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    I think its better characterized as making the meta-level point without specifics as various people's disagreements on the object level would drown out the meta-level point. FWIW, I think he made the right decision.
damnencryption 6y ago
> Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive. This has been widely studied and seems to be surprisingly effective. When there is lack of expertise or objective metrics, people default to social proof or whatever misleading thing they could use as a measure. Many sales people abuse this and it is written in those manuals as well.
deepnotderp 6y ago
Gell Mann amnesia
esja 6y ago
Your first paragraph describes the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
paulz_ 6y ago
Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote about this experience calling it "Gell-Mann Amnesia." >“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton I've noticed I have this sort of meta Gell-Mann effect where every time I think of that annecdote the news seems much more dubious. Then a short while later I go back to not thinking about it and reading the news as I otherwise would.
- jasonv 6y ago
  Reading HN though, every assertion from someone who knows something can become a thread of dispute, disagreements and "yeah, but" digressions. So, maybe, who knows anything..
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    “Who knows anything” sounds dangerously close to nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism The problem is nihilists never produce anything of lasting value. Or of any value. It seems to be the posture of those who feel like failures, and justify that perceived failure to themselves by telling themselves that nothing is worth anything. Perhaps others hold that position too. It seems like a dead end in a lot of ways...
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      A lot of Nihlism is about recognizing that even if everything is without intrinsic meaning and arbitrary subjectivity, that you can assert yourself to a meaningful life in spite of it all. I find that a compelling argument personally.
beefield 6y ago
Generally, I have tip my hat to The Economist Here. Even on the things I think I know something about, they seem to get their facts straight.
- m-ee 6y ago
  That’s funny because the first time I saw someone make the OPs comment it was in reference to the Economist. I want to say there was even a catchy term for it but I’m struggling to find it Edit- It was Gell Mann amnesia as described in a comment further down
- carabiner 6y ago
  I've caught errors about my field (engineering, not software) in other publications, even Popular Science, but the handful of Economist articles on the subject have been spot-on correct on details/nuances. I remember an old hiring ad of theirs. They were looking for "science writers," and they emphasized "scientists who can write, not the other way around."
- loufe 6y ago
  I have to agree. I've been a weekly reader for over 5 years now and I always find their analyses of my own country (Canada) more eloquent and poignant than our own media. I do recommend carefully choosing which articles to take in without a grain or tablespoon of salt. They have excellent practices but they still have an agenda and a world-view through which they frame things. Sometimes I think I'm being smart and reading between the lines but as the thread's target article aptly points out: I'm so swamped with information I never really go down the rabbit hole of proving/disproving my thoughts on articles. I see the paper as a friend who I find annoying in a few ways but that I nevertheless appreciate and generally trust.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Likewise for Ars Technica. They're a specialized source covering technical topics, and they're almost always quite good at it.
forest_dweller 6y ago
You are describing the Geil-Mann amnesia effect. > He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
jancsika 6y ago
What you are experiencing is called the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, named for the author who confirmed the phenomenon in a famous neurological study. There's a short story my Michael Crichton about it you can probably find on Google.

newacct583 6y ago

I sympathize with people who want to see a technological basis for this, I really do. I just don't buy it. We just saw a press conference an hour ago by the executive office of the most powerful nation in the world allege with a straight face that the recent election was tainted by Canadian election machines running malicious software written by Venezuela, Cuba, "likely" China, and directed by George Soros and (from the grave -- I swear I'm not making this up) Hugo Chavez. And obviously evidence was provided for none of this. People are going to believe that. LOTS of people are going to believe that. And it's not because of "information overload". It's just a lie. It's a lie that (1) is tempting for people to believe and (2) that someone is willing to tell. The internet didn't make our brains more susceptible to fake news. It just made our leaders (some of them) more able to get away with lies.

zygotic 6y ago
Whole heartedly agree. Nailed it and sailed it.
jeffbee 6y ago
The question for me is whether these people are huffing their own product, or they know they are lying. If Sydney Powell sincerely subscribes to the idea that Hugo Chavez, who died seven years ago, hacked the 2020 US election, then that has broad implications about the way we've underestimated the whole Boomer lead poisoning thing.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> And obviously evidence was provided for none of this. what kind of evidence would you expect to see if it was true?
- loopz 6y ago
  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is just hijacking criticism of authority, to start an authoritarian cult of lies, bullying and manipulation.
  - 6y ago

nprz 6y ago

This constant pushing of stories about Fake News and Misinformation makes it really feel like there's a concerted effort to alter public opinion on censorship and free speech.

tmp5690 6y ago
An effort which is as old as history itself.
theplague42 6y ago
Maybe the authors think that misinformation is currently a bigger issue than censorship?
- goalieca 6y ago
  Where to draw the line between misinformation and the government approved version of the truth. The facts of any matter are not always so simple and lies by omission can be as misleading as any falsehood. Our justice system tries to resolve this through an adversarial system. It’s not perfect but I can’t imagine allowing any single entity to determine what the truth is.
  - yokaze 6y ago
    How about drawing the line at the government? My understanding is though, that this is a bit of a straw-mans argument. There is no credible proposal to only allow the government approved version of truth. I thought the marketplace of ideas was a popular concept in the US.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      you are misinformed: "But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier. Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?" -Richard Stengel, Biden Transition Team Member

zyxzevn 6y ago

Most information, also in scientific publications, is full with logical fallacies and other inconsistencies. This again causes people to jump to conclusions on the basis of limited information/evidence. I tried to give a guideline on how to do critical thinking and how to investigate the truth about something. 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 Here is the full guideline: 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... Feel free to comment / add to it.

ethanwillis 6y ago
But what's number 3??
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  He covered that under number 6) Unknowns.
sjg007 6y ago
I think the phenomenon of unconscious bias is one of the most important concepts to understand because it is so pervasive in our thinking. It's basically part of our think fast / think slow system. It's right up there with circumstantial evidence.

vorpalhex 6y ago

I'm really conflicted over this article because it makes some really good points but is missing the forest through the trees. Information overload is very real, and people are very prone to making mistakes when digesting information from social media. The answer isn't to kill social media or force users to solve CAPTCHAS before posting. It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information. Social media algorithms are harmful, but they're ultimately dumb likelihood solutions that do naive grouping - it just turns out that more partisan/outrageous content tends to be more exciting and elicit more key value actions. The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't).

damnencryption 6y ago
Average person in developed countries spend more than few hours consuming media every day even more so in the US. Why do we think this is sustainable? I have always wondered the second order effect of binging so much media and it kind of shows these days with people being dumbfounded/superficial and making connections where none exists.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> The fix isn't to try and play legal games with social media providers, but to teach users how the mousetrap works and what are the levers they can control (and the ones they can't). In other words, empower people. I agree but this is part of the struggle. All the con artists tell you they want you to be empowered to make the correct decisions yourself and the other guy is a con artist who bullshits you into thinking he is trying to empower you.
agentdrtran 6y ago
> It's to improve those critical rationality skills and the ability to analyze information. You can not apply personal solutions to systemic problems.
- Veen 6y ago
  Another (less fashionable) way of putting it: you can't fix human nature, so you need institutions that mitigate the worst effects.

nillium 6y ago

Shameless plug, but this is something we are working on right now. Social media is a terrible medium for news. Aside from the ability for anyone to post anything, which can easily lead to misinformation, it also sets up the absolute worst incentives. If news organizations are expected to share their reporting for free, and only be able to monetize when someone clicks through to their page -- you end up with clickbait. It also means that virtually all local news is silenced. Almost by definition, local news appeals to a narrow audience, which doesn't lead to the scale social algorithms favor. We're trying to take the convenience and brevity of social news updates, but use them to build a new platform that helps reporters and surface trustworthy, local news. We make tools for newsrooms that then syndicates out to the consumer platform, before an article or video is ever even made. (We are to news what OpenTable is to restaurants.) And through rev-shares, our partners succeed when we do. https://www.forthapp.com https://www.forthapp.com is our consumer side, https://www.nillium.com/newsrooms https://www.nillium.com/newsrooms for the newsroom SaaS.

garraeth 6y ago
I hope it works out! I tried registering for updates but got a Cloudflare 502. HN "hug of death"? Once it's sorted out, I'll give it another shot. Quick request: can you please add more details to a faq or something? eg. how much it'll cost for us users, will there be a desktop interface, etc. Thanks!
- nillium 6y ago
  Thanks -- I will have a look to see whats going on. We definitely want to have you on board! There will be a free ad-supported tier for users, along with some form of paid add on, that we are working on now. At the moment, the main consumer offering will be mobile, but if there is interest, of course that is not set in stone.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nillium 6y ago
  Should be good now, an annoying configuration issue on a day that we got some unexpected interest! I also think we probably have the signups, even if it didn't display a nice confirmation.

pcj-github 6y ago

Apropos that this post appears to be submitted by a bot account, posting 10-20 links per day.

Balgair 6y ago
There does seem to be a person behind it, as their comments are not entirely automated, just mostly. But yes, it seems to be a bot account as of the last few months.

jeffbee 6y ago

I don't want to hear anything about information overload on the web when Americans aged 65+ are averaging more than 7 hours of TV every day.

Nacdor 6y ago

I think one of the root causes of this is the increasingly partisan behavior of the "mainstream" media. People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them, they're sick of media outlets that all push the same narratives 24/7 (Russiagate, anyone?), and they're desperately searching for any outlet that will objectively report "all the news that's fit to print" (as the NY Times likes to say). In the past year we saw Andrew Sullivan leave New York Magazine[1], Bari Weiss leave The New York Times[2], Matthew Yglesias leave Vox (which he founded) [3], and Glenn Greenwald leave The Intercept (which he founded) [4]. All of them had one thing in common that Greenwald summed up well: "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles." The mainstream media has created an information vacuum, and the spread of disinformation is a direct result of that. [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-you-next-friday.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-... [2] https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-a... [4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...

fokinsean 6y ago
> People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them I'm fairly sure my family's opinions come straight from the media.
- dtho 6y ago
  That's the problem he's pointing out. The media doesn't attempt to portray reality objectively or truthfully whatsoever. They have gotten quite good at influencing our opinions without rationalizing those opinions.
redisman 6y ago
Substack is a great development. Mostly news consumers seem to be drifting to much worse and even more partisan news "sources" if they leave the mainstream media.

NullIsland 6y ago

This article is interesting, I see the echo chambers of all ideologies. I have the time to look at both sides of a given issue and do not fall on either side of any political or social group. I attempt to post moderate reasonable ideas that are well vetted. But this gets me called a fence sitter. But what is scarier, in my opinion, is the idea of censorship. I would rather wad through crap than see anything censored, aside from clear incitement to commit violence.

dsign 6y ago

The world is complicated and very difficult to understand. Worst, most people have no motivation whatsoever to even try... and it's not just about politics or social policies. I wonder if we would be better off by building incentives for people to qualify themselves during their entire lifetime or at least for as long as they have a right to vote.

tehjoker 6y ago

In the experiment a participant can either create or share a meme, but what about doing neither if the quality level is too low?

jellicle 6y ago

The current largest reasons for the spread of "fake news" are: 1) Fox network profits from doing so 2) Facebook Corp. profits from doing so Neither of those two reasons are "information overload". You know how every once in a while, some email spam network gets shut down and all of a sudden, the global email spam volume gets cut in half? Just from one network? That's what would happen if Facebook and Fox were shut down.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

I think we need some system resembling double-entry book-keeping. Government should do something (actually do a lot) to prevent the spread of fake news, it should label them as such. But somebody must also control what the government is doing. Corporations have solved the problem of needing accurate information with the system of double-entry book-keeping and also with the idea that finances are managed by two parties the "Controller" and the "Treasurer" who are each watching each other.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

I think here's a good suggestion from the article: "... make it more difficult to create and share low-quality information. This could involve adding friction by forcing people to pay to share or receive information. Payment could be in the form of time" This could mean a simple rule such as: "You can only post once a day (for free)"

patcon 6y ago

This also feels like a argument for why telepathy will be exceedingly rare as an evolved trait in the universe ;)

vrperson 6y ago

The article seems to be all over the place and mixes interesting phenomena like human biases and fallacies with pure speculation, like claiming "bots can easily ruin social networks" which they infer from merely running simulations. Obviously their simulation doesn't prove anything about the nature of networks of real humans (as one example). Afaik their Botometer tool is also highly disputed, supposedly having way too many false positives. They also use supposed "independent fact checkers" for reference, when those "independent fact checkers" on Facebook and Twitter are decidedly left leaning. This in turn casts doubt on their conclusions on the differences between Democrats and Republicans (for example something like Republicans are more likely to believe fake news as verified by independent fact checkers - or maybe left leaning fact checkers are more likely to label "conservative news" as fake news). Ironically, the whole article is too long to comment on it all, kind of supporting the title of it (information overload helps spread fake news). I find it very concerning how people start to overly rely on "studies". It really needs to become common knowledge that a "study of this" or a "study of that" really doesn't prove anything just yet. Those studies need to be scrutinized and verified and replicated, and properly interpreted.

travisporter 6y ago
I found the article pretty straightforward. Biases are amplified by social networks. The article attempts to simulate some aspects of social networks and explain some biases. I'm not sure how you mean fact checkers are leaning one way or another. Sure, there are different ways to interpret things, but I don't believe it's enough to bias towards either end of the spectrum. To your last point, you are already looking critically at the studies they mention, so why wouldn't everyone?
- vrperson 6y ago
  You should occasionally fact check the fact checkers. There are no real fact checkers, that is just a self assigned marketing label that some journalists or media outlets have assigned to themselves. Once you have caught them doing it wrong several times, you may understand. As for looking critical at studies: the article didn't look critically at the studies they cited. The article being "straightforward": the problem is that it all sounds plausible, so readers are less likely to question the details.

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago

Hot take: Social media is the only place to get accurate news. It requires a different approach to filtering and assessing new information. It would be more socially beneficial to better equip people to think critically than it is to give platforms even more power to distort the perception of reality — any locus of concentrated power becomes a tempting target for capture by already powerful interests. The commercial media isn't just biased toward sensationalism and laziness because of the profit motive, it's also a front for intelligence services captured by the security state. Does that sound crazy? offend your sensibilities? This used to be well understood on the political left. Consider how the New York Times was used the manufacture consent for the Iraq War.