4 ms·

> Most progressive thinking is moving towards more legalization and treatment, vs banning and punishment... Treat it like we’re starting to treat drugs I'm all

> Most progressive thinking is moving towards more legalization and treatment, vs banning and punishment... Treat it like we’re starting to treat drugs I'm all for the direction that drug policy is going (towards more treatment, less prison time - I live in Oregon and we're on the forefront of this in the US) but I'm not sure how this would work in regards to misinformation. How do we get conspiracy theorists into treatment? Won't they just figure that's part of the conspiracy to re-educate them? And a lot of this disinformation is coming from bad actors with intent to harm. The epistemic gap is, I think the most serious problem we face now. We can't address other serious problems like climate change or even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's disinformation. We seem to be completely unprepared to deal with this. The immune system offers an analogy - we need a societal immune system that attacks disinformation in some way. No idea how we get there, though.

abernard1 6y ago
> even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's disinformation. During the last year, we have seen the following claims from public health authorities affiliated with well-regarded scientific institutions: - Vitamin D does nothing - Vitamin D helps - You should wear masks - Masks are not actually that helpful - The Trump attempts to stop travel from China are racist and terrible (Schumer, Pelosi) - We need to shut down most transportation and not just airports - We need to lockdown all non-essential businesses - Hollywood is an essential business, but churches and restaurants aren't - Lethality of COVID-19 is 2-5% - Lethality of COVID-19 is ~0.2-0.4% And just in the last couple days (highly coincidentally with no bearing at all to politics), there has been a flood of reports that Chicago, NY, and San Francisco are using to justify full openings of their economy. Those scientific reports say that the lockdowns are at best useless. At what point have the "experts" been right this year? Which of those things should we have labelled misinformation? Attempting to install a technocratic version of truth has never worked, and we should have the grace to allow "wrong" things to be said. The experts, so-called, have been inconsistent and wrong through this whole debacle.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's certainly not a good idea to identify anything that deviates from the public expert consensus as "misinformation", but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem of verifiably wrong claims spreading. For example, Chicago and San Francisco have not fully opened their economy. I'm skeptical that the resolution to this problem looks anything like "information control", but it seems terribly naive to expect the problem will resolve itself when it's so easy to be ensnared by it.
- throwaway9980 6y ago
  The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view, the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se, rather because we know that when we are emotionally distressed it is more difficult to be rational. Basically: everyone needs to calm down.
  - abernard1 6y ago
    > The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media. They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them was not stated). According to their own standards, the experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The same people saying one thing and then retracting a few months later.
  - cle 6y ago
    This is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof, widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug analogy, telling someone to “calm down” is like telling a junkie to “just quit”. It’s not going to break the feedback loop.
generalizations 6y ago
> Won't they just figure that's part of the conspiracy to re-educate them? I mean, it would literally be re-education.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Re-education is a tainted word, sadly. If someone is indoctrinated and fed only lies and half truths then the only real solution is to be educated on truth. Learning from the work of others is easiest, but doing ones own experiments is certainly possible.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    > the only real solution is to be educated on truth The key part of re-education that's so distasteful is when someone else decides what truth is, and makes others learn it.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      I don't mean to condone trying to force people to change their minds. Just trying to point out the negative association is unfortunate. Everyone works from whatever information they have, past experience, natural tendencies, etc. And people _can_ break out of an poorly-informed viewpoint. (I grew up in one for many years.) But the process must be cooperative or internally motivated. BTW, it's interesting how misinformation can overwhelm proven information. Much like spam and bot activity accounts for email and Internet traffic it's easy to lose the signal among the noise. We're all trying to adapt to find the signal. (At least those of us who aren't intentionally producing noise.)

abernard1 6y ago

> even getting COVID vaccines out to people because there's disinformation. During the last year, we have seen the following claims from public health authorities affiliated with well-regarded scientific institutions: - Vitamin D does nothing - Vitamin D helps - You should wear masks - Masks are not actually that helpful - The Trump attempts to stop travel from China are racist and terrible (Schumer, Pelosi) - We need to shut down most transportation and not just airports - We need to lockdown all non-essential businesses - Hollywood is an essential business, but churches and restaurants aren't - Lethality of COVID-19 is 2-5% - Lethality of COVID-19 is ~0.2-0.4% And just in the last couple days (highly coincidentally with no bearing at all to politics), there has been a flood of reports that Chicago, NY, and San Francisco are using to justify full openings of their economy. Those scientific reports say that the lockdowns are at best useless. At what point have the "experts" been right this year? Which of those things should we have labelled misinformation? Attempting to install a technocratic version of truth has never worked, and we should have the grace to allow "wrong" things to be said. The experts, so-called, have been inconsistent and wrong through this whole debacle.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It's certainly not a good idea to identify anything that deviates from the public expert consensus as "misinformation", but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem of verifiably wrong claims spreading. For example, Chicago and San Francisco have not fully opened their economy. I'm skeptical that the resolution to this problem looks anything like "information control", but it seems terribly naive to expect the problem will resolve itself when it's so easy to be ensnared by it.
throwaway9980 6y ago
The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view, the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se, rather because we know that when we are emotionally distressed it is more difficult to be rational. Basically: everyone needs to calm down.
- abernard1 6y ago
  > The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media. They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them was not stated). According to their own standards, the experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The same people saying one thing and then retracting a few months later.
- cle 6y ago
  This is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof, widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug analogy, telling someone to “calm down” is like telling a junkie to “just quit”. It’s not going to break the feedback loop.

generalizations 6y ago

> Won't they just figure that's part of the conspiracy to re-educate them? I mean, it would literally be re-education.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Re-education is a tainted word, sadly. If someone is indoctrinated and fed only lies and half truths then the only real solution is to be educated on truth. Learning from the work of others is easiest, but doing ones own experiments is certainly possible.
- generalizations 6y ago
  > the only real solution is to be educated on truth The key part of re-education that's so distasteful is when someone else decides what truth is, and makes others learn it.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    I don't mean to condone trying to force people to change their minds. Just trying to point out the negative association is unfortunate. Everyone works from whatever information they have, past experience, natural tendencies, etc. And people _can_ break out of an poorly-informed viewpoint. (I grew up in one for many years.) But the process must be cooperative or internally motivated. BTW, it's interesting how misinformation can overwhelm proven information. Much like spam and bot activity accounts for email and Internet traffic it's easy to lose the signal among the noise. We're all trying to adapt to find the signal. (At least those of us who aren't intentionally producing noise.)