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I'm particularly dismayed at the absence of a viable path forward. How can the public learn to perceive truth from disinformation from misinformation when the i

I'm particularly dismayed at the absence of a viable path forward. How can the public learn to perceive truth from disinformation from misinformation when the impetus for such widespread change can only come from the implicated institutions themselves? It appears to me that our school curriculums and the mass media and the major social platforms are involved. Where else can the general population find truth and begin to recognize the difference?

TinkersW 6y ago
Teach logic in school so people can recognize fallacious arguments, it will also help combat the barrage of nonsense spread by China & Russia as most of it rests upon logical fallacies(Whataboutism is a prime example).
- faitswulff 6y ago
  So first we have to fix education...
- patcon 6y ago
  I don't have much faith in any single educational approach to deal with changes that are coming at us in sub-12-year timelines. We have to fix education, but that fixes prospective 12-year-out challenges, which I think we can safely assume we haven't the first clue what they'll be. For our current challenges, we must change the space outside minds, to add assistive tools that help untrained minds read the landscape better.
  - TinkersW 6y ago
    Logic is literally a toolkit for dealing with BS, and can be taught in one semester, so no it would not take 12 years. Make it a required class in high school.
    - patcon 6y ago
      Good point. I suppose I just don't think education on frameworks of the individual mind are the main path out of this. Frameworks of the social spaces and relationships between minds are where I'd place my bets. I feel re-education campaigns, essentially sowing of specific knowledge into minds, are overrepresented in the solution space, prob because it's how we did it in the past. I'm more a believer in primarily changing/repairing the SHAPE of the network, and deemphasizing focus on the content flowing through it. Of course, neglecting either is ignorant. I just think we've leaned in recent history quite hard on hand-tuning information flowing in the network, and the world is changing in ways that weaken that
    - finiteseries 6y ago
      US government is a required class in high school.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Logic is hopelessly useless in dealing with the kinds of BS you encounter in most discussions. It's trivial to construct logical arguments that are utterly false or misleading. A lot of the disagreements you'll see people complain about aren't even about logic - they are about the very premises. Let's take just one simple example: is the Earth actually warmer than it was 50 years ago? Of course, the real answer is yes. But to actually believe this in the middle of a very cold winter, you would have to either become a climate scientist yourself, or trust in the scientific community - a classic appeal to authority fallacy if I ever saw one!
      - throwawayboise 6y ago
        Another example: Is the earth warmer 100 years ago than it was 10,000 years ago. Yes, but obviously not because of anything humans did. So another logical fallacy: climate change theory is based on cherry-picked data.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        That's as simple as explaining to someone the difference between 'climate' and 'weather'. You don't need to be a climate scientist and you don't need to trust the scientific community, you could simply look at the recorded average temperatures for the last 100 years or so and then you could make up your own mind about this. There aren't many problems of that magnitude that would require so little in terms of evidence and understanding as that one. Once you agree on the basic terminology.
- jl6 6y ago
  Beware of logic alone, because it works just as well with false axioms and gives no tools for navigating the map between the precise discrete objects of pure abstract logic and the fuzzy constructs of reality.
faitswulff 6y ago
Taiwan’s strategy for combating disinformation from its belligerent neighbor is quite interesting: https://cpj.org/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-combatting-disinfor/ https://cpj.org/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-comba... > Each of our ministries now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, they're in charge to make within 60 minutes an equally or more convincing narrative. That could be a short film, that could be a media card, that could a social media post. It could be the minister herself or himself doing a livestream. It could be our president going on a standup comedy show. It could be our deputy premier watching a livestream of a video game. > Our observation is that if we do that, then most of the population reach this message like an inoculation before they reach the disinformation, and so that protects like a vaccination.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  That sounds very pragmatic and effective, thanks for posting. Could such a service exist within China itself, though? I'd not be surprised if a US-based 'minister' immediately encountered a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting them.
- breatheoften 6y ago
  This is a rather beautiful idea -- and sounds to be rather beautiful in implementation. Taiwan really is a special place if you've ever had the good fortune to visit. I used to go to Kaohsiung repeatedly over the years when I did Oceanographic research -- my first visit the Love river was borderline industrial waste and it's shores kept with the theme. From one trip to the next though it had been transformed. I don't think I've ever seen part of a city "become beautiful again" as fast as the Love river ...
patcon 6y ago
Tools like https://pol.is/home https://pol.is/home give me hope. (It also got it's first big showcase in Taiwan, who sibling comments mention) The importance is to develop tools that allow us to perceive which ideas are fringe, which are in the liminal space between groups, which are at the center of groups large & small. We can do the rest of the nuanced social computation so long as we have this info. Assistive tools that put intuitive layers on dimensionality reduction techniques (like Principal component analysis, and others) and imho the key to getting through this current crisis
dennis_jeeves 6y ago
>How can the public learn to perceive truth from disinformation from misinformation. They cannot. Hence politicians/bad guys thrive.
IgorPartola 6y ago
There are several ways forward. Some are incompatible with our current way of life in the US but work elsewhere. Others you might not find palatable. People need something to believe in. Religion can be an answer. If we were all Roman Catholics we might not need to question who won the election because there would be no elections, just clergy. If we all believed in universal humanism we wouldn’t be fighting race and class wars in our police departments. If we all believed in communism we wouldn’t be fighting about distribution of wealth because there would be nothing to distribute. If the US was actually 50 tiny countries, each could choose better what they believe in. Vermont and Texas have very little in common with each other both geographically and socially. One path forward is to do what the USSR did: come down hard on being uneducated. It was culturally unacceptable to be an anti-intellectual in the late USSR. Today in the US you have people like Bush winning presidential campaigns against people like Kerry because Kerry is too intellectual and Bush is a “salt of the earth” kind of guy. We don’t trust smart, preferring accessible. Another path is to have a unifying event that galvanizes the country. WWII certainly got people to be more on the same page than not... At the cost of millions of lives of course because humans will be oblivious to anything but the most obvious things put in front of them. Education can help, if you accept that it is a form of indoctrination. Few college grads or those with advanced degrees believe in the flat earth. Is that something you are ok sacrificing? Basically, it’s trade offs. You can’t have universal absolute freedom and consensus on what facts are because if people are free to believe that our politicians are lizard people from another planet without much consequences to that lunacy, some will.
- nradov 6y ago
  The Roman Catholic Church has always supported some level of separation between church and state. They're happy to be named as an official state religion but don't want a theocracy.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    That’s only because they really want to be elevated above monarchs. Check out the history of Florence and the Medici family for a great example of the kind of separation the RCC is after.
throwawayboise 6y ago
> Where else can the general population find truth and begin to recognize the difference? Watch CNN, then watch Fox. Now you have the lies. So throw all that away. Look at the what the people involved in the issue actually said. Not what Twitter says they said, or what Facebook says they said, or what the opposing political party says they said, but what the people actually said. Then make up your own mind.
- krapp 6y ago
  How do you know what the people involved in the issue actually said, if you can't trust any media source that provides quotes or transcripts? Are you going to personally interview everyone involved?
fellellor 6y ago
Is “you don’t need to know” a bad answer?

TinkersW 6y ago

Teach logic in school so people can recognize fallacious arguments, it will also help combat the barrage of nonsense spread by China & Russia as most of it rests upon logical fallacies(Whataboutism is a prime example).

faitswulff 6y ago
So first we have to fix education...
patcon 6y ago
I don't have much faith in any single educational approach to deal with changes that are coming at us in sub-12-year timelines. We have to fix education, but that fixes prospective 12-year-out challenges, which I think we can safely assume we haven't the first clue what they'll be. For our current challenges, we must change the space outside minds, to add assistive tools that help untrained minds read the landscape better.
- TinkersW 6y ago
  Logic is literally a toolkit for dealing with BS, and can be taught in one semester, so no it would not take 12 years. Make it a required class in high school.
  - patcon 6y ago
    Good point. I suppose I just don't think education on frameworks of the individual mind are the main path out of this. Frameworks of the social spaces and relationships between minds are where I'd place my bets. I feel re-education campaigns, essentially sowing of specific knowledge into minds, are overrepresented in the solution space, prob because it's how we did it in the past. I'm more a believer in primarily changing/repairing the SHAPE of the network, and deemphasizing focus on the content flowing through it. Of course, neglecting either is ignorant. I just think we've leaned in recent history quite hard on hand-tuning information flowing in the network, and the world is changing in ways that weaken that
  - finiteseries 6y ago
    US government is a required class in high school.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Logic is hopelessly useless in dealing with the kinds of BS you encounter in most discussions. It's trivial to construct logical arguments that are utterly false or misleading. A lot of the disagreements you'll see people complain about aren't even about logic - they are about the very premises. Let's take just one simple example: is the Earth actually warmer than it was 50 years ago? Of course, the real answer is yes. But to actually believe this in the middle of a very cold winter, you would have to either become a climate scientist yourself, or trust in the scientific community - a classic appeal to authority fallacy if I ever saw one!
    - throwawayboise 6y ago
      Another example: Is the earth warmer 100 years ago than it was 10,000 years ago. Yes, but obviously not because of anything humans did. So another logical fallacy: climate change theory is based on cherry-picked data.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      That's as simple as explaining to someone the difference between 'climate' and 'weather'. You don't need to be a climate scientist and you don't need to trust the scientific community, you could simply look at the recorded average temperatures for the last 100 years or so and then you could make up your own mind about this. There aren't many problems of that magnitude that would require so little in terms of evidence and understanding as that one. Once you agree on the basic terminology.
jl6 6y ago
Beware of logic alone, because it works just as well with false axioms and gives no tools for navigating the map between the precise discrete objects of pure abstract logic and the fuzzy constructs of reality.

faitswulff 6y ago

Taiwan’s strategy for combating disinformation from its belligerent neighbor is quite interesting: https://cpj.org/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-combatting-disinfor/ https://cpj.org/2019/05/qa-taiwans-digital-minister-on-comba... > Each of our ministries now has a team that is charged to say if we detect that there is a disinformation campaign going on, but before it reaches the masses, they're in charge to make within 60 minutes an equally or more convincing narrative. That could be a short film, that could be a media card, that could a social media post. It could be the minister herself or himself doing a livestream. It could be our president going on a standup comedy show. It could be our deputy premier watching a livestream of a video game. > Our observation is that if we do that, then most of the population reach this message like an inoculation before they reach the disinformation, and so that protects like a vaccination.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
That sounds very pragmatic and effective, thanks for posting. Could such a service exist within China itself, though? I'd not be surprised if a US-based 'minister' immediately encountered a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting them.
breatheoften 6y ago
This is a rather beautiful idea -- and sounds to be rather beautiful in implementation. Taiwan really is a special place if you've ever had the good fortune to visit. I used to go to Kaohsiung repeatedly over the years when I did Oceanographic research -- my first visit the Love river was borderline industrial waste and it's shores kept with the theme. From one trip to the next though it had been transformed. I don't think I've ever seen part of a city "become beautiful again" as fast as the Love river ...

patcon 6y ago

Tools like https://pol.is/home https://pol.is/home give me hope. (It also got it's first big showcase in Taiwan, who sibling comments mention) The importance is to develop tools that allow us to perceive which ideas are fringe, which are in the liminal space between groups, which are at the center of groups large & small. We can do the rest of the nuanced social computation so long as we have this info. Assistive tools that put intuitive layers on dimensionality reduction techniques (like Principal component analysis, and others) and imho the key to getting through this current crisis

dennis_jeeves 6y ago

>How can the public learn to perceive truth from disinformation from misinformation. They cannot. Hence politicians/bad guys thrive.

IgorPartola 6y ago

There are several ways forward. Some are incompatible with our current way of life in the US but work elsewhere. Others you might not find palatable. People need something to believe in. Religion can be an answer. If we were all Roman Catholics we might not need to question who won the election because there would be no elections, just clergy. If we all believed in universal humanism we wouldn’t be fighting race and class wars in our police departments. If we all believed in communism we wouldn’t be fighting about distribution of wealth because there would be nothing to distribute. If the US was actually 50 tiny countries, each could choose better what they believe in. Vermont and Texas have very little in common with each other both geographically and socially. One path forward is to do what the USSR did: come down hard on being uneducated. It was culturally unacceptable to be an anti-intellectual in the late USSR. Today in the US you have people like Bush winning presidential campaigns against people like Kerry because Kerry is too intellectual and Bush is a “salt of the earth” kind of guy. We don’t trust smart, preferring accessible. Another path is to have a unifying event that galvanizes the country. WWII certainly got people to be more on the same page than not... At the cost of millions of lives of course because humans will be oblivious to anything but the most obvious things put in front of them. Education can help, if you accept that it is a form of indoctrination. Few college grads or those with advanced degrees believe in the flat earth. Is that something you are ok sacrificing? Basically, it’s trade offs. You can’t have universal absolute freedom and consensus on what facts are because if people are free to believe that our politicians are lizard people from another planet without much consequences to that lunacy, some will.

nradov 6y ago
The Roman Catholic Church has always supported some level of separation between church and state. They're happy to be named as an official state religion but don't want a theocracy.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  That’s only because they really want to be elevated above monarchs. Check out the history of Florence and the Medici family for a great example of the kind of separation the RCC is after.

throwawayboise 6y ago

> Where else can the general population find truth and begin to recognize the difference? Watch CNN, then watch Fox. Now you have the lies. So throw all that away. Look at the what the people involved in the issue actually said. Not what Twitter says they said, or what Facebook says they said, or what the opposing political party says they said, but what the people actually said. Then make up your own mind.

krapp 6y ago
How do you know what the people involved in the issue actually said, if you can't trust any media source that provides quotes or transcripts? Are you going to personally interview everyone involved?

fellellor 6y ago

Is “you don’t need to know” a bad answer?