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Of course you think so. And the other side thinks you're wrong.

IgorPartola 6y ago
Right. My point is that I don’t believe everyone I disagree with is trying to spread misinformation. I think Occam’s razor tells me they are much more likely to simply be incompetent. Select few deliberately spread misinformation. The rest simply parrot it as the truth because they haven’t thought it out critically.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  But someone somewhere actually sits behind their computer and dreams up this stuff that then gets seeded and passed on from one gullible mind to another. That's the heart of the problem, the initiators, and what their agendas are. It's not as though memes can be easily traced back to their sources. In fact, that would be a very nice project: to trace back any kind of meme (positive, negative, disinformation, I don't care) to its origin.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    I believe these projects have been done at least to some extent. Certainly the US intelligence community has put out a few bits of information on Russian-led disinformation campaigns. QAnon has been as I understand the most difficult to trace so far because of where it originated. One of the communities I wondered about for a while was The Great Awakening. They had a way of speaking that was so over the top that I couldn’t help but wonder just how real can it be? Specifically, they keep always calling each other “patriot” the way that Soviet citizens called each other comrade. Except, in the Soviet case it was a long thing in the making while TGA popped up overnight on Reddit so where did that come from. And their way of speaking really smelled to me like there were a ton of bots there. So, can you imagine waking up one day and realize that the political identity you’ve taken on and been discussing with people you now consider friends online has been in fact handed to you by a bunch of boys? And on top of that, the very “friends” you were talking to were largely bots? That’s gotta be a rude awakening to say the least.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      This is reminiscent of something I read about the kind of courage and mental fortitude required to break out of a cult or a strongly imposing religion. Basically, the reflex will be to take whatever pressure or evidence there is for seeing that 'x' is bad and to turn it on its head: to see the very act of presenting this information as the bad thing, and to disbelieve the information. Because to believe the information strikes so close to the core ego that the ego will self-protect by rejecting the evidence. So there won't be any rude awakenings, or, at least not many of them.
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        I wonder if that’s what happened with the Native Americans who couldn’t see the Europeans’ sail ships the first time they encountered it (assuming that event actually happened as described). If you can’t fathom something your brain simply rejects that reality and substitutes one that is easier to accept. But I’ve also been reading some stories of people who were seemingly true QAnon believers who after January 20th realized that marshal law wasn’t being declared and that Trump really was leaving and how it seemed to shake them. There was also the woman who called CSPAN if I recall correctly, crying because she felt like Trump betrayed her by distancing himself from the Jan 6th insurrectionists and how she just couldn’t make sense of the world. To think that she is the one who finally saw reality for what it was while others continue to believe that this is all a part of some grand plan... how do you even come out of that?

Right. My point is that I don’t believe everyone I disagree with is trying to spread misinformation. I think Occam’s razor tells me they are much more likely to simply be incompetent. Select few deliberately spread misinformation. The rest simply parrot it as the truth because they haven’t thought it out critically.

jacquesm 6y ago
But someone somewhere actually sits behind their computer and dreams up this stuff that then gets seeded and passed on from one gullible mind to another. That's the heart of the problem, the initiators, and what their agendas are. It's not as though memes can be easily traced back to their sources. In fact, that would be a very nice project: to trace back any kind of meme (positive, negative, disinformation, I don't care) to its origin.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  I believe these projects have been done at least to some extent. Certainly the US intelligence community has put out a few bits of information on Russian-led disinformation campaigns. QAnon has been as I understand the most difficult to trace so far because of where it originated. One of the communities I wondered about for a while was The Great Awakening. They had a way of speaking that was so over the top that I couldn’t help but wonder just how real can it be? Specifically, they keep always calling each other “patriot” the way that Soviet citizens called each other comrade. Except, in the Soviet case it was a long thing in the making while TGA popped up overnight on Reddit so where did that come from. And their way of speaking really smelled to me like there were a ton of bots there. So, can you imagine waking up one day and realize that the political identity you’ve taken on and been discussing with people you now consider friends online has been in fact handed to you by a bunch of boys? And on top of that, the very “friends” you were talking to were largely bots? That’s gotta be a rude awakening to say the least.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    This is reminiscent of something I read about the kind of courage and mental fortitude required to break out of a cult or a strongly imposing religion. Basically, the reflex will be to take whatever pressure or evidence there is for seeing that 'x' is bad and to turn it on its head: to see the very act of presenting this information as the bad thing, and to disbelieve the information. Because to believe the information strikes so close to the core ego that the ego will self-protect by rejecting the evidence. So there won't be any rude awakenings, or, at least not many of them.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      I wonder if that’s what happened with the Native Americans who couldn’t see the Europeans’ sail ships the first time they encountered it (assuming that event actually happened as described). If you can’t fathom something your brain simply rejects that reality and substitutes one that is easier to accept. But I’ve also been reading some stories of people who were seemingly true QAnon believers who after January 20th realized that marshal law wasn’t being declared and that Trump really was leaving and how it seemed to shake them. There was also the woman who called CSPAN if I recall correctly, crying because she felt like Trump betrayed her by distancing himself from the Jan 6th insurrectionists and how she just couldn’t make sense of the world. To think that she is the one who finally saw reality for what it was while others continue to believe that this is all a part of some grand plan... how do you even come out of that?