4 ms·

"Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard. Otherwise, why care wha

"Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard. Otherwise, why care what people read and watch?" This is the most interesting point in the article. Why should we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do good things nearly all the time. Strange beliefs rarely cause violence... certainly not often enough to worry about it. Sept 11 was probably the worst case of that, and we worried way too much. Maybe day to day there are more minor things that add up, but there's not a lot of evidence that these minor things are any worse than before. As far as I can tell gay marriage is very widely accepted pretty much everywhere in the country. The SCOTUS decision declaring sexual orientation as protected under the Civil Rights Act was written by ... a Trump appointee. So it really comes down to voting. That's what everyone is worried about: if you believe the "wrong" things you'll vote for the "wrong" person. It's all political. And that makes the war on disinformation seem a lot less noble, and a lot more prone to abuse. After all, everyone already knows who the "right" candidate is, so disinformation is anything that might get the other one elected. That makes the algorithm easy.

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GiorgioG 5y ago
> This is the most interesting point in the article. Why should we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do good things nearly all the time. Storming the Capital, loss of faith in our election system, believing vaccines & masks are a personal choice that doesn't affect others, a loss of common beliefs in America, etc - those seem like rather undesired changes in belief/behavior because of bad information.
- chmod600 5y ago
  Your list includes only one real action: storming the capitol. The rest reinforce my point; you are worried about what other people think out of proportion to what people actually do.
  - octaonalocto 5y ago
    Non-action decisions (e.g. not getting vaccinated) is currently harming other people. Inaction is also harmful.
  - nicoffeine 5y ago
    Disinformation is a legitimate problem, and it's causing more harm than you realize. My step-father has gone from a middle of the road Republican to being objectively disconnected from reality. Before vaccines were available, he refused to quarantine himself to see his granddaughters even though they have existing respiratory issues. He regularly fights with my sister on the phone, mocking her for wearing a mask and social distancing and "hiding in a corner" instead of going to a birthday party on one side of the family. She has been in and out of hospitals since she was a toddler. I remember him back then, doing what a good parent does, tearing out carpets, making sure she got her breathing treatments, and checking on her through the night. Today he claims 600,000 people have not died. He has taken up the past time of walking in to businesses that require masks without one to fight for his "freedom." The kicker is that he has been hospitalized before for asthma related issues, twice in the year before pandemic hit. Thankfully one of his doctors convinced him to get the vaccine. I am concerned about what he thinks and does, which is why I won't allow him to see my daughter anymore. She's too young for a vaccine, and he still belittles me when we talk on the phone for believing the news about the delta variant. Before the election, he told me, it was to smear Trump, and that if Biden won, all of the COVID news would disappear. Now the delta variant is a conspiracy to smear Republican governors. The constant stream of disinformation that he consumes is endangering his life, and if I'd let him, it would endanger the lives of my infant daughter, myself, my wife, my sisters and nieces... it's fucking heartbreaking. Intellectualize and rationalize if you want to. But the capital was stormed on the day Congress was certifying the election. There are people dying of COVID at this very moment who don't believe it is a real disease. Disinformation is real, it is dangerous, and we need to pay attention.
    - skulk 5y ago
      It seems clear that if one takes the position that appointing an arbiter of truth is unacceptable, the only remaining solution is an aggressive investment in education.
IAmEveryone 5y ago
> Strange beliefs rarely cause violence... Yeah, it's great to be in the majority. Ask some Asian folks how their 2020 went. Or Middle Eastern or, for that matter, Indians in the US, ca. 2002. Ask some black defendant how confident they feel to get a fair trial, knowing half their jurors love to watch reruns of COPS. Ask the (surviving) jews at that Philadelphia synagogue how benign they believe the stories about Soros eating babies are. And, fundamentally, ask yourself how good a regulatory system, with some element that measures an outcome, and some element that is regulated, can work when the information flowing between them cannot be trusted. Such feedback-dependent regulatory systems may be your AC connected to a thermometer. Or your elections, which are usually supposed to, for example, react to stories of corruption. There's much love of "free speech" here. If it doesn't matter if the speech is correct or not, that can only mean that speech doesn't make a difference either way. In that case, what's the value of free speech? Or is "speech" some magic thing that can never hurt, but still be useful? In that case, we should just get GPT-3 to give us an endless stream of plausible texts, and the magic fill find the gems in it.

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GiorgioG 5y ago

> This is the most interesting point in the article. Why should we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do good things nearly all the time. Storming the Capital, loss of faith in our election system, believing vaccines & masks are a personal choice that doesn't affect others, a loss of common beliefs in America, etc - those seem like rather undesired changes in belief/behavior because of bad information.

chmod600 5y ago
Your list includes only one real action: storming the capitol. The rest reinforce my point; you are worried about what other people think out of proportion to what people actually do.
- octaonalocto 5y ago
  Non-action decisions (e.g. not getting vaccinated) is currently harming other people. Inaction is also harmful.
- nicoffeine 5y ago
  Disinformation is a legitimate problem, and it's causing more harm than you realize. My step-father has gone from a middle of the road Republican to being objectively disconnected from reality. Before vaccines were available, he refused to quarantine himself to see his granddaughters even though they have existing respiratory issues. He regularly fights with my sister on the phone, mocking her for wearing a mask and social distancing and "hiding in a corner" instead of going to a birthday party on one side of the family. She has been in and out of hospitals since she was a toddler. I remember him back then, doing what a good parent does, tearing out carpets, making sure she got her breathing treatments, and checking on her through the night. Today he claims 600,000 people have not died. He has taken up the past time of walking in to businesses that require masks without one to fight for his "freedom." The kicker is that he has been hospitalized before for asthma related issues, twice in the year before pandemic hit. Thankfully one of his doctors convinced him to get the vaccine. I am concerned about what he thinks and does, which is why I won't allow him to see my daughter anymore. She's too young for a vaccine, and he still belittles me when we talk on the phone for believing the news about the delta variant. Before the election, he told me, it was to smear Trump, and that if Biden won, all of the COVID news would disappear. Now the delta variant is a conspiracy to smear Republican governors. The constant stream of disinformation that he consumes is endangering his life, and if I'd let him, it would endanger the lives of my infant daughter, myself, my wife, my sisters and nieces... it's fucking heartbreaking. Intellectualize and rationalize if you want to. But the capital was stormed on the day Congress was certifying the election. There are people dying of COVID at this very moment who don't believe it is a real disease. Disinformation is real, it is dangerous, and we need to pay attention.
  - skulk 5y ago
    It seems clear that if one takes the position that appointing an arbiter of truth is unacceptable, the only remaining solution is an aggressive investment in education.

IAmEveryone 5y ago

> Strange beliefs rarely cause violence... Yeah, it's great to be in the majority. Ask some Asian folks how their 2020 went. Or Middle Eastern or, for that matter, Indians in the US, ca. 2002. Ask some black defendant how confident they feel to get a fair trial, knowing half their jurors love to watch reruns of COPS. Ask the (surviving) jews at that Philadelphia synagogue how benign they believe the stories about Soros eating babies are. And, fundamentally, ask yourself how good a regulatory system, with some element that measures an outcome, and some element that is regulated, can work when the information flowing between them cannot be trusted. Such feedback-dependent regulatory systems may be your AC connected to a thermometer. Or your elections, which are usually supposed to, for example, react to stories of corruption. There's much love of "free speech" here. If it doesn't matter if the speech is correct or not, that can only mean that speech doesn't make a difference either way. In that case, what's the value of free speech? Or is "speech" some magic thing that can never hurt, but still be useful? In that case, we should just get GPT-3 to give us an endless stream of plausible texts, and the magic fill find the gems in it.