27 ms·

How to Mislead with Facts

422 points by denial 5y ago

known 5y ago
donw 5y ago
The problem is policy. Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks COVID is not a problem. Doesn't mask, hasn't had a single shot, all the rest. Bob is terrified of COVID. Masks up at home, space bubble helmet outside, all the rest. The only outcome that works is Alice and Bob agreeing that they have different risk preferences. That they each should live their lives in accordance, but that they have no right to force each other to adopt the same behaviors. Bob gets used to doing a lot of stuff over Zoom, and Alice gets used to doing a lot more Zoom calls than she did before. What if, instead, Bob tries to force the entire world to wear masks all the time, and undergo an endless stream of boosters, all in order to satisfy his risk preference? Alice will respond in-kind, and now we're in a tit-for-tat situation. Endless retaliation. Now, imagine that Bob has political power, and can mandate his desires into law. Bob has now used deadly force -- the police -- to coerce Alice into doing what he wants. Alice, being a big fan of consent, is having none of it... and that's where we are today. Same would be true if the roles were reversed.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
- stirfish 5y ago
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    There's a big difference between "can't go to a restaurant without vaccine" and "must be vaccinated".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- coliveira 5y ago
  Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks that wearing seat belts in airplanes is not necessary...
- mindslight 5y ago
  Thank you for your example of how to mislead with non-factual strawmen. This example might be connected to reality if: 1. There actually was a law requiring individuals "wear masks all the time". 2. There actually was a law requiring individuals to get an "endless stream of boosters". 3. Alice respected the boundaries of private businesses that made wearing respiratory protection or vaccination a requirement of associating with them. 4. Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing respiratory protection, rather than violating their personal space or perhaps even assaulting them. 5. Alice paid the costs of her own healthcare, and/or her "insurance" company were efficient enough to charge for her expected increased costs. 6. Healthcare providers were able to freely disassociate with Alice as to not have an undue burden on their resources due to the results of Alice's choices. 7. Alice displayed rational recognition of the scientific and legal realities she was dealing with, rather that irrational rejection of such. 8. Alice displayed some understanding of historical precedents, as pandemics are infrequent events that only appear novel. I'm a libertarian, so if you want to discuss practical ways of making it so that different value judgements can coexist, I'm all for it. It starts with acknowledging the existing non-independence like the points I listed, and will generally be about nuanced corrections to the medical consensus rather than wholesale rejection. But really, it's fallacious to frame the larger situation as being about individual freedom when the overriding characteristic is political herd behavior. What has really happened is an abrupt change in prevailing conditions, combined with professional political machines preaching simplistic easy answers that play to peoples' biases.
  - stirfish 5y ago
    >Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing respiratory protection, I've found that a lot of people think of the masks like a gas mask - supposed to keep everything bad out. They are more like the breath guard at the salad bar - keeping you from exhaling droplets six feet in front of you. Bob's mask protects Alice more than it protects Bob.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      If you're still making do with an ersatz cloth mask, sure. I've been wearing a P100 from the start of the pandemic. Both bowls of political Kool Aid are actively harmful - framing PPE as being about protecting others has also damaged the discourse. Edit: also, I do agree that keeping stuff out of the air is preferable to filtering it after the fact (especially with mucous membranes etc). This concern is addressed somewhat by (3), and also by the additional point that Alice needs to demonstrate empathy of understanding and respecting Bob's choice as well.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  What if Bob is afraid of other people firing their guns in their backyard because he doesn't want to get killed by stray bullets. It just doesn't work anymore because the risk Alice and Bob are taking depends more on what other people do than what they themselves do. After all Bob isn't gonna kill himself with a stray bullet. Bob not shooting guns but Alice shooting guns while pointing in Bob's house direction doesn't solve the problem.
  - donw 5y ago
    Anybody unable to grasp the difference between "virus with a sub-1% mortality rate for healthy working-age adults" and "inbound suppressive fire" does not get a seat at the risk-discussion table.
beachy 5y ago
This article is desperately in need of some examples. I can't believe there isn't one.
- paulsutter 5y ago
  Imagine papers with conflicting results. One side cites one subset of papers. The other side cites the other subset. Both feel the other are are disingenuous. Both sides are citing true facts (“these papers exist”), both sides are wrong (the data is in fact inconclusive)
- metaphor 5y ago
  I thought the generalized examples here[1] were objectively adequate. Using real world examples in this context strikes me as dancing into a mine field and a dismissal of the nuanced exercise towards understanding that the author suggests[2]. [1] https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/2022/01/Mislead-with-Facts_Three-Primary-Ways-of-Misleading-with-Facts.jpg https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/202... [2] https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/2022/01/Mislead-with-Facts_Four-Ways-of-Understanding-Facts-1.jpg https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/202...
- throwawayarnty 5y ago
  One example: people who simply state “women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes” to imply the advantage of being a man vs a woman. The reality of how this number is calculated (eg averages across professions, even though men and women tend to work different professions, part time vs full time is not taken into account) suggests the conclusions that come from this 82 cents number is more nuanced than the initial statement.
  - Ma8ee 5y ago
    And then you can take another step and ask why professions dominated by women in general are less well paid than similar ones dominated by men, and why it is mostly women who reduce their work hours while the kids are small and why not more men do the same.
oreally 5y ago
"There are no facts, only interpretations." - Nietzsche
- zekica 5y ago
  Scientific method tries to get as close as possible to facts. The issue is that popular press and "influencers" ignore limitations in studies and always tell just their interpretations while pointing to "the science".
  - rory 5y ago
    Aside from interpretation, a major issue is the press and "influencers" selecting to promote studies that affirm their preconceived notions, and simply ignoring other studies that contradict them.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    It's not even limitations. It's studies that are non-peer reviewed, or non-replicated (not failed to replicate sometimes, just hasn't yet been replicated). Especially certain subjects where poor, biased, studies seem rife. They take a study and run with it because a scientific study is "science", even if a study is just one step one the way to an accepted truth. Sometimes is more explicit, cherry-picking certain studies over others; possibly even dismissing those with the "bad" result as biased (or *-ist).
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      Not all science is equal, either. A paper published in an evolutionary psychology journal is not as valid as the theory of evolution itself. Yet, we tend to lump everything in under "Science".
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Tries to, but it too is flawed; misinterpretation of numbers, falsifying of numbers, publishing papers as a means to inflate one's own ego / CV, not publishing studies that don't look positive, and of course, companies and industries funding studies into the positive parts of their 'thing', see for example the campaign against 'fat' in the eighties (funded by the grain and sugar industries), being replaced with the campaign against sugar and carbs in the past two or so decades. I'm sure all of those studies had merit, had adequate numbers, were peer reviewed and everything... but they were still made with an Agenda, and worse, picked up by the mainstream media so that they could push lifestyle advice, diets, and promote one category of products over another. The "Truth" is in the middle, of course, and to make a completely opinion based and unscientific statement, too much of anything / overconsumption is a bad thing, but that's too vague a statement or advice; people like being told "avoid doing / eating this" and "do / eat that instead", sticking to simple rules as a lifestyle choice.
Brannon121 5y ago
[flagged]
erwincoumans 5y ago
cherry picked article :)
Nursie 5y ago
> What if we really wanted to understand what was going on in a way that accounted for all the facts and their various frames and interpretations? Then we are demonstrating a level of good faith and interest that seems missing in most discourse. I like the drive behind this - to really get to the bottom of things and promote rational comprehension rather than have people simply sniping at each other with misunderstood datapoints - but I'm not sure a lot of the people who are engaging in such behaviour are really that interested. As mentioned in the article, what they are really after is ammunition. Still, I welcome this, as it's far better than just throwing up our collective hands and deciding any attempt to improve the quality of public discussion is necessarily censorship.
darawk 5y ago
I love the idea of this article, but it doesn't address the reason things are the way they are. Facts get checked for literal accuracy because that's what's easy to actually do in a reasonably unbiased way. We stop there not because that's all we want, but because everything after that is too messy to even come close to systematizing. If they've got a well thought out framework for systematizing high quality contextualization, i'd love to hear about it, though.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased. It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they check (cherry picking).
  - cto_of_antifa 5y ago
  - medstrom 5y ago
    I would ask you to please identify the ones to which you apply this criticism, for epistemic hygiene.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
      I mostly encounter the ones in Germany, so I doubt it would be much use to you. For example correctiv.org or even https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ which is from the public TV network (government funding). I remember trying to verify the claims about "Trump lied x zillion times" at some US fact checking portal (I think from some major newspaper, maybe NYT or Washington Post), and all the supposed "lies" were also bullshit, like taken out of context, misinterpreted in extreme ways and so on in typical "fact checker" fashion. Really it doesn't matter what sites I list, because they are all shit. The very act of calling themselves "fact checkers" should give it away. Just pick any of them and read their "checks" with a critical mind. Anybody can call themselves a "fact checker", it is a fake claim to authority. Isn't Snopes also a renowned "fact checker"? I think some scandals regarding their founders came to light recently, but I don't remember the details.
TuringTest 5y ago
Adversarial wielding of facts could be the basis for a new model of public knowledge, one that corrects the shortcomings of current news media and social networks. Causal mapping [1] websites can aggregate the back and forth of heated discussions, eliminating emotional responses and distilling the core ideas of each opposing position. Such compilation of facts an argument in a readable, neutral format (e.g. see Kialo)[2] could work like the academic debates of old, allowing facts to be analysed in context and the validity of arguments to be tested on their own merits, not on their emotional appeal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causal_mapping_software#Causal_mapping_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causal_mapping_softwar... [2] https://www.kialo.com/ https://www.kialo.com/
zerop 5y ago
The PR teams create perceptions and narratives by misleading with facts on social media, in ways mentioned in this article. But I think people get it after a while and it can't be used for long term perceptions and narratives.
ncmncm 5y ago
The New York Times mastered all this long ago. It is not necessary to lie. All you need is to be selective about what truths you tell, and where. Some goes on the front page, some on page 13, other bits nowhere at all. Hans Blix's UN reports, before the invasion, about Iraq's entire lack of any WMD whatsoever were too important to completely ignore, but were easy enough to bury in a back page. The entire lack of any primary source information indicating Russian interference in the 2016 election was easy to avoid mentioning anywhere.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Their best method is hiding editorial and misinformation with references to earlier stories where the opinion or falsehood is in a (sometimes unattributed) quote, but in the later story is stated as a well-known fact. That's why they're in court with Palin right now.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  Misrepresenting facts in this way is still a form of lying. Speaking technical truths doesn't change that. Most lies aren't complete fabrications, honestly, even when they do contain a few.
  - zaphar 5y ago
    The most effective form of lying is lying by omission. It's harder to detect, easier to defend as just ignorance, and is perhaps more effective than outright false claims.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Why don't we make a law around it? I'm tired of politicians weaseling themselves out of difficult situations by saying "oh, I forgot about that". It's your job to bring important, relevant information to the table, damn it.
      - dolni 5y ago
motohagiography 5y ago
Faster heustistic is to check not whether the facts are true, but if the implied conflict that connects them is real. The old adage about how "dog bites man," may be true but it's not news, whereas "dog bites capitalist oppressor" is essentially all news these days, and it may even be construed as not entirely untrue, even though it seems obvious the dog has not developed class consciousness and thrown off the leash of exploitation and seized the means of food production in its righteous jaws of justice on behalf of the global oppressed, but by manufacturing the conflict that links the facts, an entirely contrived fabrication qualifies as not entirely un-true. Simply, just ask whether the facts are used as decoration and plumage for what reduces to an extravagent lie.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Hi - where is that "dog bits capitalist oppressor" from btw? Google only has this comment. While I've been developing "news/internet literacy" for decades, I found it insightful to focus not just on facts but the spin and intent of fact presentation. Would love to read more if you've got some thoughts/links :)
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    Thanks! All of my comments are original content, unless I have plagerized them from much smarter people who tolerate my company. It's more than spin, the basic unit of a story is a conflict, and you decorate it with facts. The question is whether the conflict is real, or produced by the logic of a presupposed idea (an ideo-logy). Instead of marxism in the example above, let's take the idea that the world is under the influence or control of evil forces, and you have been selected by God to thwart them, which seems bonkers from the outside, but it's also the theological basis of Christianity. (this is friendly fire) In that view, "dog bites man," becomes, "God smites man," because it has told the story using a conflict that originated in the logic of that idea. This premise that ideology can manufacture conflict that gets decorated with facts to produce stories probably scales pretty well. The decorative facts remain true and even legitimately associated, but the conflict that yields the story might have been fabricated. Most of us believe that our ideologies are some version of the substrate of reality or the most encompassing set of intellectual abstractions. As I get older, I think the only reliable source of qualitative truth may be laughter because it's involuntary, but even then, that's mostly sentiment. Anyway, thanks for the prompt. Fun thoughts.
specialist 5y ago
Tinkerbell School of Progress. Clap louder and surely Tinkerbell will fly. Like the evergreen advice to teach critical thinking. Certain to work. Next time. There's no profit in pursuing "truth" in the face of tenacious anti-truth. Truthiness is an outgrowth of identity. And identity is impervious to logic, reason, facts. The best we can do is help ourselves navigate the chaos. It's a real simple checklist: - Share your work. - Cite your sources. - Sign your name. And then you can start productive analysis, fact checking, verification. Anything less should be treated as gossip, propaganda, or trolling (distraction). Lastly, I have no idea what to do about identity.
- groby_b 5y ago
  Identity isn't entirely impervious to logic. But if you can create the impression that your identity is under threat - by setting up an either/or scenario - it means, to your amygdala at least, your survival is at stake. Very straightforward way to shortcut rational thinking. The problem is that journalism stokes the formation of camps by a) conflating ideas and identities, b) bothsidesing everything, and so creating artificial identities to be perceived as neutral, and c) knowingly exploiting that "fear sells" and targeting the identities they manufacture. Which then becomes ripe pickings for any sociopath out for their own interests. The only way I'm aware of that can overcome this at scale is forming a larger group identity that's more inclusive. But that only seems to work if there's a large outgroup you can unite against, as far as I can tell.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  It depends on what you encourage people to identify as. I predict better results from someone who identifies primarily as a "human truth-seeker" than from a "$immutable_characteristic $ideology world-improver".
bjoli 5y ago
This inevitably makes me think of a video about how meat consumption is not as bad by "things I've learned" on youtube. Search for that name and "meat" and you will inevitably find it. I thiught the claims in the video sounded too good to be true, so I read the study most of the claims in the video were based on. They were comparing against a scenario where we kept producing the food fed to animals, but that humans had to eat it. Which meant no actual land gains, only a modest reduction in co2 emissions, and that people would become unhealthy by eating 4500kcal/day, mostly from corn. Even worse than the 3.1mn views is that the study in question was covered positively on TV and in newspapers.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  Thats an unfair summary. The video also cleared up some simple facts that are often missreported and unjustly simplified in favor of a feel good frame. Like grazing sites being interchangeable with farmland. So something like https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets which pictures almost everything that isnt a forest as possible agriculture land. Same with what types of calories are fed to cows especially. As in for humans indigestible byproducts of industrial agriculture. For example, this is the "corn" we speak about in this context. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maissilage https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maissilage Used in both cow and pig feed. Here a picture https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Sonsbeck_-_Mais_08_ies.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Sonsbeck... Its the shredded plant. The stuff that gets also used in biogas plants. Calling these lies by omission out is not something that needs stricter "factchecks" that are less focused on facts to protect people from unwanted conclusions.
- harpersealtako 5y ago
  I know the video you're talking about (I also watched multiple rebuttals of the video which pointed out the issues you mentioned among others). It's been a while since I watched it though, I may be misremembering. I found it very useful as a steel-man of the pro-meat side and even after watching the rebuttals I came out with a more complexed, nuanced, and less certain opinion than I went in with. You have a statement, like "meat agriculture uses more water than plant agriculture." Then you have a fact checker that says "yup, if you look at the amount of water to raise a cow vs to water a grain field with equivalent weight, calories, or whatever other metric you're using, it takes far more water to raise a cow". This truth gets copied around the internet and used to support claims and policies -- "meat uses more water. We have a water shortage in California. Therefore we should ban cows in California because of the water shortage." The logic makes perfect sense, and all the underlying facts are true. The video then gave the context, which is that cows are often raised on otherwise unproductive grasslands that aren't used for crops anyways, and those that aren't being raised on unproductive land are usually eating corn from places that don't have as much of a water problem (e.g. the Midwest). This doesn't debunk the fact that a calorie of cow uses more water than a calorie of potato, or corn, or soybean -- you can still find those facts on any fact checker on the internet and they're still just as true -- but it does weaken the claim of "we should ban cows in California to help with the water shortage". In the context of the linked article, this is both "Decontextualizing and recontextualizing" and "Reinterpreting and pre-framing meaning". The claim "meat uses more water than plants" is decontextualized from the world where corn is grown in places without water problems and meat is often raised in situations where water use is minimal, and reinterpreted and reframed in the context of local environmental problems to support a predetermined conclusion. Of course there are probably examples in the video where it makes the same mistake the other way around -- but by watching both that video, the rebuttals, and the discussion, you can come to a better, more complex understanding of the issue, which can't be a bad thing.
_Nat_ 5y ago
Looks like a wonderful project! Society'd seem to do well to focus on how we can have real, honest dialogs. Current forums for stuff like political debates have malicious, deceptive strategies that may work better than honest ones, which just seems like a bad thing for society as a whole. The solution'd seem to be to have cultural dialogs, e.g. on politics, occur on platforms where optimal strategies are constructive. This is, where deceptive strategies would lose out to honest ones.
ComradePhil 5y ago
Slightly different perspective: facts are completely unimportant, because: - what seems like a fact may not be a "fact" at all, it may be a misunderstanding - knowing all the known facts may give you a false sense of understanding of the truth; one more fact can change your entire outlook... and yet one more can change that... you don't know the facts you don't know If certain truths are probable, the facts known today (or perceived as knowable today) should not get in the way of exploring them. Do not let any fact or a collection of facts get in the way of your exploration of the truth. If one is extremely conservative, it may seem like a good idea to only stick to what is already known (i.e. the "facts") but even then, because of the fact that you can never be sure that everything there is to know is known at this time, one should still keep an open mind.
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  You should read Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. You can be open to new evidence defining what objective truth is without dismissing the existence of objective truth due to unknown unknowns.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    I doubt I'll read it because I think it will bore me to death... knowing the fact what George Soros' "Open Society" comes from his work and judging from their actions, the whole doctrine seems to be against exploring potential truths in different ways and having a new form of monotheism which is strictly imposed on the entire world. I believe that is not only extremely dumb but also extremely dangerous. If it succeeds, I believe it will set back humanity by thousands of years, if not more. In the past, monotheistic religions have had limited control over the masses. They were limited to certain geo-political boundries, so the people outside of those could rescue the people tied too much into them (or they could rescue themselves by learning from what happens outside). If the entire world is held hostage to one central ideology, even if it is the "best" of our time, we may never recover from the "local maxima" that it will create.
    - _0ffh 5y ago
commandlinefan 5y ago
I appreciate that they didn't blame one "side" here, just described what's happening.
jnurmine 5y ago
That was an interesting article, I don't want to steal it's thunder or anything, but damn, I love the layout. It is gorgeous. Looks like a magazine, elegant, no cruft.
raziel2701 5y ago
I saw an example of how one could make the claim that 50% of infected are vaccinated and it worked like this: population of 100, 84 are vaxxed, 16 are unvaxxed. 2 infected in the vaxxed pool, and 2 infected in the unvaxxed pool. If you then look only at the total infected you can factually claim that 50% of infected are vaccinated and thus peddle whatever grift you want. But even though it's a true statement, it's a gross misrepresentation of reality that hides the important fact that only 2/84 vaxxed people got infected and thus you should get vaccinated. And that's the world we live in. Those grifters have huge incentives to generate this type of misinformation. Whereas the scientific community has no skin in the game like the grifters to communicate their information. The grifter's statistic is concise, easier to understand and plays into whatever biases the audience has. The scientific person's main job has never been to communicate clearly their findings to a regular audience, and that's where the system fails. Misalignment of incentives. The grifter needs to interact with a regular audience to peddle whatever products/podcasts/supplements for a living and will find these technically true statistics which muddle the water. The science person needs to write grants and papers that get judged by a small slice of society and are mostly confined to interact within a bubble. There's a giant asymmetry here and we don't address it systematically, we just embark on twitter-shouting matches that mostly have the effect of disillusioning the sciences while the grifters walk away with a wad of cash.
- nvusuvu 5y ago
  Great, easy to understand example of a statement of 'fact' without context.
- bena 5y ago
  When people talk about "lying with statistics", this is what they mean. Because when people hear "50% of the infected were vaccinated", they're going to misapply the symmetric property and assume 50% of the vaccinated were infected. Even though these are entirely separate things. Edit: You realize that I'm agreeing with the person I'm replying to and providing a slight paraphrase to what he's saying, right?
- rory 5y ago
  To be honest I don't find that sort of claim overly deceptive. % of infected that are vaccinated is an important metric because it helps describe the further reduction in infection that is possible through further vaccination. That's an obviously different metric than infection rate, and should be understood as such. The root problem is widespread statistical illiteracy.
anthony_romeo 5y ago
Tangentially, some years ago I recall reading a few articles about the problem with 'misconception busting' articles [I may try to find such an article later]. Apparently, content formatted like... > Myth: Spinach has a high iron content > Fact: Spinach does not have a particularly high iron content ... actually tends to reinforce the misconception in readers. This suggests to me that similar fact-checking content is inherently harmful for their achieving their intended purpose.
- brutusborn 5y ago
  I first heard this on the Sam Harris podcast. If I remember correctly he explained it as a function of our memory saving the myth and _then_ the "fact". It is easier to recite the 1st part of the memory so some people forget the "fact" and thus beleive the myth more strongly.
ouid 5y ago
This conversation isn't formal enough to be meaningful. If you want to talk meaningfully about how "facts" are used, you need to be able to invoke any notion at all of propositions and implications. It doesn't matter if your implications are mathematical in nature or scientific in nature or just correlation, facts exist in the structure imposed by implication. And facts without an implication structure are useless. In order to mislead with a "true" fact A, it needs to already be the case that there is a false fact of the form A implies B already sitting in there. The combination of a belief in A implies B (false) with this newly introduced belief A (true) yields a belief in B (false). The essence of "lying by telling the truth" is then just finding these false implications, and exploiting them. Fortunately, It's much easier to fact check implications. If A implies B is false, then you just need to come up with an example of A and not B. Unfortunately changes to belief do not always propagate reliably, and the combinatorial game is against the implication checkers. For any given true fact A there are as many potential false beliefs of the form A implies B as there are propositions B. Fortunately, most humans make do with as few (quantified) implications as they can. Rules are hard to remember. Getting rid of false implications is much easier when you can replace them with "true" implications. I suppose I am arguing then that the solution to all of this is education that doesn't teach facts, but rather implications (which are themselves just higher order facts).
- afro88 5y ago
  This is super interesting. Do you mind giving a concrete example?
  - ouid 5y ago
    Yes, by the argument just provided :). Oh alright, but it's not really as interesting as all that. False implications in the logical context are commonly referred to as logical fallacies. Wikipedia has a (non-exhaustive) list of those. One of the more famous false implications is interesting in that it maps between types of implication. A is correlated with B implies that A implies (causal) B or B implies (causal) A (note that this is false, with a plethora of different types of counter example). This is probably the most commonly exploited false implication by hucksters, and, perhaps more importantly, is a very common source of false beliefs with no malicious intent at all. It is easy to leverage this false belief into new false beliefs with true facts. If I want to sell coffee for example, I must convince someone of the buying coffee implies (causal) utility fact. All I must convince them of is that coffee is correlated with a thing that implies (causal) utility. Say for instance, that people with heart conditions have those conditions exacerbated negatively by taking coffee or drinking stimulants, and therefore don't. It follows then that drinking coffee is probably correlated with much better heart health. I phrase my findings as "People who drink coffee tend to have much better cardiac calcium scores", and just watch as people draw the incorrect conclusion about the utility of coffee from this fact, plus their fallacy (plus the additional assumption that better cardiac calcium scores probably don't cause coffee consumption). I should note that It could very well be that coffee does have utility to you. So as a fact it might still be "true". So it turns out that what really ends up mattering, is not the facts, but the chains of implications that lead you to them.
chaostheory 5y ago
One big reason for the rise in both far right and far left extremists is that mainstream media has mastered this practice a long time ago. This is why people don't inherently fully trust mainstream news that is mostly bought and paid for aka submarine PR. Catch & kill and China buying articles in the MSM weren't revelations, they were just confirming everyone's suspicions.
- notriddle 5y ago
  If everyone is bought and paid for, I might as well become an extremist. I’m probably screwed either way, but at least the nuts offer some sense of hope.
nailer 5y ago
The person reading this drinks engine coolant. That is absolutely truthful. I will omit to mention that engine coolant is water.
engineer_22 5y ago
Getting to the truth is really difficult. For example, in a court of law, where you have a handful of jurors, some witnesses, a carefully curated set of rules, and highly trained professionals guiding the process. Errors are made. The truth is not always found and an innocent person gets locked up or a guilty one walks free. Epistemology is an ancient practice. In the western tradition this was first pointed out over 2,000 years ago. Then there is the problem that human beings are not rational actors and it gets a whole lot messier.
emmelaich 5y ago
But what context is important or relevant or true? It's turtles all the way down. What we need is humility and good faith.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Good faith is part of the problem; you trust that a headline, an article, a summary etc acts in good faith, that you can trust journalists and the like. But they often have an Agenda, pushing a certain narrative or a certain political goal. I mean, even when an article ticks all the boxes for being well researched, factually correct, neutral in language, even then it can be misleading for not having a counter-point (for example), or its hosting platform to de-emphasize the article. What has more impact, a headline saying "tinfoil hats cause headaches" prominently posted on the front page of a newspaper in big impact font, or a byline four pages in?
  - emmelaich 5y ago
    Good faith cannot be part of the problem, by definition. I'll give you naivety though.
bigodbiel 5y ago
I just don’t understand the need for fact checkers in an age of instant access to information. Anyone who wants to stick to their priors, can. Anyone who wants to delegate has an array of choices to choose from. And those who want (and have the time) to chase deeper comprehension themselves can do so (still delegating some here and there, recursively). This is why every material must point to its source(s), and have full disclosure from the author.
- naasking 5y ago
  > I just don’t understand the need for fact checkers in an age of instant access to information. "Information" is not "knowledge". Information can consist of many falsehoods, knowledge should contain few if any falsehoods. We want a decent signal to noise ratio in our information, which requires some base of reliable knowledge. So I think there's a place for fact checking. This used to be the domain of good reporters, but many of them have shit the bed hard on that for a couple of decades now, and lost most of their credibility. Now is the age of "fact checkers", which aren't doing much better frankly.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Because many fact checkers are ex reporters!
jasonhansel 5y ago
> the practice of weaponizing facts This increasingly common use of the word "weaponize" (as a dysphemism for "utilize") bothers me, as does the article's use of the phrase "information war." As horrible as it is to spread disinformation and propaganda, it seems unnecessarily extreme to describe that as analogous or comparable to warfare or physical violence.
fdhfdjkfhdkj 5y ago
botev 5y ago
Theses and Antitheses, has always worked, but since Covid all those "Experts" & "Scientists" have discarded this essential framework.
rob_c 5y ago
"If you want to lie with facts, use statistics." - anonymous
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist... 100% of commenters to your comment at the time of writing this comment linked to wikipedia, STATISTICALLY PROVING that they are shills of Big Wiki.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    And I'm still chuckling at this
Ambolia 5y ago
Most of the times "fact" wars or "culture" wars are just covert interest wars. Just ask yourself who benefits and how, pull from the string, and most "facts" will just dissolve on a carefully crafted narrative that has nothing to do with the truth and a lot to do with gaining or not losing some type of power.
- QuadmasterXLII 5y ago
  Thats an interesting way to look at it. Picking a specific culture war, I’d like to examine gay conversion therapy. Who would you say are the covert interests pulling strings on either side?
  - Ambolia 5y ago
    The issue is whether christian communities get to choose how to run their own communities or if they need to be told what to do from more progressive states. Not saying they shouldn't be told what to do. Maybe they should. But the power issue is very clear. They are either too dumb or immoral and need to be told what to do, or they are grown ups and can run their communities however they see fit.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Most of the times "fact" wars or "culture" wars are just covert interest wars. Just ask yourself who benefits and how, pull from the string, and most "facts" will just dissolve on a carefully crafted narrative that has nothing to do with the truth and a lot to do with gaining or not losing some type of power. No, I don't think it's that simple. Take the classic culture war issue: abortion. There's genuine, widespread, and deep opposition to it. The "covert interests" didn't manufacture that opposition, but they have latched onto it to help make unpopular policies (e.g. laissez faire economics, tax cuts for the rich) electorally viable.
  - Ambolia 5y ago
    Abortion is a can of worms which combines many underlying power issues, from the obvious issue of personal freedom that usually gets discussed, to the need of capitalism to be able to double the work force[1], to eugenics and demographic control [2], to the most fundamental power issue that is who gets to decide what it means to be human and when does human life start. [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/two-income-trap-elizabeth-warren-book https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...
h0nd 5y ago
I have established a way of dealing with and taking from 'facts' by following these steps: 1. What is said? Do I understand it? Where does it come from? 2. How is it to be understood? How to interpret it? 3. What does it signify? Can it be classified and/or compared with other known things? 4. What can be taken from it? What implications does it have? Looking at news in this way, it is clearly visible, how most things that are communicated answer 3. and 4., omitting its foundations 1. and 2. Sometimes the bias is created by changing 2. (The fine-definition of the steps is still in the works. So far, I am very happy with this method. It helps me a lot to understand things and what things are really about. Suggestions?)
brightball 5y ago
Specific facts when a reader doesn’t know the entire story can frame the story however the author wants. Without existing knowledge of the details, a reader has no way of discerning the difference. If two guys punch each other and then shake hands, but you only publish the “fact” that one of them threw a punch you’re framing the story…with facts.
WesternWind 5y ago
It seems like many journalists are failing in their primary responsibilities to keep the public informed. Fact checking liars or misleading statements is tedious, and some politicians lie or mislead. Journalists should be doing investigations and creating reports that put social and political issues in context. Yet so often these issues, real issues that affect lives, are treated as political theater or a public sport. I can't blame journalists for the politicians lying or misleading, but I can blame them for so often going for the easy stories that they are fed, instead of the hard ones they have to look for or put together. As a result, when I read the news I pay special attention to stories that are based on original investigations, public records requests, whistleblowers, or stories in which actual context is provided from multiple viewpoints that are informed by the facts, rather than merely by self interest.
- cloutchaser 5y ago
  I think we are in a transitional period of journalism which is why it is so crazy right now. Old type publications are competing with clickbait and a million other attention grabbing things online, and have to go down that route as well. The more outrageous the better. That incentive doesn't create good journalism. In the meantime the market is correcting with things like substack, thank god people like Matt Taibbi and a few others can actually do quality journalism there. Something like substack I think will eventually win out in the quality journalism market. But it takes time. A lot of people still believe big name publications like the NYT are where quality information comes from. It takes time for markets to change.
- pydry 5y ago
  Why do you blame journalists rather than media owners? Do you believe this is a change brought about by journalists themselves?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Whether or not management has approved of or nudged this change it's clear from the rhetoric of journalists discussing journalism that over the last decade or two they have gone from thinking of themselves has having a duty to simply inform the public to having a duty to engage in discretionary inclusion/omission lest the public draw the wrong conclusion. Journalism is reaping the "people are idiots, gotta protect them from themselves" ideology we've been actively sowing since at least the 1990s.
DFHippie 5y ago
It seems to me lying with facts boils down to two techniques: 1. Misrepresenting the central tendency by presenting outliers as representative. 2. Presenting credentialed but agenda-driven authorities who argue in bad faith to affirm that these outliers are representative and pre-empt the listener's getting a competing, and actually representative, interpretation from other authorities.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
papandada 5y ago
I get the feeling this article was written by very smart people with noble intentions coming from backgrounds quite similar to mine. I found it tremendously unsatisfying. This is surely an unfair simplification, but I think, at the heart, it expresses a desire for goodness. A world where people cared about each other and made decisions based on caring about others. (That may sound flippant, and would require more explanation on my part, but I have considered this closely.) If that is part of the desire driving this project, I can sympathize with that. But I cannot feel much hope for the approach I am struggling to understand from this article. My alternative suggestion, which again might sound flippant, even more ineffective, boring, or unoriginal, but is also considered and sincere, is to focus on the very small ways we can make tangible goodness for the people we encounter most closely in life. I think it was said better, though, as "love thy neighbor as thyself." There's a little more to say about all that too, but it would be a good start.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
From that article: Our task is to create new processes for determining what counts as a shared, socially meaningful, mutually understood “truth.” Obviously, this requires more than making sure that every fact is checked. It's recognizing with double quotes "truth" as a different thing than Truth. Hence it's a confession that their task is to "create a new process for determining what counts as 'truth'" and not genuine fidelity to reality. This means that the process they claim to desire will have, by design, the backdoor of the shared illusion effect. In other words they want to be marketeers of a shared feeling of truth. That's not science, not professional journalism, that's Propaganda. They accuse people of using facts to manipulate the public imaginary and they propose to solve that problem by becoming that people themselves imposing their own manipulation of facts. Here is an idea: You can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts. Let reality show you Truth regardless of how that makes you feel and restrain yourself from wanting to impose worldviews on anybody. Nature is infinitely wiser than you (and all of us).
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > It's recognizing with double quotes "truth" as a different thing than Truth. Hence it's a confession that their task is to "create a new process for determining what counts as 'truth'" and not genuine fidelity to reality. No one has access to "Truth" (with a capital T), the best you can do is try to get closer, and it seems quite honest of them to acknowledge that. > In other words they want to be marketeers of a shared feeling of truth. That's not science, not professional journalism, that's Propaganda. They accuse people of using facts to manipulate the public imaginary and they propose to solve that problem by becoming that people themselves imposing their own manipulation of facts. > Here is an idea: You can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts. Let reality show you Truth regardless of how that makes you feel and restrain yourself from wanting to impose worldviews on anybody. Nature is infinitely wiser than you (and all of us). The biggest marketeers of "Propaganda" are those that claim they have access to the capital-T truth. If it feels like you have access to capital-T truth, you're almost certainly trapped inside an ideological construct. That said, ideological constructs aren't necessarily bad things, since society simply could not function without the shared "truth" they allow for.
zepto 5y ago
How about they apply their own theory to the framing of ‘information warfare’ that they simply assume as a factual part of what is happening but make no attempt to investigate? Obviously there is literal information warfare in the sense of state funded propaganda and disinformation campaigns. But that doesn’t seem to explain most of what I observe, which seems a lot more to do with vastly increased access to contradictory information as a result of the internet, coupled with a lack of institutional transparency. That doesn’t look like ‘war’ to me, but rather just that our institutions haven’t adapted to the presence of the internet yet.
bsedlm 5y ago
What I wonder about is how does making blind with beliefs work
Synaesthesia 5y ago
Would be great if the author included some actual real life examples. This is why I find Chomsky so convincing. He usually presents his argument with lots of evidence.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
This gives me an odd feeling. They seem to spend a lot of time undermining confidence in fact checkers, to then concede, nearer the end that you have to check facts as part of their new better approach. The fact checkers I would reference, already do these things, so I don't really see what is being added here except some emotive language that seems to be saying "well, you can prove anything with facts" which feels like it's going in the wrong direction. Reading all the other comments, there's a strong vibe of "see, I told you I was right to ignore factcheckers".

422 points by denial 5y ago

donw 5y ago

The problem is policy. Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks COVID is not a problem. Doesn't mask, hasn't had a single shot, all the rest. Bob is terrified of COVID. Masks up at home, space bubble helmet outside, all the rest. The only outcome that works is Alice and Bob agreeing that they have different risk preferences. That they each should live their lives in accordance, but that they have no right to force each other to adopt the same behaviors. Bob gets used to doing a lot of stuff over Zoom, and Alice gets used to doing a lot more Zoom calls than she did before. What if, instead, Bob tries to force the entire world to wear masks all the time, and undergo an endless stream of boosters, all in order to satisfy his risk preference? Alice will respond in-kind, and now we're in a tit-for-tat situation. Endless retaliation. Now, imagine that Bob has political power, and can mandate his desires into law. Bob has now used deadly force -- the police -- to coerce Alice into doing what he wants. Alice, being a big fan of consent, is having none of it... and that's where we are today. Same would be true if the roles were reversed.

MengerSponge 5y ago
stirfish 5y ago
- Chris2048 5y ago
  There's a big difference between "can't go to a restaurant without vaccine" and "must be vaccinated".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
coliveira 5y ago
Imagine two friends, Alice and Bob. Alice thinks that wearing seat belts in airplanes is not necessary...
mindslight 5y ago
Thank you for your example of how to mislead with non-factual strawmen. This example might be connected to reality if: 1. There actually was a law requiring individuals "wear masks all the time". 2. There actually was a law requiring individuals to get an "endless stream of boosters". 3. Alice respected the boundaries of private businesses that made wearing respiratory protection or vaccination a requirement of associating with them. 4. Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing respiratory protection, rather than violating their personal space or perhaps even assaulting them. 5. Alice paid the costs of her own healthcare, and/or her "insurance" company were efficient enough to charge for her expected increased costs. 6. Healthcare providers were able to freely disassociate with Alice as to not have an undue burden on their resources due to the results of Alice's choices. 7. Alice displayed rational recognition of the scientific and legal realities she was dealing with, rather that irrational rejection of such. 8. Alice displayed some understanding of historical precedents, as pandemics are infrequent events that only appear novel. I'm a libertarian, so if you want to discuss practical ways of making it so that different value judgements can coexist, I'm all for it. It starts with acknowledging the existing non-independence like the points I listed, and will generally be about nuanced corrections to the medical consensus rather than wholesale rejection. But really, it's fallacious to frame the larger situation as being about individual freedom when the overriding characteristic is political herd behavior. What has really happened is an abrupt change in prevailing conditions, combined with professional political machines preaching simplistic easy answers that play to peoples' biases.
- stirfish 5y ago
  >Alice respected personal preferences of people wearing respiratory protection, I've found that a lot of people think of the masks like a gas mask - supposed to keep everything bad out. They are more like the breath guard at the salad bar - keeping you from exhaling droplets six feet in front of you. Bob's mask protects Alice more than it protects Bob.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    If you're still making do with an ersatz cloth mask, sure. I've been wearing a P100 from the start of the pandemic. Both bowls of political Kool Aid are actively harmful - framing PPE as being about protecting others has also damaged the discourse. Edit: also, I do agree that keeping stuff out of the air is preferable to filtering it after the fact (especially with mucous membranes etc). This concern is addressed somewhat by (3), and also by the additional point that Alice needs to demonstrate empathy of understanding and respecting Bob's choice as well.
maximus-decimus 5y ago
What if Bob is afraid of other people firing their guns in their backyard because he doesn't want to get killed by stray bullets. It just doesn't work anymore because the risk Alice and Bob are taking depends more on what other people do than what they themselves do. After all Bob isn't gonna kill himself with a stray bullet. Bob not shooting guns but Alice shooting guns while pointing in Bob's house direction doesn't solve the problem.
- donw 5y ago
  Anybody unable to grasp the difference between "virus with a sub-1% mortality rate for healthy working-age adults" and "inbound suppressive fire" does not get a seat at the risk-discussion table.

beachy 5y ago

This article is desperately in need of some examples. I can't believe there isn't one.

paulsutter 5y ago
Imagine papers with conflicting results. One side cites one subset of papers. The other side cites the other subset. Both feel the other are are disingenuous. Both sides are citing true facts (“these papers exist”), both sides are wrong (the data is in fact inconclusive)
metaphor 5y ago
I thought the generalized examples here[1] were objectively adequate. Using real world examples in this context strikes me as dancing into a mine field and a dismissal of the nuanced exercise towards understanding that the author suggests[2]. [1] https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/2022/01/Mislead-with-Facts_Three-Primary-Ways-of-Misleading-with-Facts.jpg https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/202... [2] https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/2022/01/Mislead-with-Facts_Four-Ways-of-Understanding-Facts-1.jpg https://consilienceproject.org/content/images/size/w1000/202...
throwawayarnty 5y ago
One example: people who simply state “women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes” to imply the advantage of being a man vs a woman. The reality of how this number is calculated (eg averages across professions, even though men and women tend to work different professions, part time vs full time is not taken into account) suggests the conclusions that come from this 82 cents number is more nuanced than the initial statement.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  And then you can take another step and ask why professions dominated by women in general are less well paid than similar ones dominated by men, and why it is mostly women who reduce their work hours while the kids are small and why not more men do the same.

oreally 5y ago

"There are no facts, only interpretations." - Nietzsche

zekica 5y ago
Scientific method tries to get as close as possible to facts. The issue is that popular press and "influencers" ignore limitations in studies and always tell just their interpretations while pointing to "the science".
- rory 5y ago
  Aside from interpretation, a major issue is the press and "influencers" selecting to promote studies that affirm their preconceived notions, and simply ignoring other studies that contradict them.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  It's not even limitations. It's studies that are non-peer reviewed, or non-replicated (not failed to replicate sometimes, just hasn't yet been replicated). Especially certain subjects where poor, biased, studies seem rife. They take a study and run with it because a scientific study is "science", even if a study is just one step one the way to an accepted truth. Sometimes is more explicit, cherry-picking certain studies over others; possibly even dismissing those with the "bad" result as biased (or *-ist).
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Not all science is equal, either. A paper published in an evolutionary psychology journal is not as valid as the theory of evolution itself. Yet, we tend to lump everything in under "Science".
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Tries to, but it too is flawed; misinterpretation of numbers, falsifying of numbers, publishing papers as a means to inflate one's own ego / CV, not publishing studies that don't look positive, and of course, companies and industries funding studies into the positive parts of their 'thing', see for example the campaign against 'fat' in the eighties (funded by the grain and sugar industries), being replaced with the campaign against sugar and carbs in the past two or so decades. I'm sure all of those studies had merit, had adequate numbers, were peer reviewed and everything... but they were still made with an Agenda, and worse, picked up by the mainstream media so that they could push lifestyle advice, diets, and promote one category of products over another. The "Truth" is in the middle, of course, and to make a completely opinion based and unscientific statement, too much of anything / overconsumption is a bad thing, but that's too vague a statement or advice; people like being told "avoid doing / eating this" and "do / eat that instead", sticking to simple rules as a lifestyle choice.

Brannon121 5y ago

[flagged]

erwincoumans 5y ago

cherry picked article :)

Nursie 5y ago

> What if we really wanted to understand what was going on in a way that accounted for all the facts and their various frames and interpretations? Then we are demonstrating a level of good faith and interest that seems missing in most discourse. I like the drive behind this - to really get to the bottom of things and promote rational comprehension rather than have people simply sniping at each other with misunderstood datapoints - but I'm not sure a lot of the people who are engaging in such behaviour are really that interested. As mentioned in the article, what they are really after is ammunition. Still, I welcome this, as it's far better than just throwing up our collective hands and deciding any attempt to improve the quality of public discussion is necessarily censorship.

darawk 5y ago

I love the idea of this article, but it doesn't address the reason things are the way they are. Facts get checked for literal accuracy because that's what's easy to actually do in a reasonably unbiased way. We stop there not because that's all we want, but because everything after that is too messy to even come close to systematizing. If they've got a well thought out framework for systematizing high quality contextualization, i'd love to hear about it, though.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
All the "fact checking" sites I am aware of are heavily biased. It seems very unlikely that they actually try to be unbiased in their checking. It already starts with selecting the facts they check (cherry picking).
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
- medstrom 5y ago
  I would ask you to please identify the ones to which you apply this criticism, for epistemic hygiene.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    I mostly encounter the ones in Germany, so I doubt it would be much use to you. For example correctiv.org or even https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/ which is from the public TV network (government funding). I remember trying to verify the claims about "Trump lied x zillion times" at some US fact checking portal (I think from some major newspaper, maybe NYT or Washington Post), and all the supposed "lies" were also bullshit, like taken out of context, misinterpreted in extreme ways and so on in typical "fact checker" fashion. Really it doesn't matter what sites I list, because they are all shit. The very act of calling themselves "fact checkers" should give it away. Just pick any of them and read their "checks" with a critical mind. Anybody can call themselves a "fact checker", it is a fake claim to authority. Isn't Snopes also a renowned "fact checker"? I think some scandals regarding their founders came to light recently, but I don't remember the details.

TuringTest 5y ago

Adversarial wielding of facts could be the basis for a new model of public knowledge, one that corrects the shortcomings of current news media and social networks. Causal mapping [1] websites can aggregate the back and forth of heated discussions, eliminating emotional responses and distilling the core ideas of each opposing position. Such compilation of facts an argument in a readable, neutral format (e.g. see Kialo)[2] could work like the academic debates of old, allowing facts to be analysed in context and the validity of arguments to be tested on their own merits, not on their emotional appeal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causal_mapping_software#Causal_mapping_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causal_mapping_softwar... [2] https://www.kialo.com/ https://www.kialo.com/

zerop 5y ago

The PR teams create perceptions and narratives by misleading with facts on social media, in ways mentioned in this article. But I think people get it after a while and it can't be used for long term perceptions and narratives.

ncmncm 5y ago

The New York Times mastered all this long ago. It is not necessary to lie. All you need is to be selective about what truths you tell, and where. Some goes on the front page, some on page 13, other bits nowhere at all. Hans Blix's UN reports, before the invasion, about Iraq's entire lack of any WMD whatsoever were too important to completely ignore, but were easy enough to bury in a back page. The entire lack of any primary source information indicating Russian interference in the 2016 election was easy to avoid mentioning anywhere.

pessimizer 5y ago
Their best method is hiding editorial and misinformation with references to earlier stories where the opinion or falsehood is in a (sometimes unattributed) quote, but in the later story is stated as a well-known fact. That's why they're in court with Palin right now.
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
Misrepresenting facts in this way is still a form of lying. Speaking technical truths doesn't change that. Most lies aren't complete fabrications, honestly, even when they do contain a few.
- zaphar 5y ago
  The most effective form of lying is lying by omission. It's harder to detect, easier to defend as just ignorance, and is perhaps more effective than outright false claims.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Why don't we make a law around it? I'm tired of politicians weaseling themselves out of difficult situations by saying "oh, I forgot about that". It's your job to bring important, relevant information to the table, damn it.
    - dolni 5y ago

motohagiography 5y ago

Faster heustistic is to check not whether the facts are true, but if the implied conflict that connects them is real. The old adage about how "dog bites man," may be true but it's not news, whereas "dog bites capitalist oppressor" is essentially all news these days, and it may even be construed as not entirely untrue, even though it seems obvious the dog has not developed class consciousness and thrown off the leash of exploitation and seized the means of food production in its righteous jaws of justice on behalf of the global oppressed, but by manufacturing the conflict that links the facts, an entirely contrived fabrication qualifies as not entirely un-true. Simply, just ask whether the facts are used as decoration and plumage for what reduces to an extravagent lie.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
Hi - where is that "dog bits capitalist oppressor" from btw? Google only has this comment. While I've been developing "news/internet literacy" for decades, I found it insightful to focus not just on facts but the spin and intent of fact presentation. Would love to read more if you've got some thoughts/links :)
- motohagiography 5y ago
  Thanks! All of my comments are original content, unless I have plagerized them from much smarter people who tolerate my company. It's more than spin, the basic unit of a story is a conflict, and you decorate it with facts. The question is whether the conflict is real, or produced by the logic of a presupposed idea (an ideo-logy). Instead of marxism in the example above, let's take the idea that the world is under the influence or control of evil forces, and you have been selected by God to thwart them, which seems bonkers from the outside, but it's also the theological basis of Christianity. (this is friendly fire) In that view, "dog bites man," becomes, "God smites man," because it has told the story using a conflict that originated in the logic of that idea. This premise that ideology can manufacture conflict that gets decorated with facts to produce stories probably scales pretty well. The decorative facts remain true and even legitimately associated, but the conflict that yields the story might have been fabricated. Most of us believe that our ideologies are some version of the substrate of reality or the most encompassing set of intellectual abstractions. As I get older, I think the only reliable source of qualitative truth may be laughter because it's involuntary, but even then, that's mostly sentiment. Anyway, thanks for the prompt. Fun thoughts.

specialist 5y ago

Tinkerbell School of Progress. Clap louder and surely Tinkerbell will fly. Like the evergreen advice to teach critical thinking. Certain to work. Next time. There's no profit in pursuing "truth" in the face of tenacious anti-truth. Truthiness is an outgrowth of identity. And identity is impervious to logic, reason, facts. The best we can do is help ourselves navigate the chaos. It's a real simple checklist: - Share your work. - Cite your sources. - Sign your name. And then you can start productive analysis, fact checking, verification. Anything less should be treated as gossip, propaganda, or trolling (distraction). Lastly, I have no idea what to do about identity.

groby_b 5y ago
Identity isn't entirely impervious to logic. But if you can create the impression that your identity is under threat - by setting up an either/or scenario - it means, to your amygdala at least, your survival is at stake. Very straightforward way to shortcut rational thinking. The problem is that journalism stokes the formation of camps by a) conflating ideas and identities, b) bothsidesing everything, and so creating artificial identities to be perceived as neutral, and c) knowingly exploiting that "fear sells" and targeting the identities they manufacture. Which then becomes ripe pickings for any sociopath out for their own interests. The only way I'm aware of that can overcome this at scale is forming a larger group identity that's more inclusive. But that only seems to work if there's a large outgroup you can unite against, as far as I can tell.
_0ffh 5y ago
It depends on what you encourage people to identify as. I predict better results from someone who identifies primarily as a "human truth-seeker" than from a "$immutable_characteristic $ideology world-improver".

bjoli 5y ago

This inevitably makes me think of a video about how meat consumption is not as bad by "things I've learned" on youtube. Search for that name and "meat" and you will inevitably find it. I thiught the claims in the video sounded too good to be true, so I read the study most of the claims in the video were based on. They were comparing against a scenario where we kept producing the food fed to animals, but that humans had to eat it. Which meant no actual land gains, only a modest reduction in co2 emissions, and that people would become unhealthy by eating 4500kcal/day, mostly from corn. Even worse than the 3.1mn views is that the study in question was covered positively on TV and in newspapers.

cf141q5325 5y ago
Thats an unfair summary. The video also cleared up some simple facts that are often missreported and unjustly simplified in favor of a feel good frame. Like grazing sites being interchangeable with farmland. So something like https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets which pictures almost everything that isnt a forest as possible agriculture land. Same with what types of calories are fed to cows especially. As in for humans indigestible byproducts of industrial agriculture. For example, this is the "corn" we speak about in this context. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maissilage https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maissilage Used in both cow and pig feed. Here a picture https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Sonsbeck_-_Mais_08_ies.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Sonsbeck... Its the shredded plant. The stuff that gets also used in biogas plants. Calling these lies by omission out is not something that needs stricter "factchecks" that are less focused on facts to protect people from unwanted conclusions.
harpersealtako 5y ago
I know the video you're talking about (I also watched multiple rebuttals of the video which pointed out the issues you mentioned among others). It's been a while since I watched it though, I may be misremembering. I found it very useful as a steel-man of the pro-meat side and even after watching the rebuttals I came out with a more complexed, nuanced, and less certain opinion than I went in with. You have a statement, like "meat agriculture uses more water than plant agriculture." Then you have a fact checker that says "yup, if you look at the amount of water to raise a cow vs to water a grain field with equivalent weight, calories, or whatever other metric you're using, it takes far more water to raise a cow". This truth gets copied around the internet and used to support claims and policies -- "meat uses more water. We have a water shortage in California. Therefore we should ban cows in California because of the water shortage." The logic makes perfect sense, and all the underlying facts are true. The video then gave the context, which is that cows are often raised on otherwise unproductive grasslands that aren't used for crops anyways, and those that aren't being raised on unproductive land are usually eating corn from places that don't have as much of a water problem (e.g. the Midwest). This doesn't debunk the fact that a calorie of cow uses more water than a calorie of potato, or corn, or soybean -- you can still find those facts on any fact checker on the internet and they're still just as true -- but it does weaken the claim of "we should ban cows in California to help with the water shortage". In the context of the linked article, this is both "Decontextualizing and recontextualizing" and "Reinterpreting and pre-framing meaning". The claim "meat uses more water than plants" is decontextualized from the world where corn is grown in places without water problems and meat is often raised in situations where water use is minimal, and reinterpreted and reframed in the context of local environmental problems to support a predetermined conclusion. Of course there are probably examples in the video where it makes the same mistake the other way around -- but by watching both that video, the rebuttals, and the discussion, you can come to a better, more complex understanding of the issue, which can't be a bad thing.

_Nat_ 5y ago

Looks like a wonderful project! Society'd seem to do well to focus on how we can have real, honest dialogs. Current forums for stuff like political debates have malicious, deceptive strategies that may work better than honest ones, which just seems like a bad thing for society as a whole. The solution'd seem to be to have cultural dialogs, e.g. on politics, occur on platforms where optimal strategies are constructive. This is, where deceptive strategies would lose out to honest ones.

ComradePhil 5y ago

Slightly different perspective: facts are completely unimportant, because: - what seems like a fact may not be a "fact" at all, it may be a misunderstanding - knowing all the known facts may give you a false sense of understanding of the truth; one more fact can change your entire outlook... and yet one more can change that... you don't know the facts you don't know If certain truths are probable, the facts known today (or perceived as knowable today) should not get in the way of exploring them. Do not let any fact or a collection of facts get in the way of your exploration of the truth. If one is extremely conservative, it may seem like a good idea to only stick to what is already known (i.e. the "facts") but even then, because of the fact that you can never be sure that everything there is to know is known at this time, one should still keep an open mind.

defaultprimate 5y ago
You should read Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. You can be open to new evidence defining what objective truth is without dismissing the existence of objective truth due to unknown unknowns.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  I doubt I'll read it because I think it will bore me to death... knowing the fact what George Soros' "Open Society" comes from his work and judging from their actions, the whole doctrine seems to be against exploring potential truths in different ways and having a new form of monotheism which is strictly imposed on the entire world. I believe that is not only extremely dumb but also extremely dangerous. If it succeeds, I believe it will set back humanity by thousands of years, if not more. In the past, monotheistic religions have had limited control over the masses. They were limited to certain geo-political boundries, so the people outside of those could rescue the people tied too much into them (or they could rescue themselves by learning from what happens outside). If the entire world is held hostage to one central ideology, even if it is the "best" of our time, we may never recover from the "local maxima" that it will create.
  - _0ffh 5y ago

commandlinefan 5y ago

I appreciate that they didn't blame one "side" here, just described what's happening.

jnurmine 5y ago

That was an interesting article, I don't want to steal it's thunder or anything, but damn, I love the layout. It is gorgeous. Looks like a magazine, elegant, no cruft.

raziel2701 5y ago

I saw an example of how one could make the claim that 50% of infected are vaccinated and it worked like this: population of 100, 84 are vaxxed, 16 are unvaxxed. 2 infected in the vaxxed pool, and 2 infected in the unvaxxed pool. If you then look only at the total infected you can factually claim that 50% of infected are vaccinated and thus peddle whatever grift you want. But even though it's a true statement, it's a gross misrepresentation of reality that hides the important fact that only 2/84 vaxxed people got infected and thus you should get vaccinated. And that's the world we live in. Those grifters have huge incentives to generate this type of misinformation. Whereas the scientific community has no skin in the game like the grifters to communicate their information. The grifter's statistic is concise, easier to understand and plays into whatever biases the audience has. The scientific person's main job has never been to communicate clearly their findings to a regular audience, and that's where the system fails. Misalignment of incentives. The grifter needs to interact with a regular audience to peddle whatever products/podcasts/supplements for a living and will find these technically true statistics which muddle the water. The science person needs to write grants and papers that get judged by a small slice of society and are mostly confined to interact within a bubble. There's a giant asymmetry here and we don't address it systematically, we just embark on twitter-shouting matches that mostly have the effect of disillusioning the sciences while the grifters walk away with a wad of cash.

nvusuvu 5y ago
Great, easy to understand example of a statement of 'fact' without context.
bena 5y ago
When people talk about "lying with statistics", this is what they mean. Because when people hear "50% of the infected were vaccinated", they're going to misapply the symmetric property and assume 50% of the vaccinated were infected. Even though these are entirely separate things. Edit: You realize that I'm agreeing with the person I'm replying to and providing a slight paraphrase to what he's saying, right?
rory 5y ago
To be honest I don't find that sort of claim overly deceptive. % of infected that are vaccinated is an important metric because it helps describe the further reduction in infection that is possible through further vaccination. That's an obviously different metric than infection rate, and should be understood as such. The root problem is widespread statistical illiteracy.

anthony_romeo 5y ago

Tangentially, some years ago I recall reading a few articles about the problem with 'misconception busting' articles [I may try to find such an article later]. Apparently, content formatted like... > Myth: Spinach has a high iron content > Fact: Spinach does not have a particularly high iron content ... actually tends to reinforce the misconception in readers. This suggests to me that similar fact-checking content is inherently harmful for their achieving their intended purpose.

brutusborn 5y ago
I first heard this on the Sam Harris podcast. If I remember correctly he explained it as a function of our memory saving the myth and _then_ the "fact". It is easier to recite the 1st part of the memory so some people forget the "fact" and thus beleive the myth more strongly.

ouid 5y ago

This conversation isn't formal enough to be meaningful. If you want to talk meaningfully about how "facts" are used, you need to be able to invoke any notion at all of propositions and implications. It doesn't matter if your implications are mathematical in nature or scientific in nature or just correlation, facts exist in the structure imposed by implication. And facts without an implication structure are useless. In order to mislead with a "true" fact A, it needs to already be the case that there is a false fact of the form A implies B already sitting in there. The combination of a belief in A implies B (false) with this newly introduced belief A (true) yields a belief in B (false). The essence of "lying by telling the truth" is then just finding these false implications, and exploiting them. Fortunately, It's much easier to fact check implications. If A implies B is false, then you just need to come up with an example of A and not B. Unfortunately changes to belief do not always propagate reliably, and the combinatorial game is against the implication checkers. For any given true fact A there are as many potential false beliefs of the form A implies B as there are propositions B. Fortunately, most humans make do with as few (quantified) implications as they can. Rules are hard to remember. Getting rid of false implications is much easier when you can replace them with "true" implications. I suppose I am arguing then that the solution to all of this is education that doesn't teach facts, but rather implications (which are themselves just higher order facts).

afro88 5y ago
This is super interesting. Do you mind giving a concrete example?
- ouid 5y ago
  Yes, by the argument just provided :). Oh alright, but it's not really as interesting as all that. False implications in the logical context are commonly referred to as logical fallacies. Wikipedia has a (non-exhaustive) list of those. One of the more famous false implications is interesting in that it maps between types of implication. A is correlated with B implies that A implies (causal) B or B implies (causal) A (note that this is false, with a plethora of different types of counter example). This is probably the most commonly exploited false implication by hucksters, and, perhaps more importantly, is a very common source of false beliefs with no malicious intent at all. It is easy to leverage this false belief into new false beliefs with true facts. If I want to sell coffee for example, I must convince someone of the buying coffee implies (causal) utility fact. All I must convince them of is that coffee is correlated with a thing that implies (causal) utility. Say for instance, that people with heart conditions have those conditions exacerbated negatively by taking coffee or drinking stimulants, and therefore don't. It follows then that drinking coffee is probably correlated with much better heart health. I phrase my findings as "People who drink coffee tend to have much better cardiac calcium scores", and just watch as people draw the incorrect conclusion about the utility of coffee from this fact, plus their fallacy (plus the additional assumption that better cardiac calcium scores probably don't cause coffee consumption). I should note that It could very well be that coffee does have utility to you. So as a fact it might still be "true". So it turns out that what really ends up mattering, is not the facts, but the chains of implications that lead you to them.

chaostheory 5y ago

One big reason for the rise in both far right and far left extremists is that mainstream media has mastered this practice a long time ago. This is why people don't inherently fully trust mainstream news that is mostly bought and paid for aka submarine PR. Catch & kill and China buying articles in the MSM weren't revelations, they were just confirming everyone's suspicions.

notriddle 5y ago
If everyone is bought and paid for, I might as well become an extremist. I’m probably screwed either way, but at least the nuts offer some sense of hope.

nailer 5y ago

The person reading this drinks engine coolant. That is absolutely truthful. I will omit to mention that engine coolant is water.

engineer_22 5y ago

Getting to the truth is really difficult. For example, in a court of law, where you have a handful of jurors, some witnesses, a carefully curated set of rules, and highly trained professionals guiding the process. Errors are made. The truth is not always found and an innocent person gets locked up or a guilty one walks free. Epistemology is an ancient practice. In the western tradition this was first pointed out over 2,000 years ago. Then there is the problem that human beings are not rational actors and it gets a whole lot messier.

emmelaich 5y ago

But what context is important or relevant or true? It's turtles all the way down. What we need is humility and good faith.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Good faith is part of the problem; you trust that a headline, an article, a summary etc acts in good faith, that you can trust journalists and the like. But they often have an Agenda, pushing a certain narrative or a certain political goal. I mean, even when an article ticks all the boxes for being well researched, factually correct, neutral in language, even then it can be misleading for not having a counter-point (for example), or its hosting platform to de-emphasize the article. What has more impact, a headline saying "tinfoil hats cause headaches" prominently posted on the front page of a newspaper in big impact font, or a byline four pages in?
- emmelaich 5y ago
  Good faith cannot be part of the problem, by definition. I'll give you naivety though.

bigodbiel 5y ago

I just don’t understand the need for fact checkers in an age of instant access to information. Anyone who wants to stick to their priors, can. Anyone who wants to delegate has an array of choices to choose from. And those who want (and have the time) to chase deeper comprehension themselves can do so (still delegating some here and there, recursively). This is why every material must point to its source(s), and have full disclosure from the author.

naasking 5y ago
> I just don’t understand the need for fact checkers in an age of instant access to information. "Information" is not "knowledge". Information can consist of many falsehoods, knowledge should contain few if any falsehoods. We want a decent signal to noise ratio in our information, which requires some base of reliable knowledge. So I think there's a place for fact checking. This used to be the domain of good reporters, but many of them have shit the bed hard on that for a couple of decades now, and lost most of their credibility. Now is the age of "fact checkers", which aren't doing much better frankly.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Because many fact checkers are ex reporters!

jasonhansel 5y ago

> the practice of weaponizing facts This increasingly common use of the word "weaponize" (as a dysphemism for "utilize") bothers me, as does the article's use of the phrase "information war." As horrible as it is to spread disinformation and propaganda, it seems unnecessarily extreme to describe that as analogous or comparable to warfare or physical violence.

fdhfdjkfhdkj 5y ago

botev 5y ago

Theses and Antitheses, has always worked, but since Covid all those "Experts" & "Scientists" have discarded this essential framework.

rob_c 5y ago

"If you want to lie with facts, use statistics." - anonymous

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist... 100% of commenters to your comment at the time of writing this comment linked to wikipedia, STATISTICALLY PROVING that they are shills of Big Wiki.
- rob_c 5y ago
  And I'm still chuckling at this

Ambolia 5y ago

Most of the times "fact" wars or "culture" wars are just covert interest wars. Just ask yourself who benefits and how, pull from the string, and most "facts" will just dissolve on a carefully crafted narrative that has nothing to do with the truth and a lot to do with gaining or not losing some type of power.

QuadmasterXLII 5y ago
Thats an interesting way to look at it. Picking a specific culture war, I’d like to examine gay conversion therapy. Who would you say are the covert interests pulling strings on either side?
- Ambolia 5y ago
  The issue is whether christian communities get to choose how to run their own communities or if they need to be told what to do from more progressive states. Not saying they shouldn't be told what to do. Maybe they should. But the power issue is very clear. They are either too dumb or immoral and need to be told what to do, or they are grown ups and can run their communities however they see fit.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Most of the times "fact" wars or "culture" wars are just covert interest wars. Just ask yourself who benefits and how, pull from the string, and most "facts" will just dissolve on a carefully crafted narrative that has nothing to do with the truth and a lot to do with gaining or not losing some type of power. No, I don't think it's that simple. Take the classic culture war issue: abortion. There's genuine, widespread, and deep opposition to it. The "covert interests" didn't manufacture that opposition, but they have latched onto it to help make unpopular policies (e.g. laissez faire economics, tax cuts for the rich) electorally viable.
- Ambolia 5y ago
  Abortion is a can of worms which combines many underlying power issues, from the obvious issue of personal freedom that usually gets discussed, to the need of capitalism to be able to double the work force[1], to eugenics and demographic control [2], to the most fundamental power issue that is who gets to decide what it means to be human and when does human life start. [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/two-income-trap-elizabeth-warren-book https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/432080520/fact-check-was-planned-parenthood-started-to-control-the-black-population https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...

h0nd 5y ago

I have established a way of dealing with and taking from 'facts' by following these steps: 1. What is said? Do I understand it? Where does it come from? 2. How is it to be understood? How to interpret it? 3. What does it signify? Can it be classified and/or compared with other known things? 4. What can be taken from it? What implications does it have? Looking at news in this way, it is clearly visible, how most things that are communicated answer 3. and 4., omitting its foundations 1. and 2. Sometimes the bias is created by changing 2. (The fine-definition of the steps is still in the works. So far, I am very happy with this method. It helps me a lot to understand things and what things are really about. Suggestions?)

brightball 5y ago

Specific facts when a reader doesn’t know the entire story can frame the story however the author wants. Without existing knowledge of the details, a reader has no way of discerning the difference. If two guys punch each other and then shake hands, but you only publish the “fact” that one of them threw a punch you’re framing the story…with facts.

WesternWind 5y ago

It seems like many journalists are failing in their primary responsibilities to keep the public informed. Fact checking liars or misleading statements is tedious, and some politicians lie or mislead. Journalists should be doing investigations and creating reports that put social and political issues in context. Yet so often these issues, real issues that affect lives, are treated as political theater or a public sport. I can't blame journalists for the politicians lying or misleading, but I can blame them for so often going for the easy stories that they are fed, instead of the hard ones they have to look for or put together. As a result, when I read the news I pay special attention to stories that are based on original investigations, public records requests, whistleblowers, or stories in which actual context is provided from multiple viewpoints that are informed by the facts, rather than merely by self interest.

cloutchaser 5y ago
I think we are in a transitional period of journalism which is why it is so crazy right now. Old type publications are competing with clickbait and a million other attention grabbing things online, and have to go down that route as well. The more outrageous the better. That incentive doesn't create good journalism. In the meantime the market is correcting with things like substack, thank god people like Matt Taibbi and a few others can actually do quality journalism there. Something like substack I think will eventually win out in the quality journalism market. But it takes time. A lot of people still believe big name publications like the NYT are where quality information comes from. It takes time for markets to change.
pydry 5y ago
Why do you blame journalists rather than media owners? Do you believe this is a change brought about by journalists themselves?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Whether or not management has approved of or nudged this change it's clear from the rhetoric of journalists discussing journalism that over the last decade or two they have gone from thinking of themselves has having a duty to simply inform the public to having a duty to engage in discretionary inclusion/omission lest the public draw the wrong conclusion. Journalism is reaping the "people are idiots, gotta protect them from themselves" ideology we've been actively sowing since at least the 1990s.

DFHippie 5y ago

It seems to me lying with facts boils down to two techniques: 1. Misrepresenting the central tendency by presenting outliers as representative. 2. Presenting credentialed but agenda-driven authorities who argue in bad faith to affirm that these outliers are representative and pre-empt the listener's getting a competing, and actually representative, interpretation from other authorities.

deleted 5y ago

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papandada 5y ago

I get the feeling this article was written by very smart people with noble intentions coming from backgrounds quite similar to mine. I found it tremendously unsatisfying. This is surely an unfair simplification, but I think, at the heart, it expresses a desire for goodness. A world where people cared about each other and made decisions based on caring about others. (That may sound flippant, and would require more explanation on my part, but I have considered this closely.) If that is part of the desire driving this project, I can sympathize with that. But I cannot feel much hope for the approach I am struggling to understand from this article. My alternative suggestion, which again might sound flippant, even more ineffective, boring, or unoriginal, but is also considered and sincere, is to focus on the very small ways we can make tangible goodness for the people we encounter most closely in life. I think it was said better, though, as "love thy neighbor as thyself." There's a little more to say about all that too, but it would be a good start.

sebastianconcpt 5y ago

From that article: Our task is to create new processes for determining what counts as a shared, socially meaningful, mutually understood “truth.” Obviously, this requires more than making sure that every fact is checked. It's recognizing with double quotes "truth" as a different thing than Truth. Hence it's a confession that their task is to "create a new process for determining what counts as 'truth'" and not genuine fidelity to reality. This means that the process they claim to desire will have, by design, the backdoor of the shared illusion effect. In other words they want to be marketeers of a shared feeling of truth. That's not science, not professional journalism, that's Propaganda. They accuse people of using facts to manipulate the public imaginary and they propose to solve that problem by becoming that people themselves imposing their own manipulation of facts. Here is an idea: You can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts. Let reality show you Truth regardless of how that makes you feel and restrain yourself from wanting to impose worldviews on anybody. Nature is infinitely wiser than you (and all of us).

tablespoon 5y ago
> It's recognizing with double quotes "truth" as a different thing than Truth. Hence it's a confession that their task is to "create a new process for determining what counts as 'truth'" and not genuine fidelity to reality. No one has access to "Truth" (with a capital T), the best you can do is try to get closer, and it seems quite honest of them to acknowledge that. > In other words they want to be marketeers of a shared feeling of truth. That's not science, not professional journalism, that's Propaganda. They accuse people of using facts to manipulate the public imaginary and they propose to solve that problem by becoming that people themselves imposing their own manipulation of facts. > Here is an idea: You can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts. Let reality show you Truth regardless of how that makes you feel and restrain yourself from wanting to impose worldviews on anybody. Nature is infinitely wiser than you (and all of us). The biggest marketeers of "Propaganda" are those that claim they have access to the capital-T truth. If it feels like you have access to capital-T truth, you're almost certainly trapped inside an ideological construct. That said, ideological constructs aren't necessarily bad things, since society simply could not function without the shared "truth" they allow for.

zepto 5y ago

How about they apply their own theory to the framing of ‘information warfare’ that they simply assume as a factual part of what is happening but make no attempt to investigate? Obviously there is literal information warfare in the sense of state funded propaganda and disinformation campaigns. But that doesn’t seem to explain most of what I observe, which seems a lot more to do with vastly increased access to contradictory information as a result of the internet, coupled with a lack of institutional transparency. That doesn’t look like ‘war’ to me, but rather just that our institutions haven’t adapted to the presence of the internet yet.

bsedlm 5y ago

What I wonder about is how does making blind with beliefs work

Synaesthesia 5y ago

Would be great if the author included some actual real life examples. This is why I find Chomsky so convincing. He usually presents his argument with lots of evidence.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

This gives me an odd feeling. They seem to spend a lot of time undermining confidence in fact checkers, to then concede, nearer the end that you have to check facts as part of their new better approach. The fact checkers I would reference, already do these things, so I don't really see what is being added here except some emotive language that seems to be saying "well, you can prove anything with facts" which feels like it's going in the wrong direction. Reading all the other comments, there's a strong vibe of "see, I told you I was right to ignore factcheckers".