7 ms·

> I do not think there is much evidence that misinformation has become more widespread, that this increase in misinformation is due to technological change, or

by epgui 5y ago

> I do not think there is much evidence that misinformation has become more widespread, that this increase in misinformation is due to technological change, or that it is at the root of the political trends liberals are most angry about. If anything, people seem to be better-informed than in the past — which is what you would expect because our information technology has gotten better [...] This kind of framing makes me feel very weary. There is plenty of evidence, but I'm not interested in going on a hunt. Rather, let's think for just one second about how to model this: - The number of "bad actors" probably has not changed significantly over time - The cost of producing documents has gone down significantly - The cost of diffusing documents, or information, per audience headcount, has gone down significantly - Overall, the total volume of sketchy information produced yearly has been dramatically increasing as a result of these lowering barriers. - Conversely, the total volume of quality information has clearly increased as well. - The technological tools at our disposal, as consumers of content, have become more and more sophisticated, such that we now have access to more quality information than ever before in History. - However, consuming quality content requires constant deliberate effort and prudence, and it is much easier to stumble upon crappy information, than it is to find quality information. - The less expert you are at a subject, the more energy is required to sift through the crap. - Most people are either not expert at anything, or are expert in a narrow field of interest. - Information no longer flows in the same way it once did: it now diffuses through a social graph which is prone to significant network effects. Non-experts can have a bigger influence than experts, even when the information they share is entirely meritless. Echo-chambers form naturally and require a lot of deliberate and conscious effort to get out from. It is very difficult to reach certain pockets of the graph.

fortuna86 5y ago
> If anything, people seem to be better-informed than in the past [citation needed] more information =/ better informed, the same way drinking from a firehose doesn't allow you to ingest more water than drinking slowly from a glass. This point missed ironically by a website called "slowboring.com"
- brianfitz 5y ago
  I believe he was using the source article. One example was a leap in public polling around how our government functions (33% jump in being able to identify the three branches of the US federal government).
  - fortuna86 5y ago
    Congratulations to us all on the bump in basic civics knowledge. Meanwhile, on more important matters, acceptance of vaccines (which used to be nearly universally viewed as safe and effective) have plummeted. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(20)30012-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7... Similar numbers can be found about faith in democracy, views toward fellow citizens, etc. It's not just lack of knowledge, it's the embracing and polarizing extremes.
    - edanm 5y ago
      Have you read the article? He talks specifically about this very subject, and why this narrative is wrong. > When I asked Twitter followers to suggest the best evidence they had that misinformation has become worse than it was 30 years ago, a lot of people expressed their frustration with the people who won’t get Covid-19 vaccines. I also find this extremely frustrating. > That said, vaccination rates for kids have actually risen since the mid-1990s [...] > A lot of people know that the licensing of the polio vaccine in the 1950s was widely greeted with celebratory headlines and the ringing of church bells. [...] Eighteen months after authorization, vaccine uptake was still slow, and that was after a much longer development process.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      The COVID vaccine is not the same as other vaccines. One can have hesitancy towards the COVID and other mRNA vaccines and go get the flu shot the same day. If you want to solve the hesitancy problem you must recognize this first, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a loop like you are now, demanding they’re safe just like every other vaccine in history.
aaroninsf 5y ago
I wish I could upvote this 10x though I see atm that is not necessarily. A very nice summary of priors and predicates that need to be grokked! To these I myself often add several aspects looking more specifically what "social graph" means and what the so-called algorithm means, with lemmas about "engagement" and its industry... ...and the underbelly of how the algorithm works, the constellation of surveillance tracking entity resolution and targeting that make up the actual functioning of "teh algorithm." These regularly lead me back to trying to find pithy summations of specific paths through this mire, such as "deplatforming is not censorship, it is failure to provide or sell a megaphone," and, "we need to reason about 1A the way we do about 2A," (ie in terms of understood liberty vs aggregate societal harms). Another such summation is simply to observe that the subset of "the information out there" that any individual sees, and which is amplified within their own social circles online and off-, is the most hotly contested property in the market today. In many markets. Against this individual integrity and good faith often appears to be but a reed in the wind.
- bcrl 5y ago
  Exactly. The fundamental difference in advertising today compared to 30 years ago is that for the entire of history until the last 2 decades, it was expensive to target individuals. Ads on TV and newspapers have to adhere to standards established by organizations like the Advertising Standards Council. Malicious ads or propaganda that target individuals with misinformation or malware or phishing can be bought on modern platforms for pennies or mere fractions of a penny. Nobody is being held to account for the damage they are doing to our society. In the past at least the cost of postage was a barrier to entry, but today? This desperately needs to be fixed.
  - FFRefresh 5y ago
    What misinformation have you been convinced of because you saw a targeted advertisement? Or a slightly different version: What views do you hold that originated from a targeted ad? Or for some more specific examples: In elections, do you start out looking to elect one candidate and then you see a targeted ad and you change your vote because of it? For COVID vaccines, did you start off with a stance and then you see a targeted ad and you change your stance because of that ad?
tekknik 5y ago
How come only experts are/should be allowed to speak on a subject? This leads to a technocracy, which while enticing those in the pseudo-aristocracy, it sucks for everybody else involved. Every time I see someone post this all that goes through my head is this person has an ego and thinks they should speak for the country/world.
- ravi-delia 5y ago
  The person you replied to said nothing to imply they disagree with you. Perhaps we are forced to choose as a society between technocracy and misinformation. I'm suspicious of that line of argument myself, but "technocracy is bad" and "misinformation isn't a problem" are separate arguments.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    Sure they did, it was implied in these three points: > - The less expert you are at a subject, the more energy is required to sift through the crap. > - Most people are either not expert at anything, or are expert in a narrow field of interest. > - Information no longer flows in the same way it once did: it now diffuses through a social graph which is prone to significant network effects. Non-experts can have a bigger influence than experts, even when the information they share is entirely meritless. Echo-chambers form naturally and require a lot of deliberate and conscious effort to get out from. It is very difficult to reach certain pockets of the graph.
    - ravi-delia 5y ago
      That only argues that non-experts will be fooled. The universe is under no obligation to make misinformation less bad just because technocracy is even worse. Maybe we're just screwed! Between you and me I suspect it's not that big of an issue, but no matter how bad technocracy is (and I agree that it's very bad) it still has no bearing on whether non-experts proliferate misinformation.
- cyanydeez 5y ago
  what youre really asking is "why do credentials matter and why should randomly samplibg information not result in a appropriate confidence in a result" after all, we knew for decades that the average guess for a cows weight tends to be more accu4ate than any individual guess. the probablem as you are responding to, is how cheap messaging is and how effortless it is to both produce information and entrain the body politik in its recitation. these can be over come by what you deride, credentialling and weighting sources. because in the exam0le od the cown, theres no people interested in giving wrong answers or mani0ulating responders to effecr a skew on the answers. we know and have directly seen that is a naive point of view. as such, your response takes a simplistic exam0le and broadly interprets everything naively.

by epgui 5y ago

fortuna86 5y ago

> If anything, people seem to be better-informed than in the past [citation needed] more information =/ better informed, the same way drinking from a firehose doesn't allow you to ingest more water than drinking slowly from a glass. This point missed ironically by a website called "slowboring.com"

brianfitz 5y ago
I believe he was using the source article. One example was a leap in public polling around how our government functions (33% jump in being able to identify the three branches of the US federal government).
- fortuna86 5y ago
  Congratulations to us all on the bump in basic civics knowledge. Meanwhile, on more important matters, acceptance of vaccines (which used to be nearly universally viewed as safe and effective) have plummeted. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(20)30012-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7... Similar numbers can be found about faith in democracy, views toward fellow citizens, etc. It's not just lack of knowledge, it's the embracing and polarizing extremes.
  - edanm 5y ago
    Have you read the article? He talks specifically about this very subject, and why this narrative is wrong. > When I asked Twitter followers to suggest the best evidence they had that misinformation has become worse than it was 30 years ago, a lot of people expressed their frustration with the people who won’t get Covid-19 vaccines. I also find this extremely frustrating. > That said, vaccination rates for kids have actually risen since the mid-1990s [...] > A lot of people know that the licensing of the polio vaccine in the 1950s was widely greeted with celebratory headlines and the ringing of church bells. [...] Eighteen months after authorization, vaccine uptake was still slow, and that was after a much longer development process.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    The COVID vaccine is not the same as other vaccines. One can have hesitancy towards the COVID and other mRNA vaccines and go get the flu shot the same day. If you want to solve the hesitancy problem you must recognize this first, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a loop like you are now, demanding they’re safe just like every other vaccine in history.

aaroninsf 5y ago

I wish I could upvote this 10x though I see atm that is not necessarily. A very nice summary of priors and predicates that need to be grokked! To these I myself often add several aspects looking more specifically what "social graph" means and what the so-called algorithm means, with lemmas about "engagement" and its industry... ...and the underbelly of how the algorithm works, the constellation of surveillance tracking entity resolution and targeting that make up the actual functioning of "teh algorithm." These regularly lead me back to trying to find pithy summations of specific paths through this mire, such as "deplatforming is not censorship, it is failure to provide or sell a megaphone," and, "we need to reason about 1A the way we do about 2A," (ie in terms of understood liberty vs aggregate societal harms). Another such summation is simply to observe that the subset of "the information out there" that any individual sees, and which is amplified within their own social circles online and off-, is the most hotly contested property in the market today. In many markets. Against this individual integrity and good faith often appears to be but a reed in the wind.

bcrl 5y ago
Exactly. The fundamental difference in advertising today compared to 30 years ago is that for the entire of history until the last 2 decades, it was expensive to target individuals. Ads on TV and newspapers have to adhere to standards established by organizations like the Advertising Standards Council. Malicious ads or propaganda that target individuals with misinformation or malware or phishing can be bought on modern platforms for pennies or mere fractions of a penny. Nobody is being held to account for the damage they are doing to our society. In the past at least the cost of postage was a barrier to entry, but today? This desperately needs to be fixed.
- FFRefresh 5y ago
  What misinformation have you been convinced of because you saw a targeted advertisement? Or a slightly different version: What views do you hold that originated from a targeted ad? Or for some more specific examples: In elections, do you start out looking to elect one candidate and then you see a targeted ad and you change your vote because of it? For COVID vaccines, did you start off with a stance and then you see a targeted ad and you change your stance because of that ad?

tekknik 5y ago

How come only experts are/should be allowed to speak on a subject? This leads to a technocracy, which while enticing those in the pseudo-aristocracy, it sucks for everybody else involved. Every time I see someone post this all that goes through my head is this person has an ego and thinks they should speak for the country/world.

ravi-delia 5y ago
The person you replied to said nothing to imply they disagree with you. Perhaps we are forced to choose as a society between technocracy and misinformation. I'm suspicious of that line of argument myself, but "technocracy is bad" and "misinformation isn't a problem" are separate arguments.
- tekknik 5y ago
  Sure they did, it was implied in these three points: > - The less expert you are at a subject, the more energy is required to sift through the crap. > - Most people are either not expert at anything, or are expert in a narrow field of interest. > - Information no longer flows in the same way it once did: it now diffuses through a social graph which is prone to significant network effects. Non-experts can have a bigger influence than experts, even when the information they share is entirely meritless. Echo-chambers form naturally and require a lot of deliberate and conscious effort to get out from. It is very difficult to reach certain pockets of the graph.
  - ravi-delia 5y ago
    That only argues that non-experts will be fooled. The universe is under no obligation to make misinformation less bad just because technocracy is even worse. Maybe we're just screwed! Between you and me I suspect it's not that big of an issue, but no matter how bad technocracy is (and I agree that it's very bad) it still has no bearing on whether non-experts proliferate misinformation.
cyanydeez 5y ago
what youre really asking is "why do credentials matter and why should randomly samplibg information not result in a appropriate confidence in a result" after all, we knew for decades that the average guess for a cows weight tends to be more accu4ate than any individual guess. the probablem as you are responding to, is how cheap messaging is and how effortless it is to both produce information and entrain the body politik in its recitation. these can be over come by what you deride, credentialling and weighting sources. because in the exam0le od the cown, theres no people interested in giving wrong answers or mani0ulating responders to effecr a skew on the answers. we know and have directly seen that is a naive point of view. as such, your response takes a simplistic exam0le and broadly interprets everything naively.