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There is a phrase of set of phrases I am looking for when it comes to astroturfing / election manipulation/ fake news. The first is that there are many stories
by lifeisstillgood 4y ago
There is a phrase of set of phrases I am looking for when it comes to astroturfing / election manipulation/ fake news.
The first is that there are many stories, interpretations or perhaps coherent models. Obviously some stories are inconsistent or falsifiable on their own terms. Then we walk up the pyramid - and stories exist like "stories for children". these are things like "love will always triumph, hospitals are where sick people go and doctors make them better again". These stories are true in some directional sense, and they are true in that there are many facts that will support them, but there are facts that falsify the stories.
And so we travel up the pyramid, and the stories become more complex and nuanced - failed prime ministers should not get 100K pa pensions, but if we don't give officials fat payouts they are at risk of bribery on the job which is more expensive. There are facts that support that argument but it seems less cut and dry - you need a model of bribery and human nature and revolving doors to match up.
As we go further up the pyramid more and more falsifiable stories don't just need the same facts as me to agree with me, but they need other mental models to agree with me. Deserving poor, mentally ill people need to buck up a bit, believe in yourself, etc
I think that surfacing mental models matters as much as surfacing facts. Debunking can only go so far and facts that might help cannot be used if the mental model is the wrong shape.
- fsckboy 4y agoyou're using falsifiability only as a negative, whereas most people will be familiar with Karl Popper and falsifiability as a necessary element of scientific discourse and progress.
- peteradio 4y agoThey say that falsifiability is a best case scenario and base of the pyramid, as you move up you have to construct dynamic models of measurement to deduce even a probability of being true.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoI see falsifiability as very much a positive and love me a bit of Karl Popper. I just think that for a empirical outcome to falsify a theory we both need to agree on the same theory. If your theory is there is a shadowy cabal of pedophiles secretly controlling wokeness to hold down good old boys from decent jobs and my theory is that factory production in China is cheaper so why keep the factory in Detroit, exactly which facts are going to help us? It took a lot to prove the Earth even spins, and orbits the sun. And yet if you had polled everyone in Europe or America from 1600 onwards, I am not sure when 50% of people would have said heliocentric, and do wonder when if ever the figure got above 95%. Somehow the figure that Brexit and Trump votes split not on age but on further education seems relevant here - that university teaches new mental models. But somehow I am dubious that has explanatory power.
- peteradio 4y agoI really like this pyramid of "factuality". I wonder if the missing bit is people attesting to their confidence of their statements and/or a prior on bullshittidness of the given source.