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I think that the reason behind the astonishing rise of fake news is partly due to people wanting to believe things that they know are, at least, not totally tru
by ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
I think that the reason behind the astonishing rise of fake news is partly due to people wanting to believe things that they know are, at least, not totally true.
Unfortunately, I have witnessed this firsthand where the desire to "own" the other side grows faster than that of getting to the best (possible) answer.
Winning at all costs is indeed a dangerous game to play.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thfuran 3y agoYou think people are only recently starting to want to believe false things?
- optimalsolver 3y agoI want to believe that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bagels 3y agoI think that the acceptance and celebration of this kind of thinking has increased, or, maybe I'm just more exposed to it through media.
- lupire 3y agoHow do you explain the history of world religion?
- itishappy 3y agoHas religion been proven false?
- apetresc 3y agoWell, maybe not, but most of the big ones are at least mutually exclusive. So to the OP's point, at various periods throughout history at least ~80% of the population were "believing false things", even if we can't agree on which 80% those were.
- thfuran 3y agoTo the extent they can be, yes.
- default-kramer 3y agoWhether or not a certain religion is "proven false" is generally not a productive question. But many religious people would proudly state that they would continue to hold whatever sacred belief they have even if it were proven wrong. So I think the popularity of religion does show that people want to believe false things, regardless of whether the religion is true or false or (most commonly) unfalsifiable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SkyMarshal 3y ago> I think that the reason behind the astonishing rise of fake news is partly due to people wanting to believe things that they know are, at least, not totally true. They don't know these things aren't true. Modern disinfo and psyops is sophisticated enough to be credible and plausible to its targets. It aims to identify already-existing grievances, perspectives, worldviews and frames of reference, then select actual events out of the random soup and create false narratives for them that reinforce or justify those pre-existing beliefs. Like how we see shapes in the clouds or the stars and ascribe meaning to them where none exists. It manipulates the human mind's penchant for pattern matching, even where the pattern is just a statistically inevitable artifact of randomness.
- lupire 3y agoI don't know. If people were confident in their beliefs, why is it worthwhile to go through effort of reconvincing them what they already believe?
- SkyMarshal 3y agoWe're trained in school to get the "right" answer, and it triggers a dopamine rush when somebody tells us we're right, or we learn something that reinforces our belief that we're right, even if we already believe it. Makes us feel even more certain, superior, etc.