5 ms·
It's a well-known fact that a tiny focused group can have a major impact on the society; that's how many initially fringe progressive ideas were implemented, li
by treprinum 2y ago
It's a well-known fact that a tiny focused group can have a major impact on the society; that's how many initially fringe progressive ideas were implemented, like LGBT rights. The problem of fake news is that some of them turn out to be true, discrediting whoever opposed them, casting doubt on the "arbiters of truth", giving further credibility to supersharers ("what if this person is right when we know official media lied to us in this and that case?"). Now we have even well-respected people that spent their whole life in the power circles like Jeffrey Sachs casting doubt on many official narratives. This further weakens the "truth" signal and increases confusion. I suspect AI is going to make everything worse fairly soon as well.
- HPsquared 2y agoAI text generation is going to be very strong at generating arguments for whatever position the user requests.
- euroderf 2y agoThis sounds like a way to make trial lawyers obsolete.
- visarga 2y agoThe same models can curate your feeds of what you don't want to see. This could be a fix for the problem - you can't actually remove unwanted content from the network, but you can hide it like ad blockers. I think we need local AI to de-garbage our internet interactions from now on. Who decides what should be hidden? You can do it yourself, or align with some trusted source, the same way we subscribe to ad blocking feeds. Yes, there is a risk of a bubble, but you have the tools to avoid it, LLMs are very flexible in how they get prompted. This only saves you from having to endure the garbage, but if you're actually interested in stopping others from seeing it, no help. I think that's a social problem, not a technological one.
- sillysaurusx 2y agoIt’s also sometimes an important phenomenon. Remember when it was impossible to talk about the lab leak theory without being labeled? Eventually mainstream media came around, but they did a lot of damage to their credibility. Not to mention the whole Iraq having weapons of mass destruction narrative that many of us grew up seeing proven false firsthand. At this point I just don’t trust anything. It’s fortunate to be of a scientific mindset, since you can make up your own mind with some confidence that you’re not crazy. That doesn’t really work for most people, which seems like the main problem you touch on.
- staunton 2y ago> I just don’t trust anything Surely you trust a lot of things and people every day. One cannot make up ones mind about almost anything without being influenced by others, nor without taking into account information received from others. The point is to always be willing to question and revise one's opinions while consciously making decisions despite uncertainty.
- sillysaurusx 2y agoIt seems like we’re saying the same thing. Trust implies that you can afford to outsource your skepticism. Being willing to question whoever you trust is at odds with that. It’s probably more accurate to say that whenever someone says something, it’s treated as an independent data point, each of which is assigned somewhere between "probably true" and "probably false". The datapoints get updated as more observations about the world come in. Observations are different than taking someone’s word for it.
- amalcon 2y agoThat assigned probability is a function of trust in the speaker, prior plausibility, other available information, and the consequences of being wrong in either direction. You can't avoid the trust question by talking about probability.
- rimunroe 2y ago
- nemo44x 2y agoIt's a well-known fact that a tiny focused group can have a major impact on the society; It’s Pareto essentially. And yes it’s in everything. In any organization a well organized minority will exert power over the disorganized majority, or remainder of people. It’s why you see ridiculous municipal codes, etc. Small but well organized groups of people create pressure to bring them into existence. Opposition to it is disorganized and apathetic. The minority group can’t be too small but because it’s small it’s easier to organize a larger group of outer supporters (sympathizers, useful idiots, etc) that will march with you on a nice Saturday afternoon, etc. Now your fringe idea looks like it is majority held and enough otherwise disinterested people say “sure, whatever”.