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Maybe. One problem we have now is that fact checking is a lot more expensive than bullshitting. If we had a program that could bring things closer to parity it

Maybe. One problem we have now is that fact checking is a lot more expensive than bullshitting. If we had a program that could bring things closer to parity it would be nice. But also, a lot of propaganda isn’t false per se but simply blown out of proportion, or underproportioned in cases of inconvenient truths. The truth is a distribution of events, and editors continuously choose how to skew that distribution. (One of my very interesting possessions is an old Chinese state-owned newspaper. As far as I could tell, their main tool wasn’t lying, but simply omission.) For example, if you wanted to push a narrative that e.g. pit bulls are the most dangerous problem in America, you would just post a nonstop stream of pit bull attack videos. It taps into cognitive biases people have which aren’t propositional logic statements. More broadly, the world is stochastic, at least in the way we experience it. So our brains have to make sense of that, which is an opportunity for narratives to creep in.

drdeca 2y ago
You mention the world being (at least subjectively) stochastic. This brings to mind the idea that a model of probability rather than just logic, might be more beneficial? The example you gave of focusing excessively on some topic in order to make it seem like a bigger deal… hm, is there a way we could formalize such things in a way like how formal fallacies are formalized? It seems more difficult than classifying common formal fallacies. But, might it be possible?
- janalsncm 2y ago
  The problem is that “news” is not a random sampling of all events. It is biased by the very fact that someone has to decide the event is notable. And even if you were to witness a random sampling of all events via some kind of clockwork orange mechanism, your brain has saliency biases as well. You might find the wiki page on cognitive bias interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias
FloorEgg 2y ago
So maybe the solution is to have these FOL capabilities close to the user and far from the information source. FOL values analysis of information streams, that manifest as user interface for configuring the algorithms that decide what information is surfaced to you in media. This is why I said this sort of thing might be part of a solution. The whole solution would involve other significant parts.
mirekrusin 2y ago
You can require that factual statements require source reference. Statement that "pit bulls are the most dangerous problem in America" requires source data (ie. cause of death or serious injuries in 2024 in USA). Publications can be signed by authorities (ie. university or government body). IMHO sooner or later we will (have to) end up with system like that. Every information will be signed and level of trust will be automatically established based on your preference who you trust.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Such a publication would not explicitly come out and say “pit bulls are the most dangerous problem in America”. That’s something that can be easily falsified. They would say something like “learn the truth about pit bulls” and then feed you an endless barrage of attack footage and anecdotes and emotionally charged information. The purpose is to shape your priors. If all you see is pit bulls attacking people, your subconscious will rate them more risky. You may not even be able to verbalize why you changed your opinion.
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    People say that in the future all information will not be directly ingested by people – instead everybody will have a "filter" similar to how we use spam filters, but it'll rewrite information (removing misinformation, adjusting bias, adding references, summarizing and/or expanding <<probably more rare>> etc). I believe this future (all information being like this) is not far off and it has decent usage percentage already judging from direct traffic decline on some well known information source websites. Perplexity, phind (as well as upstream chat interfaces now) support internet searching (exploring?) already which does it. When reading (news and other) articles I find myself more and more often reading them through LLMs to perform above steps. If somebody never tried it, it's really worth, especially for politically biased news articles. I believe this shift in information consumption is happening more and more for everybody. Everything will become indirect, likely with multiple layers (ie. extra layer at OS level is likely – this is frankly perfect for use cases like protecting minors: it would be great if you can safely give laptop to your kid knowing that there is ai based content filter you've setup for their age group).

drdeca 2y ago

You mention the world being (at least subjectively) stochastic. This brings to mind the idea that a model of probability rather than just logic, might be more beneficial? The example you gave of focusing excessively on some topic in order to make it seem like a bigger deal… hm, is there a way we could formalize such things in a way like how formal fallacies are formalized? It seems more difficult than classifying common formal fallacies. But, might it be possible?

janalsncm 2y ago
The problem is that “news” is not a random sampling of all events. It is biased by the very fact that someone has to decide the event is notable. And even if you were to witness a random sampling of all events via some kind of clockwork orange mechanism, your brain has saliency biases as well. You might find the wiki page on cognitive bias interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

FloorEgg 2y ago

So maybe the solution is to have these FOL capabilities close to the user and far from the information source. FOL values analysis of information streams, that manifest as user interface for configuring the algorithms that decide what information is surfaced to you in media. This is why I said this sort of thing might be part of a solution. The whole solution would involve other significant parts.

mirekrusin 2y ago

You can require that factual statements require source reference. Statement that "pit bulls are the most dangerous problem in America" requires source data (ie. cause of death or serious injuries in 2024 in USA). Publications can be signed by authorities (ie. university or government body). IMHO sooner or later we will (have to) end up with system like that. Every information will be signed and level of trust will be automatically established based on your preference who you trust.

janalsncm 2y ago
Such a publication would not explicitly come out and say “pit bulls are the most dangerous problem in America”. That’s something that can be easily falsified. They would say something like “learn the truth about pit bulls” and then feed you an endless barrage of attack footage and anecdotes and emotionally charged information. The purpose is to shape your priors. If all you see is pit bulls attacking people, your subconscious will rate them more risky. You may not even be able to verbalize why you changed your opinion.
- mirekrusin 2y ago
  People say that in the future all information will not be directly ingested by people – instead everybody will have a "filter" similar to how we use spam filters, but it'll rewrite information (removing misinformation, adjusting bias, adding references, summarizing and/or expanding <<probably more rare>> etc). I believe this future (all information being like this) is not far off and it has decent usage percentage already judging from direct traffic decline on some well known information source websites. Perplexity, phind (as well as upstream chat interfaces now) support internet searching (exploring?) already which does it. When reading (news and other) articles I find myself more and more often reading them through LLMs to perform above steps. If somebody never tried it, it's really worth, especially for politically biased news articles. I believe this shift in information consumption is happening more and more for everybody. Everything will become indirect, likely with multiple layers (ie. extra layer at OS level is likely – this is frankly perfect for use cases like protecting minors: it would be great if you can safely give laptop to your kid knowing that there is ai based content filter you've setup for their age group).