
How Disinformation Hacks Your Brain - Elof
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-disinformation-hacks-your-brain/
======
mrspeaker
The most impressive application I've seen of this lately is the "all
journalists are bad" idea. Having hidden under a rock for the last few years
(deleted twitter, no social media except here), I was surprised when I started
seeing that sentiment appear on HN: "Sure tabloid X is all lies, but NY
Times/WaPo/etc don't check facts", "They only print what generates clicks - so
they're all terrible".

The third time I saw that sentiment repeated here I googled around a bit, and
it seems like that originated a couple of years ago - and was repeated enough
that it worked really really well. No one believes any journalism now and
every publication is equally wrong!

I'm jaded enough that I don't care about too much - but damn that has a scary
"history repeating" feeling about it.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Why exactly is this sentiment wrong? I've been holding it for many years now -
I consider every mainstream news article individually to be bullshit until
proven otherwise. I base this on my personal experience. Gell-Mann amnesia is
a thing. And deleting social feeds perhaps made this more difficult for you to
notice - one nice feature of some social networks (like HN or niche
subreddits) is that for almost any news story, either the subject of the
article, someone with first-hand knowledge, or an expert on the topic will
chime in to thoroughly debunk the article. It's hard to not draw conclusions
from this pattern.

EDIT: The conclusion also hold under reasoning from first principles. The
basic idea behind critical reading is considering who's writing and why. The
reason news media publishes anything is to make money, they don't really keep
any pretense of a civil duty anymore. How do they make money? Predominantly by
advertising. Which creates a strong selection pressure that favors outrage-
inducing stories, and disincentivises truthful and accurate reporting.

EDIT2: I just remembered I actually made a diagram of this before:

    
    
                 BULLSHIT SCALE
       |[------]----------[---------------]-->
       |    |                        |       |
       |   the range people think    |      fake news
       |   news publications         |
       |   operate in               the range
       |                            they actually
       |                            operate in
      as close to truth
      as one could get
    

See [0] for more explanation.

\--

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627258)

~~~
wavefunction
You may certainly hold the sentiment yourself but that offers no insight into
whether it is valid. I have to wonder for example, do you research the claims
of every mainstream news article and if so what have you found? How accurate
are they after you've researched their claims? What's the accuracy rate on
mainstream news articles? How does that compare to the accuracy rate of "non-
mainstream news articles?" I know if I had such a strongly held belief as this
that I would want to investigate if my belief was correct or not and if not,
change my belief.

~~~
mikedilger
Yes, you should always try to disprove your beliefs rather than to confirm
them if you want to know if they are true.

I've researched the claims of many "mainstream" news articles and found almost
zero falsehoods which would stand up in a court of law (courts are very lax
and consider many statements to be matters of opinion that I would consider to
be matters of fact); however, I've found pretty much every article, most
sentences have excessive manipulative framing that taints or spins a story,
leading the reader towards beliefs which are very often untrue, unproven, or
judgemental (normative). I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and
deliberately tried to 'unspin' stories, but gave up after realizing how much
work that was going to be. This isn't something that happened in the last four
years... at least not for right-leaning people. Maybe it's a new idea to some
left-leaning people (other than Noam Chomsky/Edward Herman).

As for "non-mainstream" most of them are much worse, often containing actual
provable falsehoods. But some of them do seem to be more accurate and less
manipulative. I have to say "seem" because the ones I respect the most have
the same biases that I do, so I can't see the mistakes as clearly.

~~~
funkymike
> I noticed this as a teenager in the 1980s and deliberately tried to 'unspin'
> stories, but gave up after realizing how much work that was going to be.

This struck a chord with me.

Few specific lessons from school stuck with me. There was one though that was
powerful enough that I have tried to not just remember it, but practice it
ever since. The lesson was simply to watch the evening national news and pay
special attention to words, phrasing, and tone that could sway the opinion of
those watching, apart from the facts being presented, then describe what we
found in class the following day. Even when seemingly just presenting the
facts of the story you can almost always pick out the views of the presenter.
The idea was to instill in people how to separate the facts from the opinions
of those presenting the facts so one can form their own opinions. You can then
also judge how honest the news source seems to be about their biases.

A speech that is described as a "standard policy speech" compared to a
"powerful appeal for change" can affect how people think of it, then discuss
it with others. Only if we are paying attention to these details can we split
out fact from opinion.

Every source of news attempts to influence people. Everyone has opinions and
they can come out in very subtle ways. The key for me is how open and honest
they are about it. I think the problem we have today are so many news outlets
that claim to be objective and unbiased when they are anything but,
intentionally. Too many people never had the lesson I did and were never made
to realize how much other people are trying to manipulate them, including
(especially) those they trust.

------
TeMPOraL
Same thing applies to advertising, which for the most part (as practiced
today, not in theoretically ideal, benign form) is also disinformation, albeit
with less political undertones.

------
commandlinefan
> crowdsourced judgments

That depends on who’s allowed into the crowd. One only needs to look to reddit
to see what happens when you crowdsource “truth” but also allow the
“unenlightened” to be kicked out arbitrarily with no transparency. This only
works if _everybody_ gets a say, even if they don’t have fashionable
viewpoints.

~~~
bena
Self-selection bias also plays a part.

There are some subreddits that pride themselves on not banning users, but
their entire userbase is nothing more than users banned from more mainstream
subreddits.

So while they aren't kicking out anyone, they still aren't getting a say from
"everyone".

~~~
jfengel
Unmoderated forums are sometimes the most biased, because they are dominated
by the loudest voices: the ones with the strongest feelings, the ones with the
most free time, the ones who repeat arguments that have been debunked, the
ones who will deliberately cause offense. Once people realize that they will
make no headway there, they leave.

~~~
bena
That is also a good point.

It's why most "general discussion" forums become unusable. You mostly wind up
people who only have expertise in "free time".

------
mikedilger
Disinformation is widespread. Even this article contains some.

What the authors should have said about the "pedo ring" theory was not that it
was "fake news" and "debunked" but that major portions of it were "fake news"
and "debunked." Comet Pizza having a basement was clearly debunked. Bots being
involved has shown much of it to be untrustworthy. Yet some of it has some
support: Several claims about Jeffrey Epstein came back up and he was re-
arrested and famously committed suicide; There actually was a child pedo ring,
with at least Jeffrey Epstein involved; Bill Clinton flew in Epstein's plane
and was reported to have been on Epstein's island by Virginia Roberts, a
victim.

I don't think it's smart to take an absolute one-sided approach to this story.
The story is complex and you have to hold some of it as ambiguous and be
comfortable with that.

~~~
bena
While "pedophiles exists" is a fact common to both stories, there are no
credible links between Comet Pizza and Epstein's sex trafficking.

So, no support.

~~~
mikedilger
I didn't follow the story at the time but I was under the impression that the
Comet Pizza theory and the Epstein theory were the same theory. If the Comet
Pizza / Hillary Clinton / Satanic baby eating stories did not mention Jeffrey
Epstein than I'm sorry that I got them confused. I'd have to research deeper
to sort that out; memory works in weird ways as it's partially reconstructed
from fragments.

~~~
chacha2
Epstein was an already known sex offender and had previously done time for it.

------
zyxzevn
Interesting is to understand how disinformation started the first world war.
Something that is proven, but not publicly known. Here is some information
about it:
[https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/](https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/)
(check the historical records on it) "babies on barjonets" was a clear
propaganda slogan.

It was also used in the invasion of Iraq. Where we had WMD's, that did not
exist. (except for some old US-produced ammunition) "babies being killed in
incubators"

And the Afghan war? While Bin Laden was in Pakistan, as everyone knew?

Now we see something similar around Douma, where the mainstream publishers are
trying to keep a narrative. [https://www.corbettreport.com/the-douma-hoax-
anatomy-of-a-fa...](https://www.corbettreport.com/the-douma-hoax-anatomy-of-a-
false-flag/) Later confirmed via whistleblowers and via wikileaks how the UN-
watchdog was making up evidence. Probably because the Pentagon threatened
their families just before?

This all shows how disinformation is often used to push for war. So the "good
guys" can bomb poor people that have almost nothing to live for.

George Carlin:
[https://i.imgur.com/D621y7S.png](https://i.imgur.com/D621y7S.png)

Solutions: 1: Get money out of politics, so that big military industry cant
push decisions. (Also limit how much they can influence the media). 2: Get CIA
out of the media and politics. Let them defend the country, instead of control
its politicians and citizens. 3: Protect whistleblowers, also those who expose
war-crimes. 4: Instead of bombing/destroying other countries, one can setup
non-destructive infrastructures. A bit like the Romans did. 5: The US should
stop blaming their internal political problems on the rest of the world. 6:
The US should protest against befriended countries that are clearly abusing
human rights.

------
cklaus
How should social networks like Facebook and Twitter fight all the
disinformation? Seems like it is pervasive.

