
The Problem with Believing What We’re Told - Reedx
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-problem-with-believing-what-were-told-11567224060?mod=rsswn
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JacKTrocinskI
I think a lot of people don't really care or want to know what is going on in
the world, they prefer watching "entertaining" high speed car chases, tornado
reports, animal rescues, special guest "experts" that shout ideas over one
another, and whatever other wild things the news can come up with these days.
I'm in Poland right now, the latest "big" news was that the son of some rich
guy died jet skiing and that a thunderstorm killed some people in the
mountains, not the crisis in Venezuela or protests going on in Hong Kong. I
recommend Anchorman 2, if you haven't watched it already, great comedy and
commentary about the state of the current news.

~~~
johnnycab
>I'm in Poland right now, the latest "big" news was that the son of some rich
guy died jet skiing and that a thunderstorm killed some people in the
mountains, not the crisis in Venezuela or protests going on in Hong Kong. I
recommend Anchorman 2, if you haven't watched it already, great comedy and
commentary about the state of the current news.

I was with you when you offered a critique of the news-cycle and the banality
of infotainment, until you segued into recommending a comedy film, as a way to
gain further insight and draw parallels with serious matters.

~~~
jazzyjackson
Comedy can absolutely be critique, I don't know why you would dismiss it out
of hand.

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pjc50
Something very important with reading news: you have to understand reported
speech.

If you see "a spokesman for the president says the moon is made of green
cheese", and that spokesman did actually say that, _that passes a fact check_.

The fact that the moon is not made of green cheese is not considered to be in
the remit of journalism.

~~~
mieseratte
Reminds me a bit of “peer reviewed” vs. “reproduced.”

One would hope those journalists would employ some type of standards on what
they choose to report, and how deep they investigate it to avoid confusion.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Peer review can be pretty shit too, and should be viewed as a spam-filter more
than anything. There isn't really a _fast_ way to know if some work is good
and reliable if its about something new.

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Reedx
> "A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology compared the spread of
> fake news and real news on Twitter in a 2018 study published in the journal
> Science. Looking at 126,000 tweets of news stories over the previous 11
> years, _they found that fake news stories were 70% more likely to be
> retweeted than true stories_. Real news took about six times as long to
> reach a benchmark audience of 1,500 people as fake news did."

~~~
dqpb
I think there is an information theoretic explanation for this.

The content of fake news tends to be more surprising than factual news. It is
surprising because it is less likely.

Generally speaking, the more unlikely a message is, the more information it
carries. Thus, fake news appears to have higher information content then
factual news to people unable to detect that it's fake.

~~~
smitty1e
The spectacle of seeing a nominal fact-checking site go after an overtly
satirical one has been an astounding result for our day.

I like to point out the rose colored glasses of the early internet, when the
awesome signal-to-noise ratio was going to have a catalytic effect on human
knowledge.

#Whoops

~~~
kibibu
Do you remember Bonsai Kitten, and the breathlessly horrified email campaigns
against it? People have had difficulty determining real from fake for a long
time.

~~~
esmi
It’s way older than that. This is just one I know off the top of my head. I’m
sure there are many other, older, examples.

[https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/colonial-
life-...](https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/colonial-life-
today/fake-news-is-nothing-new/)

~~~
kibibu
Yes of course; but it's the earliest one I remember being a purely online
phenomenon that suckered people in.

Besides, of course, the stupid lists of factoids that used to get emailed
around - duck quacks don't echo etc.

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dredmorbius
The conclusion of this WSJ piece -- organ of the Murdoch disinformation
empire, though generally the WSJ's news reportage continues to enjoy a
reputation no longer afforded its opinion pages -- is that we need better
media literacy.

That is: it's a plea for a dodge of responsibility by media organisations
themselves.

My conclusion is the opposite: we need better reputational and accountability
systems and institutions. The idea that a media channel, editorially
controlled, AI heuristics driven, or "wisdom-of-the-crowd" determined, can act
in complete disregard (or open opposition) to the truth and reality, and fail
to be held to account, is a key problem.

To those who respond with "but who then would determine the truth": these
institutions are _already_ determining at least the _perception_ of truth,
through what they promote. Repetition, as the WSJ article and its cited
research show, _create_ impression of truth. And whilst not all ground truths
can be known, _some can be well established_ , as can be deliberate campaigns
to obviate and obscure truth.

Dante's deepest circle of hell was reserved for the betrayers of others. But
immediately above this was the circle reserved for the bearers of false
witness. An arrangement in an age where virtually all information _was
conveyed through witness,_ either oral or spoken testimony. Much of the
social, religious, and communications institution of the time was devoted to
establishing the importance of truth, and the consequences for falsehood,
where independent verification was difficult or impossible.

Advances in information technology have offered increased opportunities for
verification, but also broken down many of the foundations of trust in
individuals and institutions. Some recent tools -- Bitcoin comes to mind --
are expressly founded on removing the role of trust within sectors of
activity. This is a bad idea for multiple reasons, two of the principle ones
being that trust itself has an extreme function in improving efficiency, and
that its removal proves instantly and deeply toxic socially and
institutionally.

We need to reestablish trust, adherence to trust, accountability to trust, and
institutional trust. Information technology to date has worked in the opposite
direction.

This ends poorly.

~~~
rayiner
You make some excellent points, but your dig at Murdoch undermines your point.
The fact is that we live in an age of pervasive _advocacy._ Everyone has a
side and everyone musters the best arguments for their side. It’s something we
expect of lawyers—to make whatever arguments on behalf of their client that
can be made within the threshold requirements of good faith and plausibility.
But now we see it everywhere. News media, public interest organizations,
academia, etc. It’s not just WSJ or Fox News, but the NYT, ACLU, EFF, etc. And
people find that disconcerting. People don’t really expect when reading
content from such organizations, that they’re being lawyered. But every time I
read an ACLU blurb in my email and dig into the facts to see how much spin
there was on the story, it makes me feel like when I was clerking first a
judge and would see the amount of spin with which the trial record was
portrayed in the briefs. Even when it comes to organizations I respect a lot
(I rag on the ACLU, but I’m a member) it’s tiring. I feel like I’m engaged in
a mental joust rather than being educated.

Part of this is, I think, the degree to which electronic media and modern
society has allowed us to self-segregate. Increasingly, our communications are
directed to people who already agree with us, which allows us to communicate
in a code of canned talking points. Given the self-selection in media
consumption, that applies to media organizations as well.

~~~
dredmorbius
Some advocate.

Some advocate, knowingly, willingly, and with great compensation, for the
Devil.

Which would you do?

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popularwarfare
The real lie is the implied premise that if people only knew the 'the truth'
it would somehow cause them to act in a certain way.

Which is categorically and empirically false. But I don't want to be too hard
on them, they are journalists after all.

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rb808
I think I have the opposite problem now where I don't believe anything I'm
told. Especially from friends and relatives.

~~~
DangitBobby
I get the impression that that's the desired effect of foreign-funded fake
news compaigns.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
While I agree with the sentiment, I'd like to point out that not all of them
are foreign-funded.

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redmaverick
Ted Bundy's mom Louise refused to believe her son was a murderer despite all
evidence to the contrary. Her son admitted that he was the culprit and only
that made her come out of her denial.

In a lot of third world countries it is pretty common and even expected that
the average Joe will vote for whomever appeals to their emotions. Every sin of
the politician is forgotten and forgiven even if the said politician has a
history of inciting murder or being corrupted etc.

There is a good chance that people who voted for their candidate made up their
minds long before any kind of "fake news" hit their newsfeed.

~~~
jadell
In a lot of first-world countries, too.

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paulsutter
This is similar to publication bias for news outlets and even scientific
journals, just with progressively lower standards. Each party wants to publish
the most interesting things they can, therefore take it as close to the line
as their reputation/judgement allows.

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vbsteven
The first part of Neal Stephensons latest novel “Fall, or Dodge in hell”
explores exactly this topic in the context of social media. The possible
consequences of a post-truth world where people cannot agree on facts are
stunning. An interesting read.

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RyanAF7
Not to mention the political advantage of framing your opponents base as
having poor judgment or lacking discernment by producing fake stories you know
they are more likely to read, share and believe than your own base.

Politics today is far more deceptive because the speed of delivery and
feedback for communications allows it to be.

Only going to get worse unless a new platform/network/protocol is created for
the future of "trustless" news and publications.

~~~
popularwarfare
It's always been this way, politics is a zero sum game.

~~~
RyanAF7
All things are zero-sum if you try hard enough.

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rkagerer
I tend to be very skeptical and have a good sense of whether somebody's
feeding me bullsh*t. I'm genuinely surprised by some of the things I see those
around me just blindly accept. I hope when I'm a parent, I can instill a
healthy sense skepticism in my child.

~~~
abraae
My proudest moment of parenting so far was when my son told me how much he
appreciated being brought up to question and not to blindly accept groupthink.

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mch82
The correct term is “propaganda”.

We shouldn’t use the term “fake news”, which is a term designed to undermine
trust in news institutions. When we use the term, we contribute to the
undermining.

~~~
tsimionescu
That is confusing terms. Propaganda can and usually is built out of true news
as well as fake stories - true news presented selectively, given a specific
interpretation etc. can be a very powerful tool.

Fake stories and their spread are a different matter - they can be a form of
propaganda as well, but they can also serve other properties (selling ads,
such as in spam, is a major reason for fake stories).

~~~
cjslep
I've been using the word "paltering" or "to palter" to help make this
distinction. Once "lying by being truthful" has a concrete name like
paltering, it is easier to get others to start to see the different kinds of
propaganda and label them.

Paltering is what Chomsky rails against in traditional media in his books such
as _Manufacturing Consent_. Ex: tortured Polish Solidarity Catholic priests in
the USSR get national headlines, but Catholic Priests murdered by US-funded
death squads in Guatemala do not.

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empath75
It’s a rare parent that wants their children questioning what they’re told.
It’s one of the reasons the Greeks killed Socrates.

That’s the fundamental aspect of human nature that needs to somehow be
changed. It’s not that hard to develop critical thinking skills — but parents
don’t want it, corporations don’t want it, politicians don’t want it. Where is
the constituency that is going to push for and pay for critical thinking
skills in childhood education?

~~~
Vinnl
> corporations don’t want it, politicians don’t want it

Hmm, the question that then arises in my mind is: are parents that _do_
encourage their children to question them properly preparing those children
for a society that will disregard them with that attitude?

(Working from your assumptions here - I'm not necessarily sure how widespread
the disregard for a questioning attitude is.)

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JustSomeNobody
Wait, so you mean Dorian _won’t_ hit Alabama!?

