> An engaged and well-informed public has always been the foundation of our democracy
Is there even a shred of scientific evidence to support this hypothesis? I see it in print so often that it appears to be a axiom that is considered so correct as to be unquestionable.
Democracy has never really relied on people being well-informed. The "wisdom of crowds" incorporates a lot of ignorance. It just assumes that ignorance is random, while informed opinion will tend to have a bias in favor of reality. If 49% of the people make a random guess one way, and 49% of people make a random guess the other way, then 2% of people who actually know something will put the best-informed answer over the top.
So democracy is robust against ordinary ignorance. It's just not robust against deliberately-induced ignorance[1]. The nudge towards reality is easily overwhelmed by a thumb on the scale of the wrong answer.
Ignorance has never been really random, but the press of misinformation is more widespread than ever. As is the press of information, but when people don't know which to choose, misinformation is often more attractive.
Democracy is intended to be a sort of "eventually correct" system; the people vote to make decision (a), see what happens, then vote again to make decision (b), etc. If decision (a) produces bad outcomes, then knowledge of those bad outcomes will presumably affect the way everyone votes in decision (b). Over time the voting populace converges the government toward their desired state, in theory.
The challenge here is in knowing whether an outcome was bad or good. Different people can have different perspective on facts, of course. But if people don't have direct experience in the outcomes, then they have to hear about it 2nd hand. That's where the opportunity opens up for them to hear lies, which corrupt the process.
The challenge in the 21st Century is that our most pressing issues seem to be those that don't produce immediate direct experience for most voters, like climate change, systemic racism, non-point-source pollution, threats of diseases, authoritarianism, etc.
People are increasingly reliant on 3rd parties to inform them on these issues, and the information ecosystem we've built to do that optimizes on engagement instead of accuracy.
I wonder though if another issue is at play: in the past both well-informed and random folks would mostly have "swayable" opinions (mostly certain, but leave room for a doubt; thus open to arguments and possibly a change of opinion), currently most opinions seem to have a religious hardness to them. This makes science less influential -- people tend to put a lot of spin on key findings to avoid changing their views.
This is judging by newspapers and magazines of 50 years ago and talking to older generations; not sure how objective this is.
Huh, never thought about the math like that. It makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing.
P.S. Before the age of social media, was there not the same level of risk of induced ignorance through traditional media campaigns and propaganda? If not, why not?
Propaganda has always been a problem, and it's hard to quantify if it's actually worse now or merely different. Even if it's merely different, though, it feels like it's the kind of problem that should be solvable. In so many cases people aren't merely misinformed but actively hostile to science in a way that should bite them in the butt sooner rather than later. Surely, one thinks, that should make it possible to resolve it, at least a little.
> Propaganda has always been a problem, and it's hard to quantify if it's actually worse now or merely different.
I think that part of what makes it both different and worse now is the way that, thanks to automatic personalisation of content, what feels like honest intellectual inquiry will be met with automated replies that drive us deeper in the direction of our beliefs (inadvertently; they optimise for engagement, but it's more likely that a random browser will engage with something that supports their beliefs than that challenges them).
Of course, there was always propaganda before, but there was at least the chance of realising critically that it was being forced upon you, and so choosing to resist it; or, if you wanted to be swallowed up by the propaganda, at least you had to make some effort to find the material that would support that position. It's the way that our filter bubbles are now more than ever hidden from us and, even worse, presented as ever more rarefied intellectual inquiry that I think causes so much 'unswayability'.
Is there any way to realistically and gradually reduce the prevalence and thickness of these filter bubbles, so that people can be encouraged to practice critical thinking in a sustainable way? Will this have to necessarily be a governmental effort, or can there be business value in such practices? Will there ever be sufficient incentives for any government to work on this?
Sorry for all the questions, I'm just thinking out loud.
> Is there any way to realistically and gradually reduce the prevalence and thickness of these filter bubbles, so that people can be encouraged to practice critical thinking in a sustainable way? Will this have to necessarily be a governmental effort, or can there be business value in such practices? Will there ever be sufficient incentives for any government to work on this?
The problem that I see is that filter bubbles keep people happy, so the effort to fix it has to be an effort that's going to make people unhappy—and what business or democratic government is going to do that? To me, it's like being a teacher (my profession); there are ample studies that show that teaching effectiveness is in many ways inversely correlated with student satisfaction (because true learning is often uncomfortable), and yet the incentives for teachers are all in the direction of encouraging student satisfaction even when everyone knows it can be at the expense of learning.
I see, that makes sense. Kind of a "eat your vegetables" type of situation.
I really hope we can learn and get to a better place from here, but I'm not holding my breath. The way I see it, there's a good chance that the world will only continue to become increasingly more authoritarian and dictatorial. Because in a world filled with more and more widespread filter bubbles and entrenched divides, authoritarianism and dictatorships logically become the optimal solution to get society to cooperate and function.
In the old days the propaganda was expensive and it came from monied interests and any such interest would have a competitor pushing the other way providing balance and allowing room for the influence of the most informed citizens.
We're in the weird territory because some propaganda comes from really low-budget campaigns not easily steadied by the stabilizing influence of competing businesses. The disruption is akin to the printing press invention - suddenly low budgets provide loud voice. I expect this to go the same way - running good social media campaigns will demand huge budgets and require support from big businesses.
The other odd (and alarming) part is that the government bureaucracy itself became a source of the propaganda - we don't have a competing government bureaucracy so no tension is created to promote balance.
The 98% are never split equally. And some percentage of 100% is always swayed by propaganda. That's why it's propaganda that pushes the vote over the top. And in today's democracy, its done under the guise of "education". That's why the self-declared "engaged and well-informed" are often the most targeted, readily swayed, and eager to back the wrong movement.
The anti-vaccine movement is one example of the engaged being swayed to total conviction, and it's easy to question whether they truly care about their children, but love is their motivation. Similarly, many "wrong" movements are for the love of democracy of the country etc.
And looking at the bullet points at the end of the article, those are what even the "wrong" are doing, extremely proactively. And it all starts with the "educator" claiming to be the "reliable information source", which happens to be what Scientific American is also doing here.
I posit it's susceptible to both, and that it is susceptible to any manipulation. Not just overt or malicious. Even in good faith. And even the article is a form of manipulation. And I am saying the "manipulated" and the "educated" are often one in the same especially in hindsight when wrong becomes clear.
> The nudge towards reality is easily overwhelmed by a thumb on the scale of the wrong answer.
What’s the evidence supporting this?
I've noticed this trend of all sides of every political debate declaring that the other side has fallen for "fake news." In actuality, it's often that people with the "wrong answer" just have a different value system than the people with "right answer."
I provided a link. You don't get to sea-lion me by just repeating "evidence" until you've demonstrated that you've at least read the sources I gave you already.
The wikipedia article you linked doesn't make this claim.
The primary example, that cigarette companies tried to hide that smoking causes cancer, doesn't prove this point -- the vast majority of people know this and the propaganda effort was a failure.
You are missing the point: there's an entire field of study about the claim and the various ways that it's true. The wikipedia article is about that field of study. Hence, the only way the claim would be false would be if that entire field of study were completely junk (e.g. homeopathy or neurolinguistic programming), which from the wikipedia article, it doesn't look so.
> the vast majority of people know this and the propaganda effort was a failure.
The vast majority of people know this now, but it was just as much a subject of motivated doubt in its time as climate change is now. It's only because of a massive counter-propaganda effort (in a good cause, but it's still propaganda) that it seems so obvious to us now, and so inevitable in retrospect that people of sense would see the truth.
In my lifetime I have never known the average person to be engaged, nor informed. I think they're mostly mis-informed for the past 10+ years.
People just believe whatever outlandish title comes across their facebook feed. I had about 12 people ask me if I heard the news--that wayfair was selling missing children on their website, disguised as fancy cabinets. It took me about 12 seconds to find out it was a theory with no evidence put forth by an anonymous reddit poster. 2/12 changed their minds when I showed them that.
I made the terrible mistake of trying to convince someone out of this insane view only to remember the old quote, "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into".
Maybe we should just devote the entirety of a school year to basic rationalism and logic...
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into".
Very good quote. It took me decades to comprehend that a lot of people don’t even try to understand things but go with whatever sounds right and makes them feel good. Especially when it comes to political issues I don’t think I have ever heard somebody say “oh yes, this convinces me to change my stance.”. People stick to their beliefs as long as possible. I only have seen people change their minds over years.
It's difficult, tiring, and demoralizing to keep on and on trying to maintain sincere and reasoned argument with seemingly unreasonable and ignorant people.
But we really can't give in to that cynicism. These conversations almost always have an audience, and the point isn't just to convince this person in front of you and win, but to keep your side of the argument alive and in front of as many people as possible.
And to practice your own patience, sharpen your argument, and maintain bridges and relationships.
I'm sure most people can't do it, but if you can please don't throw up your hands and walk away, depriving perhaps many other people from hearing a point of view they might not otherwise ever hear.
[Edit: Of course I'm speaking generally here about climate denialism, etc., not specifically about the crazy conspiracy theory mentioned above.]
Do you also put that much effort into arguing against climate exaggerationism? Claims like the world is on fire, civilization will end or humans will go extinct because of it? People who won't have children because they believe the world will no longer be suitable for human habitation during their lives.
If we're arguing for something rationally it is important to be honest in that argument. That means not pretending the risk doesn't exist, but also not over-inflating the risk.
One of the worst things the CDC did was take an anti-mask position initially when it was a bald faced lie unsupported by data. That destroyed their trust relationship and continues to haunt us now.
I've heard a similar theory about Epstein and child trafficking for years, but not one single person was ever able to provide evidence proving the allegation, so naturally I concluded the allegation is False.
Simple logic goes a long way in discovering the truth, no need to get into that complicated epistemology pseudoscience.
You think that's bad? I've met more than 12 people who believe humans were created by an invisible space alien who reads our minds and will punish us if we think the wrong thoughts. When I was at school, we were encouraged to engage in group chants begging the space alien not to punish us.
Religion is the elephant in the room. There are more people who believe God wants them to kill gays and Jews than believe in any internet conspiracy theory.
In "Amusing Ourselves to Death" they made the point that Americans used to be much better read, and would attend lectures as a past time. They said Presidential Candidates would travel the country and in-depth structured debates that went on for hours and would attract a huge mass of people. Never really bothered to confirm it but the idea sounded interesting.
I would say that in the past, the engaged and well-informed public (and few honestly) were valued by the policy/decision makers because they generally were or closely related to the decision makers.
The democratization of opinion and influence has not gone well for technical experts and correct information getting to (or influencing) people in positions of responsibility.
Everyone (no matter how ill-informed) is so able to issue opinions and "make their voices heard" that people in responsibility get confused who they should worry about satisfying.
Sometimes democracy (and democratization of information) is not a purely good thing.
I think it's more of an assumption required by models which say "democracy is a good idea that will work well." In other words, the typical civics class model goes something like "democracy is a good idea that will work well, assuming that (among other things) the public is engaged and well-informed."
That ironically isn't true - it can work well for reasons seperate from good decisionmaking even when excluding incentives as a component (democracy gives a wider array of relevant interests in decision making).
For one democracy is a good pressure relief valve - far from the monarchist fears they were way more stabme compared to the regular secession civil wars of monarchies and rebellions. Election results let a potentially hotheaded minority faction know "you won't win you know, you got only 30% of the vote - let alone what percentage would actually fight for you. You are outnumbered so chill, campaign, and wait for the next election".
>> well-informed public has always been the foundation of our democracy
I'd say maybe a well-informed electorate. Until very recently, the majority of "the public" wasn't allowed to vote and so had very limited input into "our democracy".
So - AFAIK, originally most white men weren't allowed to vote, in the US; I can't remember when this got changed, but in the very earliest formulation, there was a strong limitation where only certain kinds of landed property owners were allowed to vote.
I believe this had several intents behind it; one of them was of course just plain-old elitism/cronyism, but I think there were also some elements of using it as a proxy for education, shared-culture, and (presumed) fiscal responsibility.
There also was probably a surprisingly pragmatic problem of logistics; a small register of settled-down property owners was probably far easier to collect votes from that a wild array of migrant laborers, whalers, fur-trappers, and frontiersmen.
Is there even a shred of scientific evidence to support this hypothesis? I see it in print so often that it appears to be a axiom that is considered so correct as to be unquestionable.