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People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

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Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#141

Post by knzhou »

didericis wrote: post #111

The worst thing about widespread fake information is the ease with which you can convince yourself that everything you don't like is fake. We don't really have a defense against it that allows for people with opposing perspectives to coexist. I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Not a truth checker; that's far too…

> I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims.

Bad news: the political narratives of whatever party you don't like are self-consistent, and perfectly consistent with the facts that they hear about. The people you think are ignorant are already seeking out news from sources they know and trust, and they already evaluate new information in the context of whatever they already believe. The issue is just not as simple as you suggest.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#142

Post by perl4ever »

mherdeg wrote: post #48
tabtab wrote: post #3

Fake people reading and writing fake news on fake websites? If this keeps up, we'll end up with a fake President. Don't give me negative points, for this is a fake reply.

In Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" he proposes a distant alternate-history future where a priest-like cult of technical experts set themselves up to do effective human-aided Google searches which were necessary because the Internet was full of machine-generated disinformation. I genuinely thought this was an implausible, hokey premise when I read the book in 2008. I felt similarly about Orson Scott Card's plot in "Ender'…

"Then a bunch of Macedonian teenagers..."

Uh, is this a commonly accepted fact? I literally had not heard this before now.

I thought it was "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds".

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#143

Post by mattr47 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #51
jeffdavis wrote: post #7

It will be interesting when the election cycles start to cross over into eachother. For instance, start lining up primaries for an election 5 years away. We could be in a permenent election, with people slowly positioning themselves to be elected sometime later. Then, we can finally give up and just draft our representatives. Two months before it's time for new politicians to take over, they would draw names, and do…

Trump never stopped campaigning as it is. He has been holding rallies this entire time.

The only thing a first term president cares about is a second term. Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton etc all did this.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#144

Post by didericis »

knzhou wrote: post #141
didericis wrote: post #111

The worst thing about widespread fake information is the ease with which you can convince yourself that everything you don't like is fake. We don't really have a defense against it that allows for people with opposing perspectives to coexist. I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Not a truth checker; that's far too…

> I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Bad news: the political narratives of whatever party you don't like are self-consistent, and perfectly consistent with the facts that they hear about. The people you think are ignorant are already seeking out news from sources they know and trust, and they already evaluate new…

Don't get me wrong, in no way am I suggesting this is an easy problem to fix. I'm aware of how good people are at cramming huge amounts of knowledge into a siloed yet consistent narrative (and I am not claiming myself to be completely innocent of this either, though I think I try fairly hard not to). I'm also well aware of the extreme difficulty in making a system that can automatically check for consistency in the way I'm describing.

However, there are chinks in ideological armor which, if given the right light, can cause breaches and get people to collaborate and understand one another better.

I would argue that the current lack of any form of reliable, extensive consistency checker that people can trust (ie, a SYSTEM they can trust rather than a group of people) leads people to silo themselves into small, isolated networks. They don't operate outside of their network, even though there might be information out there somewhere that's valuable and would cause their worldview to expand, because they know there are at least some nefarious actors putting out inconsistent/untrue information, and it's too hard to identify.

If there were some way to automatically "expand" your axioms and see how much of the world they can explain while maintaining their consistency, it could theoretically be a non biased, trustworthy way of testing your assumptions of the world outside of your own, small, limited network, and might help people recognize what parts of the world it is and isn't explaining.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#145

Post by pixl97 »

didericis wrote: post #144
knzhou wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Bad news: the political narratives of whatever party you don't like are self-consistent, and perfectly consistent with the facts that they hear about. The people you think are ignorant are already seeking out news from sources they know and trust, and they already evaluate new…

Don't get me wrong, in no way am I suggesting this is an easy problem to fix. I'm aware of how good people are at cramming huge amounts of knowledge into a siloed yet consistent narrative (and I am not claiming myself to be completely innocent of this either, though I think I try fairly hard not to). I'm also well aware of the extreme difficulty in making a system that can automatically check for consistency in the w…

I'm not sure any human system is self consistent. Our entire society is built on incomplete information.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#146

Post by nradov »

btilly wrote: post #96
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am (mid-forties) and started using Photoshop around version 2. People definitely worried about the integrity of photographic evidence. I think what's different now is the combination of much more powerful cheaper tools (those fake GAN generated faces are likely taken from one of the sites making them for free) vs Photoshop at the time was thousands of inflation-adjusted dollars. This is coupled with a much more eff…

What is even crazier about the Dan Rather story is that the story about how George W. Bush avoided Vietnam due to political manipulation and bribes was actually TRUE. Before it was ever reported in the USA it was reported in the UK by The Guardian among others. Dan Rather's team started their investigation with sources in hand which already constituted very strong evidence. Given that the story was true and Dan Rathe…

That's an interesting conspiracy theory. Now where's the hard evidence?

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#147

Post by ddmma »

elliekelly wrote: post #76
digi59404 wrote: post #75

Did anyone stop and consider these aren’t fake people but people who value anonymity? I have 20 friends who use such tools and tech to hide their identities. Yes they lean right, slightly but they do. They all do this to avoid being found by employers and other. One of my friends is a prominent person in a legal field, another one is a member of a three letter group. Other than my real name - My Facebook profile has…

Surely that scenario is the exception and not the rule. But also, if you have the Facebook app on your phone, or associated with your phone number or email, you’re not anonymous. It’s been an issue for sex workers in the past who try to conceal their identity on social media but Facebook still manages to suggest their “Johns” as friends.

If you upload contacts in Wazzup you’ll see them suggested into your facebook

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#148

Post by blotter_paper »

pixl97 wrote: post #145
didericis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong, in no way am I suggesting this is an easy problem to fix. I'm aware of how good people are at cramming huge amounts of knowledge into a siloed yet consistent narrative (and I am not claiming myself to be completely innocent of this either, though I think I try fairly hard not to). I'm also well aware of the extreme difficulty in making a system that can automatically check for consistency in the w…

I'm not sure any human system is self consistent. Our entire society is built on incomplete information.

Indeed, I've long desired such a tool not as a weapon to convince my enemies of their logical flaws but as a mirror to convince myself of my own.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#149

Post by ardy42 »

jordigh wrote: post #91
bonestamp2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

!!! SPOILER ALERT ABOVE !!! Hopefully you saw this before reading the above comment.

Spoiler alerts are a 20th century invention. Everyone has been taught to get angry about spoilers, but the very word "spoiler" itself is an internet invention coined in Usenet. The idea of society at large working hard to keep a fictional story secret is a marketing ploy invented by Alfred Hitchcock to sell more movie tickets to his mystery films. It used to be common to know everything about a story before you even…

And even without spoilers, one often already has a pretty good idea of the ending not even halfway into a movie.

As far as I'm concerns, spoilers should be avoided only for works where there's a prominent Sixth Sense-like twist.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#150

Post by trianglem »

knzhou wrote: post #141
didericis wrote: post #111

The worst thing about widespread fake information is the ease with which you can convince yourself that everything you don't like is fake. We don't really have a defense against it that allows for people with opposing perspectives to coexist. I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Not a truth checker; that's far too…

> I wonder if it's possible to somehow create a "consistency checker" that can check to see what claims are compatible with what other claims. Bad news: the political narratives of whatever party you don't like are self-consistent, and perfectly consistent with the facts that they hear about. The people you think are ignorant are already seeking out news from sources they know and trust, and they already evaluate new…

Even if it the “consistency checker” was completely unbiased people wouldn’t care. Most people are just looking for validation and will deliberately ignore facts or find a way to rationalize them away.
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