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People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

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Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#151

Post by didericis »

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.

> I'm not sure any human system is self consistent

I think you're right, with the possible exception of math. The entire discipline is about finding a large, self consistent set of rules, and a lot of progress has been made towards that end.

I think a system that checks for consistency with regards to observations about the real world would be useful as a roadmap even if the ultimate goal of finding a set of rules that was entirely self consistent and described pretty much everything we observed would be too large/complicated to figure out.

If there were a way of testing the effectiveness of our information and our assumptions by testing our information and assumptions against all other information, I think it would help identify how "good" our information and assumptions were.

Such a system could theoretically help identify bad actors. If an actor is putting out information that is inconsistent with other information, that could mean a) that actor's information is "bad" b) the other information is "bad". To determine which person is "right", you could look at whether the axioms they put forward are consistent with things you accept as true, how many things those axioms can explain accurately, and then compare that to the axioms and information put forward by other people.

I realize this is essentially what people do now when they generate their own little web of trust (although there are lots of charisma/confidence/rhetorical angles to human trust that this is unrelated to), but I think if you could some how automate those consistency checks, you'd be able to more easily test your own ideas without worrying about someone with an opposing ideological bent messing with you/being turned of by personality types of presentation of people with a different worldview/etc.

This is all extremely theoretical, and again, if the kind of system I was describing were somehow possible, there's a fair chance it could backfire/be used as a sort of "ultimate truth authority" that ideologues could use to stifle ideas they don't like. But I do think the current situation is such that people are going to try to make a "truth engine" regardless of whether it's possible or a good idea, so trying to figure out how to steer that ship in the best direction possible seems prudent (and imo that direction is to try to make it free/open and dependent on consistency/webs of trust rather than anything authoritative).

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#152

Post by blotter_paper »

avivo wrote: post #14

I actually just published a guide on how you can help ensure that ("deepfake") tools that you make are less likely to end up misused like this: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614912/ethical-deepfake-t... Curious what folks think. I also just posted it to /newest if you want to respond there.

> Curious what folks think.

Personal take: I value open source software, and while you do note that some of your suggestions can be implemented in open source while hoping that bad actors don't take the time to remove them you also suggest (especially in the other article that elaborates on when to release code) that some code simply shouldn't be shared with the public. I hope you lose the culture war, and we find other ways to deal with this issue. The people I trust least are the ones most capable of forging evidence, and I hope that proliferation of this technology you fear will cause us to rethink our standards of trust and evidence altogether; signature or it didn't happen.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#153

Post by jdance »

creato wrote: post #131
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution is to just hang out in meatspace, and assume everything I can't physically observe doesn't exist. This has been a surprisingly effective solution.

This seems like it is how (non-ironic) flat earthers come to be.

The motions of the sun and seasons (my personal experience) are much easier explained by the "round" model :) The truth from ground level is more like "I can't actually know if it's round or not, because the scale is invisible from here". I readily admin I have not seen a round earth and can't say that I know for sure (in the end not even my own memory can be trusted, so I can never really know). But even with that the flat model is really horrible.

My point being, I'm sure theres some more weird psychological phenomena that makes people want to believe in a flat earth, rather then hanging out in meat space.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#154

Post by btilly »

nradov wrote: post #146
btilly wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I read it in one of Greg Palast's books. He reported on the story for the BBC, and knew what evidence Rather's team started with because he was one of the people who supplied it to them. You can also still find reporting on the story online from The Guardian if you look for it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Palast for more on the reporter that I named.

And lest you think that this kind of dirty and underhanded trick would have been off limits, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth for a more widely known story of the underhanded tricks used by Bush supporters in that particular election.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#155

Post by nradov »

btilly wrote: post #154
nradov wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I read it in one of Greg Palast's books. He reported on the story for the BBC, and knew what evidence Rather's team started with because he was one of the people who supplied it to them. You can also still find reporting on the story online from The Guardian if you look for it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Palast for more on the reporter that I named. And lest you think that this kind of dirty and underhand…

So no actual evidence, just innuendo.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#156

Post by btilly »

nradov wrote: post #155
btilly wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it in one of Greg Palast's books. He reported on the story for the BBC, and knew what evidence Rather's team started with because he was one of the people who supplied it to them. You can also still find reporting on the story online from The Guardian if you look for it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Palast for more on the reporter that I named. And lest you think that this kind of dirty and underhand…

So no actual evidence, just innuendo.

Let's see.

I pointed you at an author who is a reporter for the BBC. I am not sure which of his books it is in, but that shouldn't be too hard to find out. (My guess is Armed Madhouse.) He lays out the interviews and documents that were sufficient for the BBC to report the story as fact. This is all verifiable.

According to you, this is "just innuendo". And therefore you have dismissed it out of hand.

The BBC is not in the habit of publishing as fact what is "just innuendo".

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#157

Post by nradov »

btilly wrote: post #156
nradov wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no actual evidence, just innuendo.

Let's see. I pointed you at an author who is a reporter for the BBC. I am not sure which of his books it is in, but that shouldn't be too hard to find out. (My guess is Armed Madhouse .) He lays out the interviews and documents that were sufficient for the BBC to report the story as fact. This is all verifiable. According to you, this is "just innuendo". And therefore you have dismissed it out of hand. The BBC is not…

I looked at the BBC reports. There's no hard evidence, just innuendo and hearsay. You're making things up.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#158

Post by sjwright »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #26
sjwright wrote: post #22

It doesn’t matter how autonomous and free thinking you are or any other individual is— social media is transforming us into a collective. Like ants excreting pheromones, our actions in aggregate are more powerful than any individual, the result being whatever results from this untested cocktail of biology, language and global connection. It’s unprecedented and borderline unpredictable. Nobody is in a position to dire…

How is this worse than tightly controlled mass media? I think people like to look back on this non-existent golden era of News where it was fair and balanced and just reported the truth. That era never existed. At least now you have options. I hate social media as much as anyone, but it's not bringing an end to the world. It's easy to manipulate people of Facebook. But it's way easier on Fox News or CNN.

You’re prioritising truth over social cohesion. I like truth but without social cohesion, no amount of truth matters.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#159

Post by mherdeg »

perl4ever wrote: post #142
mherdeg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

This is super well documented; see:

* This coverage about the industry in Veles: https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/

* Similar coverage from Wired: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/

* NBC's version: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-ma...

* A re-told version of the story in 2019 from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-macedoni...

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#160

Post by makomk »

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…

You'd be surprised. For example, there was a terror attack in London shortly before the recent UK elections, which our Labour party responded to by spreading a bunch of lies that tried to blame the ruling Tories for the attack. One of our legal bloggers then attacked the Tories as the liars for correctly debunking those claims, backed it up with a blog post that showed those Labour claims were false for exactly the reasons claimed - but crucially, without tying the errors it pointed out to any claims made by anyone but the Tories - and managed to successfully pass it off as proof the Tories were the lying liars.

(His objection was that the Tory claims were misleading because they didn't mention that the courts could have given the Parole Board the oversight which Labour falsely claimed they had anyway and failed to exercise by handing down a kind of sentence that Labour falsely accused the Tories of stopping them from handing down. Except carefully worded to make it sound like the Tory claims and only those claims were complete lies.)

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