Information overload helps fake news spread

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

paulz_ wrote: post #23

goalieca wrote: post #3

I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess. Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive.

Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote about this experience calling it "Gell-Mann Amnesia." >“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wron…

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

zyxzevn wrote: post #8

Most information, also in scientific publications, is full with logical fallacies and other inconsistencies. This again causes people to jump to conclusions on the basis of limited information/evidence. I tried to give a guideline on how to do critical thinking and how to investigate the truth about something. The first steps are: 1) logical fallacies 2) the scientific method .. And I think that these should be part…

Post by thehappypm » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #74

thehappypm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russiagate is basically the idea that the Trump campaign was working closely with Russia to "cheat" the 2016 election. The Mueller report showed.. Russia was messing around for sure, but the Trump campaign wasn't really involved in any meaningful way.

That is incorrect. The Mueller report clearly showed a great deal of coordination, and could not reach accusations because of limits placed on the investigation. A Mueller investigation with different parameters would have reached very different conclusions.

Post by vrperson » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

travisporter wrote: post #148

vrperson wrote: post #137

The article seems to be all over the place and mixes interesting phenomena like human biases and fallacies with pure speculation, like claiming "bots can easily ruin social networks" which they infer from merely running simulations. Obviously their simulation doesn't prove anything about the nature of networks of real humans (as one example). Afaik their Botometer tool is also highly disputed, supposedly having way t…

I found the article pretty straightforward. Biases are amplified by social networks. The article attempts to simulate some aspects of social networks and explain some biases. I'm not sure how you mean fact checkers are leaning one way or another. Sure, there are different ways to interpret things, but I don't believe it's enough to bias towards either end of the spectrum. To your last point, you are already looking c…

Post by thehappypm » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #168

thehappypm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps do some research? A key takeaway of the Mueller report was that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. I mean, here's a New York Times article, which as everyone knows, is not fond of Trump and does not hold punches: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/us/politics/mueller-repor... Mueller did not exonerate Trump on the obstruction of justice charges, but that's not what this thread is ab…

That is not a key takeaway of the report, which found about 140 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. Mueller repeatedly and specifically said he was not investigating Trump on any criminal charges since he was bound by the opinion of the DOJ that a sitting President cannot be indicted and therefore there were no charges that could be pursued, even if Trump shot someone live on TV.