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The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

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Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#101

Post by rhino369 »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #66
pdonis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only 60 something percent of Americans believed the moon landings were real the year they happened. What is your basis for this? Were you alive then? I was. I watched the first Moon landing on television. Nobody was talking about how it was faked.

I sm skeptical on that number as well. I looked for the source. In the 10 minutes that I was willing to spend on it, I only found this: "A July1970 poll found 30% of Americans declaring Apollo 11 to be a fake." https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_millions-still-believe-1969-mo... Couldn't find the original source. It looks to be something like US 6% of the population at the moment (Gallup https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/…

Another issue is that polling is often fucked around with by the respondents, especially if the poll wasn't well written.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#102

Post by throwaway894345 »

dang wrote: post #80
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

I've also noticed that the term "willful ignorance" gets thrown around a lot more nowadays. There is a sizeable contingent of people who are so convinced that what they believe is the absolute truth that any disagreement or critique must therefore be out of malice rather than genuine disagreement.

Also "disingenuous", which is a fancy way of saying lying. Edit: that's not quite right, as throwaway894345 and xyzzyz and Sohcahtoa82 have pointed out below. It's also not quite what I meant (I was being hasty). The point is that 'disingenuous', like 'lie', implies intent to deceive.

I think “lying” as more of a “your claim is outright false” while “disingenuous” lends itself to more subjective forms of misleading. For example, if I refer to a given protest as “violent” on the basis that a literal handful (out of tens or hundreds of thousands) were violent, I’m not really lying but I’m certainly misleading people by way of my characterization.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#103

Post by PathOfEclipse »

RIMR wrote: post #85
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

I've also noticed that the term "willful ignorance" gets thrown around a lot more nowadays. There is a sizeable contingent of people who are so convinced that what they believe is the absolute truth that any disagreement or critique must therefore be out of malice rather than genuine disagreement.

I think there's some nuance to this terminology, but overall I prefer to use the term "bad faith" when people are saying things that they know are untrue. In general, most people I hear using the term "willful ignorance" are referring to the same phenomenon of people lying to push their own narrative. Actual ignorance is never willful, by definition of ignorance.

Willful ignorance doesn't just include lying to push a narrative. It's also an ailment of probably the majority in modern society to both be uninformed about the issues of the day and to have no interest in becoming informed. And no wonder. Being informed is hard work! For any given issue, you have to research a lot, and do it from multiple perspectives and view points, including those you don't agree with. Then you have to sort out which information you trust versus distrust, and finally synthesize your own educated opinion. Actually, you aren't even done then. You have to be willing to continue to consider opposing ideas and be willing to update your views given new information.

Until ~2 years ago, I was one of the uninformed masses. It took the recently-intensifying insanity of American politics and ascendant leftwing ideology in the past few years to wake me up.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#104

Post by xyzzyz »

dang wrote: post #80
BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

I've also noticed that the term "willful ignorance" gets thrown around a lot more nowadays. There is a sizeable contingent of people who are so convinced that what they believe is the absolute truth that any disagreement or critique must therefore be out of malice rather than genuine disagreement.

Also "disingenuous", which is a fancy way of saying lying. Edit: that's not quite right, as throwaway894345 and xyzzyz and Sohcahtoa82 have pointed out below. It's also not quite what I meant (I was being hasty). The point is that 'disingenuous', like 'lie', implies intent to deceive.

That’s not quite true. Lying is typically understood as actively saying something untrue. What is more typical, especially in media, is selectively sharing true information, but obscuring other true information, which would present the narrative in completely different light. This way, one can manipulate people to have misconception about the reality, without actively saying a single lie. It is still disingenuous, though, if done deliberately.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#105

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gorwell wrote: post #31
sleepingadmin wrote: post #20

Misinformation is misinformation. I am certain I am misinformed about many things. The correct response to when I post misinformation is to inform. What happened recently with the move to yellow journalism is not misinformation but rather censorship. Fact checkers end up labelling things in order to censor them. The interesting thing on my mind in regards to Canada. Trudeau has changed. He would take on people head o…

I hadn't thought about it that way, but it certainly would explain his actions. You don't compromise with nazis. If you're convinced that's what they are. This would explain a lot about Trump too. He was in a misinformation bubble as well. Which means even world leaders aren't immune to this tribal trap.

I don't think that Trump was in a misinformation bubble. Trump was in the bubble of his own narcissistic ego. Things were "true" or "false" based on how they made Trump look. Anything that threw any kind of a negative light on him was "false".

The same was true of people. People were either "the greatest" or "losers" depending on whether the last thing they said made Trump look good or not.

Trump was creating a lot of misinformation, but it wasn't because he was misinformed (at least not primarily). It was because he cared more for his image (and, I suspect, his own image of himself) rather than reality. Facts didn't matter, only image did.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#106

Post by rhino369 »

helen___keller wrote: post #36

The author is correct that in any debate, the prominent skeptics are often extremely well informed (joe Rogan on vaccines, in his example). I think what the author is missing is that Joe Rogan and the likes are not spreading misinformation, but spreading tools for misinformation. My mother in law is very deep in misinformation. I’m not talking simple anti vax, I’m talking “trump will raid the Vatican for stolen gold…

You should be careful about placing the blame on skeptics for misuse of their opinions by nutbags. Because the nutbags would have likely just latched onto something else. They didn't reason themselves into their crazy beliefs. So removing reasonable opinions isn't going to change their beliefs one bit.

The conspiracy theorists often latch onto proponent's factual claims and misinterpret them as supporting the conspiracy theory. A lot of conspiracy theories re vaccines will quote CDC, WHO, research papers, etc. that aren't skeptical.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#107

Post by standardUser »

PathOfEclipse wrote: post #99
standardUser wrote: post #96

"...but you can find super-informed people on both sides of the question. That’s why it’s a live debate." It's just rhetoric. Anything can become a debate, such as who won the 2020 presidential election, if one side is willing to make up facts and repeat them over and over. Proponents of the Big Lie are super-informed, insofar as they have a lot of lies they can say with a straight face that act as stand-ins for actu…

I don't think that's what the right wing is about at all. All the conservative pundits I listen to think Trump behaved disgracefully after the election and that there is still no evidence of sufficient voter irregularities to turn the election. Many still believe it's a major problem that states like Pennsylvania violated their own laws during the election, which should be illegal, but handling that is a separate iss…

I'm not asserting every single conservative fits this mold, or that you can't cherry-pick pundits who still play fair. But most of what the right wing is oriented around today is attacking the free press, stifling public education, making voting more difficult for urban citizens and pretending, loudly and constantly, that the last election was stolen.

Where are the policy proposals? What major legislation did conservatives pass during the previous Republican administration when they had a trifecta? What was the Republican Party platform in 2020? And why is the RNC choosing not to allow a debate in 2024? This is not a party with lots of ideas ready to fight for the hearts and minds of voters.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#108

Post by [deleted] »

civilized wrote: post #83
softwarebeware wrote: post #46

IMO the author displays confirmation bias in the post. He doesn't think about the effects of a higher availability information with a lower ability to seek out other contradicting points of view. If you're deluged with carefully chosen factual information, that's more convincing than outright lies. And this is often the situation we are in more often than not these days. Along with an inability to spot logical fallac…

> He doesn't think about the effects of a higher availability information with a lower ability to seek out other contradicting points of view. This is a baffling claim. Why on earth would you believe that people now have a lower ability to seek out contradicting points of view?

[deleted]

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#109

Post by dfxm12 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #23

I've also noticed that the term "willful ignorance" gets thrown around a lot more nowadays. There is a sizeable contingent of people who are so convinced that what they believe is the absolute truth that any disagreement or critique must therefore be out of malice rather than genuine disagreement.

Yes, and I think there are two things worth considering.

First, people put their identities into their beliefs. Everything is a lifestyle choice anymore. What non-mainstream belief defines me as a person? When you make believing in the flat earth part of your identity, you get a fight or flight response when someone attacks the idea of the flat earth, because in a way, they are attacking you.

Second, it's easy to confirm your misinformation with more misinformation! I don't think people hear something once, like "the earth is flat" and just believe it. They hear it, look it up, see multiple sources saying the same things (weren't we taught to confirm stuff like this?), sprinkle in the smallest amount of plausibility - maybe a source that otherwise prints stuff you know to be true (sports scores, natural disasters, whatever) also prints something about the flat earth, and there you have it. You've done your homework. At this point admitting you're wrong means you must admit you are ignorant and were so easily duped, or that your entire education was a waste of time. It takes a very big person to do that.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#110

Post by mint2 »

civilized wrote: post #83
softwarebeware wrote: post #46

IMO the author displays confirmation bias in the post. He doesn't think about the effects of a higher availability information with a lower ability to seek out other contradicting points of view. If you're deluged with carefully chosen factual information, that's more convincing than outright lies. And this is often the situation we are in more often than not these days. Along with an inability to spot logical fallac…

> He doesn't think about the effects of a higher availability information with a lower ability to seek out other contradicting points of view. This is a baffling claim. Why on earth would you believe that people now have a lower ability to seek out contradicting points of view?

most americans live insular suburban lives in their bubble and when they get doses of current events they are algorithmically fed confirmation bias and especially confirmation bid that arouses them to click/engage. I.e tabloidizing the cherry picked facts that then framed with the biases that poke the viewers buttons.
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