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The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

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Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#241

Post by krapp »

PathOfEclipse wrote: post #229
cgriswald wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is that Trump attempted a coup and failed to interrupt it, but that is okay because it wasn't a serious coup and other corruption exists.

I am legitimately not convinced he was attempting a coup. I am willing to admit I am wrong on this. I've read accounts from leftwing media sources and from their wording it sounds like what Trump did was really bad. I've read accounts from rightwing sources and from their wording it doesn't sound bad at all. I have not done a great deal to try to reconcile the two and decide where the truth lies. Right now, I believe…

> I absolutely do not think Trump was in any way encouraging people to riot in the capitol, much less stage a coup. I also believe that no such fraud was ever found.

I think that depends on how you interpret a lot of statements made by Trump and others[0], for instance:

    “We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. …

    “You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen. These are the facts that you won’t hear from the fake news media. It’s all part of the suppression effort. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. …

    “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
If you're a Trump supporter, A patriot who believes in the revolutionary thesis of the Second Amendment and who's certain enough the election has been stolen to march on Washington, do these words encourage you to wait patiently and work within the system until the system is resolved, or do they communicate an urgent need for desperate action in a desperate time?

What's certain - and we know this from their own testimony and communications - is that many of the rioters believed they were acting under Trump's orders[1]. Where did this belief come from? Was there simply no relationship between the words coming from Trump and other Republicans, and what Trump supporters were hearing? After four years of paranoid rhetoric amongst the right about vast leftist conspiracies, violent Marxists in the streets, vaccines as fascism and now the election being stolen right before their eyes? Four years of the populist gospel of victimhood and the need to exact revenge upon the elites? When you, as a Trump supporter, see the courts throwing out lawsuit after lawsuit, and Republican Congressman Louis Gohmert suggests on TV that people should "go out and be violent like antifa[2]" how do you react?

On the spectrum of culpability from "Trump had absolutely nothing to do with anything" to "Trump literally planned it himself", I fall somewhere on the latter side. Where seems to depend on just how much Trumpists piss me off that day, I'll admit. Unfortunately, there's no smoking gun here.

But there's also no way Trump didn't at least understand the atmosphere he was creating, or really discourage it (until well after the damage was done, which isn't a good look.) I think at the very least he was hoping the chaos, whatever form it took, would benefit him.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/07/trump-incite...

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/capitol-rioters.html?a...

[2]https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/louie-go...

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#242

Post by dang »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #200
dang wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictionaries define the word in terms of human qualities (dishonesty, insincerity, etc.), so I don't think this argument is on solid ground lexicographically :) The etmyology is interesting: ingenuous originally meant noble, which is also only something that would be said about a person ( https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=ingenuous ).

I don't know man. I've spoken English my whole life and I've never heard of anyone being confused about referring to an idea as 'disingenuous' or similar. :) Certainly no one (except you) has corrected me that it can only apply to people. Indeed, dictionary.com offers examples of "disingenuous" referring to ideas: > The move has no political chance in a Democratic House, but sends a clear, though disingenuous, messag…

The first example does refer to people. That's the point of using the word "disingenuous" there. "Sending a disingenuous message" means a message you don't really believe. The second one is hard to make sense of without more context.

Words are sort of statistical meaning clouds—people have different associations and use them differently. Regional variations play a large role. I'm pretty sure the word disingenuous does imply intent to deceive, though, and it's a significant moderation issue because it's extremely popular in internet arguments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#243

Post by lp0_on_fire »

fortuna86 wrote: post #237
PathOfEclipse wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just one word, actually. And, as we are learning now, Hillary Clinton's team paid to infiltrate into whitehouse servers as part of efforts to delegitimize Trump's election: https://www.dailywire.com/news/bombshell-clinton-campaign-pa... We also know now that the russian collusion hoax was entirely fabricated by Hillary's team: https://nypost.com/2021/11/04/the-real-collusion-was-the-cre... I don't agree with w…

I started to respond to this, claiming a DNS request is "infiltrating into whitehouse servers". This is a technology forum, do I really need to explain to you why that is complete and utter rubbish? Linking to opinion pieces by right wing media isn't a way of making an argument btw, it's outsourcing your thinking to partisans that can tell you want you want to hear. I don't like a lot of things about politics these d…

> I started to respond to this, claiming a DNS request is "infiltrating into whitehouse servers". This is a technology forum, do I really need to explain to you why that is complete and utter rubbish?

The assertion coming from the Clinton camp was that Donald Trump had a "server that was communicating with a Russian Bank". They were _very_ careful in their use of words talking about it on the campaign trail. It was never asserted the _content_ of those communications just that _communication occurred_.

This being a technology forum, I think we can all agree that kind of jives with how DNS works - DNS logs can show can infer the "who" but not the "what".

Knowing those things, I don't think it strains credulity to believe that a nefarious political actor could take advantage of people unfamiliar with DNS to suggest a connection that doesn't exist while still having plausible deniability.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#244

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #242
throwaway894345 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man. I've spoken English my whole life and I've never heard of anyone being confused about referring to an idea as 'disingenuous' or similar. :) Certainly no one (except you) has corrected me that it can only apply to people. Indeed, dictionary.com offers examples of "disingenuous" referring to ideas: > The move has no political chance in a Democratic House, but sends a clear, though disingenuous, messag…

The first example does refer to people. That's the point of using the word "disingenuous" there. "Sending a disingenuous message" means a message you don't really believe. The second one is hard to make sense of without more context. Words are sort of statistical meaning clouds—people have different associations and use them differently. Regional variations play a large role. I'm pretty sure the word disingenuous doe…

The second one is very much about disingenuous people (and their dealings), it's from a WaPo piece headlined Deshaun Watson is taking a stand against disingenuous NFL owners. It could change the league.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/02/01/deshaun-wat...

Just like 'shut your lying mouth' is, in fact, calling someone a liar and not merely an observation about some independent attribute of their piehole.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#245

Post by FFRefresh »

bcrl wrote: post #217
aaroninsf wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could upvote this 10x though I see atm that is not necessarily. A very nice summary of priors and predicates that need to be grokked! To these I myself often add several aspects looking more specifically what "social graph" means and what the so-called algorithm means, with lemmas about "engagement" and its industry... ...and the underbelly of how the algorithm works, the constellation of surveillance tracki…

Exactly. The fundamental difference in advertising today compared to 30 years ago is that for the entire of history until the last 2 decades, it was expensive to target individuals. Ads on TV and newspapers have to adhere to standards established by organizations like the Advertising Standards Council. Malicious ads or propaganda that target individuals with misinformation or malware or phishing can be bought on mode…

What misinformation have you been convinced of because you saw a targeted advertisement? Or a slightly different version: What views do you hold that originated from a targeted ad?

Or for some more specific examples: In elections, do you start out looking to elect one candidate and then you see a targeted ad and you change your vote because of it?

For COVID vaccines, did you start off with a stance and then you see a targeted ad and you change your stance because of that ad?

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#246

Post by tstrimple »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #73
kevin_b_er wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The firehose of falsehoods relies on this. The liar can produce 10 lies and demands you disprove them or they are somehow true. The burden of the liar proving their reasoning is missing. The goal is that their opinion and your fact be treated with equal weight or the opinion has greater weight simply because they can produce more "opinions" more often than you can facts.

Yes, this. John Green mentioned in his vlog several months ago that he was not going to be answering antivax objections anymore because doing so was becoming a fulltime job and he has other work to do. This is the burden that deliberate misinformation is trying to impose: flood the zone with factual-seeming counter information, provide "data" (generally cherry-picked or out of context) to back it up and demand that i…

> flood the zone with factual-seeming counter information, provide "data" (generally cherry-picked or out of context) to back it up and demand that it must be addressed.

This is also referred to as Gish Gallop and relies heavily on the bullshit asymmetry principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#247

Post by tstrimple »

mschuster91 wrote: post #45

> More generally, I think a lot of excessive worry about “misinformation” is driven by the erroneous belief that more factual information would resolve political disputes. The key thing that journalism should do is take factual information and provide context. If 99.999% of scientists claim the earth is a ball and 0.001% claim the earth is flat, for fucks sake don't present these two things as equal . With vaccines i…

> Just how much airtime was given to people blathering that vaccines cause autism, which is a decades-old debunked fraud? Way too much.

Sure, but cut them off and then they cry censorship. "They wouldn't be trying to silence us if they weren't hiding something!"

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#248

Post by UncleOxidant »

tstrimple wrote: post #246
UncleOxidant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this. John Green mentioned in his vlog several months ago that he was not going to be answering antivax objections anymore because doing so was becoming a fulltime job and he has other work to do. This is the burden that deliberate misinformation is trying to impose: flood the zone with factual-seeming counter information, provide "data" (generally cherry-picked or out of context) to back it up and demand that i…

> flood the zone with factual-seeming counter information, provide "data" (generally cherry-picked or out of context) to back it up and demand that it must be addressed. This is also referred to as Gish Gallop and relies heavily on the bullshit asymmetry principle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

"named it after American creationist Duane Gish and argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution."

Interesting that there seems to be a lot of overlap between creationists and antivaxers. Creationists seem to buy into a sort of conspiratorial view of science where they claim that their "creation scientists" are purposely ignored by mainstream science which is in the grip of some kind of delusion so that they can't comprehend that creationism is the way or are in fact actively trying to subvert the idea that creationism is actually true. Extrapolate to vaccines and they easily believe that there's some kind of alternative science that hasn't been corrupted, but isn't widely known. Similar overlaps for denying climate change.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#249

Post by bcrl »

FFRefresh wrote: post #245
bcrl wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The fundamental difference in advertising today compared to 30 years ago is that for the entire of history until the last 2 decades, it was expensive to target individuals. Ads on TV and newspapers have to adhere to standards established by organizations like the Advertising Standards Council. Malicious ads or propaganda that target individuals with misinformation or malware or phishing can be bought on mode…

What misinformation have you been convinced of because you saw a targeted advertisement? Or a slightly different version: What views do you hold that originated from a targeted ad? Or for some more specific examples: In elections, do you start out looking to elect one candidate and then you see a targeted ad and you change your vote because of it? For COVID vaccines, did you start off with a stance and then you see a…

As I post every so often here on Hacker News, have a look at this ad my elderly father got a couple of years ago just before COVID hit: https://imgur.com/a/Lk85lST . It's a perfectly innocent search by someone looking for help with a problem that directs towards an ad for a phishing site. The worst part is that it's highly targeted. I tried doing EXACTLY the same search from my own phone and laptop and got completely different results despite coming in from the same wifi network at the same location and the same time. This isn't acceptable. If malicious ads couldn't be targeted like that so that more people saw the same unacceptable content, it sure as hell would be reported a lot more. Instead, someone has made a decision that nobody should be held accountable. It generates a profit, so it's OK, right?

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#250

Post by 8note »

PathOfEclipse wrote: post #151
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "more election security" mean less black people voting? I mean the Republican party has argued in court that it should be legal for them to prevent black democrats from voting as long as it targets them as Democrat voters, rather than by race, so it's not like this is a big secret conspiracy or anything. https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...

Thomas Sowell has been debunking the "disparate outcome means racism" fallacy for decades. I wish more people were listening. He's the most underrated genius of his time. https://www.amazon.com/Discrimination-Disparities-Thomas-Sow... In short, if voter ID laws cause some groups of people to vote less than others, that doesn't make the law discriminatory or make the law bad. Scanning over this ACLU article, I see not…

What's missing from these voter id laws is provisions to make it easy to get voter id, and to pay people to spend time getting it.

They aren't bad on the face of it, other than being chosen specifically because black people are less likely to have an ID, or be able to get one.

A new restriction like "you aren't allowed to give out water anymore" because black people were sharing water in the ultra long lines in the heat black people are forced to wait in to vote doesn't impact security at all though, only useability

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