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The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

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Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#311

Post by fortuna86 »

native_samples wrote: post #274
fortuna86 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, people seem to be better-informed than in the past [citation needed] more information =/ better informed, the same way drinking from a firehose doesn't allow you to ingest more water than drinking slowly from a glass. This point missed ironically by a website called "slowboring.com"

The article itself is the citation, and provides plenty of evidence and arguments for this.

The internet has become a confirmation bias machine (as platforms figured out giving people want they want to hear keep them on platform longer).

The result is, people are becoming more confident in false conclusions.

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1493987804442812416

The promise of the internet is more information will help our accuracy, this doesn't take into account the nature of some to want information that confirms their beliefs, not info that is confirmed accurate.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#312

Post by fortuna86 »

fortuna86 wrote: post #300
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Do you really think it's whataboutism to point out what one of the parties we're talking about was publicly saying on the campaign trail at the time in question? The roles could be reversed and I'd still make the same statement. "Please try and see the blinders you have on regarding nearly everything you've said." is something you said a few comments up. You should listen to yourself more often.

Yes, because i'm not pushing the political partisan talking points of a campaign that ended in 2016. You however are pushing political partisan talking points of a campaign that ended in 2020 (but will never go away because of a single man's ego).

In retrospect I was being too kind. This claim:

> 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...

Is false. It's a lie. And giving lies equal time as the truth, to be "debated", is one of the reasons why we are in this collective mess.

First, virtually none of what appeared in the recent filing from Durham’s office is new information. Here’s a New York Times story from over four months ago with basically all of it: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/us/politics/trump-alfa-ba...

Second, nothing in the filing supports breathless claims technically illiterate cable hosts are making. It does not allege anyone “hacked” Trump computers, or was paid to “infiltrate” networks, or that anyone “intercepted e-mails and text messages."

You mindlessly repeat these claims hoping people aren't looking critically enough to see through them. You either don't understand these matters yourself, or you know they are lies and repeat them anyways. I personally view the second outcome as much worse.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#313

Post by cyanydeez »

tekknik wrote: post #290
epgui wrote: post #148

> I do not think there is much evidence that misinformation has become more widespread, that this increase in misinformation is due to technological change, or that it is at the root of the political trends liberals are most angry about. If anything, people seem to be better-informed than in the past — which is what you would expect because our information technology has gotten better [...] This kind of framing makes…

How come only experts are/should be allowed to speak on a subject? This leads to a technocracy, which while enticing those in the pseudo-aristocracy, it sucks for everybody else involved. Every time I see someone post this all that goes through my head is this person has an ego and thinks they should speak for the country/world.

what youre really asking is "why do credentials matter and why should randomly samplibg information not result in a appropriate confidence in a result"

after all, we knew for decades that the average guess for a cows weight tends to be more accu4ate than any individual guess.

the probablem as you are responding to, is how cheap messaging is and how effortless it is to both produce information and entrain the body politik in its recitation.

these can be over come by what you deride, credentialling and weighting sources. because in the exam0le od the cown, theres no people interested in giving wrong answers or mani0ulating responders to effecr a skew on the answers.

we know and have directly seen that is a naive point of view. as such, your response takes a simplistic exam0le and broadly interprets everything naively.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#314

Post by epgui »

tekknik wrote: post #290
epgui wrote: post #148

> I do not think there is much evidence that misinformation has become more widespread, that this increase in misinformation is due to technological change, or that it is at the root of the political trends liberals are most angry about. If anything, people seem to be better-informed than in the past — which is what you would expect because our information technology has gotten better [...] This kind of framing makes…

How come only experts are/should be allowed to speak on a subject? This leads to a technocracy, which while enticing those in the pseudo-aristocracy, it sucks for everybody else involved. Every time I see someone post this all that goes through my head is this person has an ego and thinks they should speak for the country/world.

As others have pointed out, I am not suggesting (nor do I think) that only experts should be allowed to speak on a given subject.

However, it is my (perhaps vain) hope that people understand that there is value in expertise. I highly recommend the following read: it's something so many people get wrong, and it's highly pragmatic.

https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/03/20/the-rules-of-logic-...

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#315

Post by epgui »

tekknik wrote: post #292
epgui wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe I really love the firehose visual, and I think it's quite apt... Except that there's also a "pollution" aspect to information. If you consume enough misinformation, it doesn't matter who you are or how smart you are, it's going to affect the way you think. Just as in terms of physical fitness, "you are what you eat", in terms of mental fitness, "you are what you read/hear/consume".

So this means we can’t even trust the “experts”, as they would fall victim to the same issue. So listening to experts would be even more detrimental.

I am sorry, your conclusion does not logically follow.

I can see from your other comments that you have some beef against expertise, and all I can say is that I hope you find a way to reason.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#316

Post by tekknik »

aaroninsf wrote: post #306
tekknik wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These regularly lead me back to trying to find pithy summations of specific paths through this mire, such as "deplatforming is not censorship, it is failure to provide or sell a megaphone," and, "we need to reason about 1A the way we do about 2A," (ie in terms of understood liberty vs aggregate societal harms). This is one of the scariest paragraphs I’ve seen on HN in some time. Who exactly gets to reason about the…

By "we" I mean, we as a society. Me, you, all of us. By "reason" I mean, we need to have open debate about where the appropriate line today is in various domains between competing goods and aims. The conflict is often as here, between collective interest, and individual liberty. Not the time or place reopen/rehash well-trod arguments, but I will observe that from the perspective of someone who believes in gun control…

> in the feedback system which marries surveillance and the construction of personalized information streams.

You've continued to terrify me. How can we construct "personalized information streams" without censorship? By definition you either allow someone to view information outside their stream, or you don't. It clearly sounds like you're saying we shouldn't allow people to construct their own streams, but have someone else do it for them. Therefore censorship.

> I do not posit any particular answers. > But we need to have the hard discussion, the sooner the better.

And again, what would the results of this conversation be? You have one side demanding control over speech, and the other demanding no control over it. One side, once some perceived threat arises, wants total control and extermination of the perceived threat. Yet the other side doesn't perceive this threat. The other side believes this threat to be an authoritarian attempt to stifle non-aligned speech and thoughts.

What great societal damage has you wanting to control speech so much? COVID? Vaccine hesitancy?

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#317

Post by tekknik »

fortuna86 wrote: post #299
tekknik wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The COVID vaccine is not the same as other vaccines. One can have hesitancy towards the COVID and other mRNA vaccines and go get the flu shot the same day. If you want to solve the hesitancy problem you must recognize this first, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a loop like you are now, demanding they’re safe just like every other vaccine in history.

mRNA isn't new (it was discovered in the 90s), and has been arguably studied far more than other types of vaccines. Also, there are non-mRNA COVID19 vaccines available as well, if that is your issue. Accounting for both these facts, how is vaccine hesitancy justified ?

> mRNA isn't new (it was discovered in the 90s)

Actually the 1960s, and yet I’m still not wrong as the first mRNA vaccine approved for use was Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. So an actual large scale usage of an mRNA vaccine just happened.

> and has been arguably studied far more than other types of vaccines

Gonna need a source for that.

> Also, there are non-mRNA COVID19 vaccines available as well, if that is your issue.

> Accounting for both these facts, how is vaccine hesitancy justified ?

And this is covered by a lack of fear of the virus. Many people have caught it and recovered, substantially more than have died. So therefore the vaccine is not needed.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#318

Post by tekknik »

epgui wrote: post #315
tekknik wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this means we can’t even trust the “experts”, as they would fall victim to the same issue. So listening to experts would be even more detrimental.

I am sorry, your conclusion does not logically follow. I can see from your other comments that you have some beef against expertise, and all I can say is that I hope you find a way to reason.

> If you consume enough misinformation, it doesn't matter who you are or how smart you are

You said it yourself, so how does it not logically follow?

> I can see from your other comments that you have some beef against expertise, and all I can say is that I hope you find a way to reason.

No, I have a problem with ego and narcissism.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#319

Post by tekknik »

epgui wrote: post #314
tekknik wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come only experts are/should be allowed to speak on a subject? This leads to a technocracy, which while enticing those in the pseudo-aristocracy, it sucks for everybody else involved. Every time I see someone post this all that goes through my head is this person has an ego and thinks they should speak for the country/world.

As others have pointed out, I am not suggesting (nor do I think) that only experts should be allowed to speak on a given subject. However, it is my (perhaps vain) hope that people understand that there is value in expertise. I highly recommend the following read: it's something so many people get wrong, and it's highly pragmatic. https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/03/20/the-rules-of-logic-...

There's value in expertise, but at the end of the day it's not the experts life and decisions should be left to the individual. Once you realize this, these types of comments become meaningless.

Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation

#320

Post by tekknik »

ravi-delia wrote: post #303
tekknik wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come only experts are/should be allowed to speak on a subject? This leads to a technocracy, which while enticing those in the pseudo-aristocracy, it sucks for everybody else involved. Every time I see someone post this all that goes through my head is this person has an ego and thinks they should speak for the country/world.

The person you replied to said nothing to imply they disagree with you. Perhaps we are forced to choose as a society between technocracy and misinformation. I'm suspicious of that line of argument myself, but "technocracy is bad" and "misinformation isn't a problem" are separate arguments.

Sure they did, it was implied in these three points:

> - The less expert you are at a subject, the more energy is required to sift through the crap.

> - Most people are either not expert at anything, or are expert in a narrow field of interest.

> - Information no longer flows in the same way it once did: it now diffuses through a social graph which is prone to significant network effects. Non-experts can have a bigger influence than experts, even when the information they share is entirely meritless. Echo-chambers form naturally and require a lot of deliberate and conscious effort to get out from. It is very difficult to reach certain pockets of the graph.

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