As someone that works on moderation of an online platform I can tell you that lots and lots of misinformation exists and is read by millions of people. On vaccines many people actually believe the microchip, 5G, magnetic, secret ingredients, fetal tissue, vaccines shedding, Bill Gates stuff. Misinformation affects real people's actions in dangerous ways, I don't know what downplaying its existence accomplishes.
The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
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Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#82An important measure of "misinformation" is who benefits if the information is actually true or false. Also valuable to identify who has the financial capacity to influence the sources of "truth".
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#83IMO 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?
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#84As someone that works on moderation of an online platform I can tell you that lots and lots of misinformation exists and is read by millions of people. On vaccines many people actually believe the microchip, 5G, magnetic, secret ingredients, fetal tissue, vaccines shedding, Bill Gates stuff. Misinformation affects real people's actions in dangerous ways, I don't know what downplaying its existence accomplishes.
Of course, the author doesn't downplay its existence, only its impact. But to know that we'd have to read the post.
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#85I'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.
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#86In my opinion, the "misinformation problem" breaks down into a couple of separate causes. Mainly the odd inability of people not being able to view a comment that they disagree with and not try to "correct" that person (highly related to the inability people have to let the other person have the last word) and simple tribalism.
I don't know what to do about the "inability not to respond" issue, I suffer from that myself. On the tribalism issue, I strongly suggest becoming the equivalent of a nomadic wanderer. When someone posts something about a topic I strongly agree with, I don't assume I will agree with everything else they might say. The same goes for posts about something I strongly disagree with. Being too caught up in tribalism leads to inoffensive posts from the other tribe causing a knee-jerk reaction to say something, anything, to put them in their place even if the person completely agree with what the other person just posted. Hence, the rise of "whataboutism".
I try to take on a view of comments posted in which I don't care who the other person is, what other beliefs they might have good or bad, and just reply to the comment at hand. If the comment is full of insults I just ignore them and pick out the pieces of their posts related to the discussion topic and reply to those. This would seem to be a good way to have less conflict in conversations on the internet but in my experience you need very thick skin to go this route because you are an outsider to all groups, meaning you are a target for everyone. There are people who will stop insulting you when you calmly reply to their points and ignore their jibes, but not as many as a younger more naive version of myself would have expected, unfortunately.
This is what I try to do, anyway. I'm unfortunately as human as everyone else, so I slip at times.
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#87IMO 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…
We are talking about Matthew Yglesias. Confirmation bias is basically his entire brand.
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am an anti-woke, but also gave you a starting point which explains what woke is (or was?), but I'm afraid what I wrote is not something I can link, as I wrote it was middle pandemic and going back to find posts from back then is a bit time consuming for me, then you can believe it or not, that's your choice, but I am not sure what should I do here, I guess for in depth research you can also go around the web yourse…
Quoted post unavailable.
You can also fight noble cause in a wrong way, you go with the alert against racial prejudice and discrimination in a way that causes other issues, I am against woke because they want people banned or muted or offended from platform for saying things that they don't agree with
I think you're oversimplifying serious issues there, it's not being against or pro racial prejudice, it's being against racial prejudice but also pro freedom of speech, against moderation and censorship and pro conversation
Woke culture has alienated whoever was racist, and whoever had racist idea was removed from Twitter, the result? They just created their own societies on 4chan and other QAnon channels, away from conversation and from anyone who could tell them why their ideas were wrong, the result? Racist grew their support to the point where Trump was elected president, now that Trump is banned from Twitter, he is still growing his user base, away, unmoderated, and without the opportunity to discuss
so yeah I am against wokes
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#89No post body was provided.
Re: The “misinformation problem” seems like misinformation
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 so we can be a free country for the first time since the 19th century” misinformation, like QAnon tier stuff. This is likely the big causal factor here. Your MIL is definitely not typical. The notion that conspiracy nuts are specifically being influenced by "skeptic talking poin…
She was pretty normal until around 2018 on the contrary. I’m sure losing her job in 2008 and ending up socially isolated because she doesn’t speak fluent English didn’t help. I’m not claiming ordinary and well adjusted people easily fall prey to misinformation if that’s what you’re trying to refute here. It’s simply an observational fact that conspiracy groups wield skeptic talking points as weapons and that modern t…
There is a bit of a catch 22 here. I think you're right. Most of the garbage floating about our public discourse (and I would submit most of it is garbage) is rooted in some legitimate facts. So your MIL will get some of these skeptical headlines, perhaps with some of these more conspiratorial groups capitalizing on and embellishing the these things. I think what you say is happening is....
... but on the other side, the same thing happens. Stories such as yours get posted about and even reported on and then different organized movements build these up into narratives and use these narratives to push for the silencing of skeptical points. In the end it's really the exact same behavior: get a few facts (in context or not), build your own narrative, add a substantial amount of emotionalism so it's less about the facts anyway, and you have a ready population of true believers that for the most part won't change their views.