There are many strawmen here. Does Putin even claim "Nazis run Ukraine"? Granted I have not followed this closely, but all I have heard is that "Ukraine has a Nazi problem". Same with bleach, not even Trump claimed that. poor post.
> Still, the fundamental problem with the war on misinformation is that it scapegoats misinformation for the sins of irrationality. If human being were rational, misinformation would be basically harmless.
I have the sense that the meaning of key terms (especially "rational") are being misapplied here. Information is the data we process. Rationality is the processing. If we receive bad data, a rational thought process will still lead to bad conclusions.
You seem to be redefining "rationality" to mean "ignore data you think is bad", but that begs the question.
You're right. Biden didn't steal the election. Zuckerberg and Soros stole the election, with a lot of help. When you imply that the statement "The election was stolen" is misinformation, and anyone who says that is a misinformed fool, you betray your political bias, at best, and you put yourself in the company of the misinformed fools you condemn, at worst.
Targeting the purveyors of “misinformation” is part of a broader pattern of blaming the supply side of any undesirable transactional social behavior. Drug use is blamed on suppliers. Consumerism is blamed on advertisers. Social media use on large tech companies. In all cases the consumers, the people, seem to be imagined as gullible, pliable sheep easily manipulated by nefarious others to act in ways that, in the absence of influence, they would not choose to act. As if the critic of the behavior cannot imagine someone voluntarily having a preference set different from their own.
Our Greco-Roman culture has always tolerated–even encouraged–public dissemination of unsupported claims and even outright lies.
Alcibiades would be as successful in contemporary Western politics as he was in Athens, as was Caesar in Rome.
English scandal sheets in the 17th century, fanned the flames of falsehood on a mass scale and established a tradition of 'free speech' that afflicts us to this day.
That's not how Confucian cultures roll.
For as long as we've permitted public lying, they've insisted that those who speak publicly on important matters meet three criteria:
1. Have first-hand, practical experience in the matter being considered.
2. Be sincere and objective when speaking about it publicly.
3. Take full, personal responsibility for the consequences of their speech.
I have been studying PRC official speech since 1961 and comparing it to observable reality, and have yet to catch the Chinese government lying or making promises which they do not keep.
The Chinese–who have always held their officials in supremely high esteem–consider this unremarkable, while Westerners find it incredible.
Nevertheless, in multiple surveys by Western pollsters, for multiple decade, Chinese rank their governments, institutions and media the most trustworthy on earth.
I suppose it's true that people who haven't studied economics lean in favor of protectionism. But that doesn't mean they're wrong. People who have studied economic history, for example -- people with Ph.D's in this rigorous academic field -- also lean in favor of protectionism.
> If this seems implausible, remember the vast empirical literature on biased thinking. To take one of my favorite examples, people who have never studied economics are almost invariably protectionists. The reason can’t be “misinformation,” because people who have never studied economics spend near-zero time thinking about the subject. The story almost has to be, rather, that we’re predisposed to error. Protectionism is much more emotionally satisfying for psychologically normal humans. The study of economics is necessary to move away from this default.
This all makes sense to me, especially after reading "The Myth of the Rational Voter". But can you think of any reason why people would, by default, believe Ukraine to be at fault in the war? Here in Europe it does have to do with anti-Americanism, but what about people in US?
Great points! This is my take on the misinformation craze of late - it's a little orthogonal but feels related in spirit.
Imagine a world where social media, news outlets, etc, all had access to an information oracle that was able to perfectly flag, censor or otherwise edit content to the point of having almost nothing but objective truth or possibly valid opinions (and marked as such).
Now, imagine 20 years into the future, and some unscrupulous people come into power (far-fetched, I know), and has the ability to put information out that circumvents the misinformation filter. People would be so susceptible to suggestion - so ready to swallow whatever is fed them. A tyrant would have little resistance if they had the ability circumvent the oracle (or whatever).
Curating information isn't necessarily a good thing, even if you believe it's possible. There's something to be said for developing the psychological thick skin of skepticism the hard way. I think we do well to continually tune our skepticism (not too pollyanna, but not too cynical), through exercise. Apart from getting bad info from time to time, how else can we learn to think critically about things?
I think there's been a huge shift in the last 5 years in the willingness of politicians to spout absurd lies. Maybe people have always been willing to believe them and there was an elite hesitancy to use a highly effective but immoral rhetorical weapon. Maybe the masses have become more gullible. I think I lean more toward the former. I think people give tacit approval to their side's liars and attack the other side's liars and the people who care about truth aren't numerous to matter politically.
Assigning blame isn't really productive. Clearly listeners are culpable. If I say "Nazi Bigfoot faked the moon landing therefore vote for me", yes my lie is blameworthy, but anyone who believes it is too. But so what? People like that aren't going to be morally shamed, they're not going to listen to reason, they are untouchable by normal persuasion.
Best case "misinformation" is something that prevents obtainable equilibrium between stakeholders from forming. If so it can be corrected with more accurate information.
More likely though, people have irreconcilable differences in values and interests. Given this they will try to shape the public information space to their own advantage. There is a taboo, for good reasons, against nakedly expressing ones self interest or declaring ones value system objectively superior to another. So instead of saying "I will make you do X" you say "If you had accurate information, you would agree with X".
I admit that sometimes being more open about conflict rather then passive aggressive might be a better way of doing things.
I think it makes sense to think about the dynamics of information, like an ecology or an economy. There are some bits of information (accurate or inaccurate) that tend to pop up on their own, some that are easier or harder to spread, some that make others easier or harder to acquire (it's easier to acquire views about handwashing if you have related views about germ theory of disease; it's easier to acquire views about George Soros if you have related views about Jewish conspiracies), and so on. But not all of the dynamics are internal to the information - some are dependent on social structure, and on communications technology.
Just as the global aviation system makes the dynamics of viral spread very different, so that pandemics are now a phenomenon that arise in a year or two, rather than taking decades (or centuries, like Black Death), the social media system makes the dynamics of informational spread very different. It's going to change the equilibrium behavior of the system, with certain types of information (accurate or inaccurate) becoming much easier or harder to spread to fixation than they used to be.
I agree that a lot of mainstream discussion of "misinformation" misses all these important points, but dismissive claims about how misinformation has always existed also miss the points. There really is something qualitatively different about the global information ecosystem now that we live in a world of social media rather than broadcast media (which was itself a very different information ecosystem from the largely illiterate world before the printing press), and it behooves us to get a better understanding of this, just as we need to have a better understanding of the global virus ecosystem in a world connected with air travel.
“Nazis run Ukraine.” “Biden stole the election.” “You can cure Covid by injecting bleach.”
This is pretty harmless misinformation. What about the serious one?
* Human capital increase thru spending in (public) education. Let’s increase that spending!
* Border protection is key to the US survival.
* Majority should rule. Voter's rationality will make politicians effective and accountable
* God love us (even Ukrainians) and sent us his/her beloved son as an irrefutable proof and to save us from evil (and this happened more than 2,000 years ago)
* I will love you forever. Till death set us apart.
* Yes, Daddy, I will take good care of you until you are old.
It seems to me that "misinformation" is like air to human beings. Our irrationality needs it to survive. That’s who we are. We are made out of "convenient missinformation"). We just die in its absent.
Being human and trying to survive on an exclusive diet of truths seems a little "Nietzscheske" to me.
There are many strawmen here. Does Putin even claim "Nazis run Ukraine"? Granted I have not followed this closely, but all I have heard is that "Ukraine has a Nazi problem". Same with bleach, not even Trump claimed that. poor post.
> Still, the fundamental problem with the war on misinformation is that it scapegoats misinformation for the sins of irrationality. If human being were rational, misinformation would be basically harmless.
I have the sense that the meaning of key terms (especially "rational") are being misapplied here. Information is the data we process. Rationality is the processing. If we receive bad data, a rational thought process will still lead to bad conclusions.
You seem to be redefining "rationality" to mean "ignore data you think is bad", but that begs the question.
You're right. Biden didn't steal the election. Zuckerberg and Soros stole the election, with a lot of help. When you imply that the statement "The election was stolen" is misinformation, and anyone who says that is a misinformed fool, you betray your political bias, at best, and you put yourself in the company of the misinformed fools you condemn, at worst.
Targeting the purveyors of “misinformation” is part of a broader pattern of blaming the supply side of any undesirable transactional social behavior. Drug use is blamed on suppliers. Consumerism is blamed on advertisers. Social media use on large tech companies. In all cases the consumers, the people, seem to be imagined as gullible, pliable sheep easily manipulated by nefarious others to act in ways that, in the absence of influence, they would not choose to act. As if the critic of the behavior cannot imagine someone voluntarily having a preference set different from their own.
In other words, a lot of people are stupid.
Our Greco-Roman culture has always tolerated–even encouraged–public dissemination of unsupported claims and even outright lies.
Alcibiades would be as successful in contemporary Western politics as he was in Athens, as was Caesar in Rome.
English scandal sheets in the 17th century, fanned the flames of falsehood on a mass scale and established a tradition of 'free speech' that afflicts us to this day.
That's not how Confucian cultures roll.
For as long as we've permitted public lying, they've insisted that those who speak publicly on important matters meet three criteria:
1. Have first-hand, practical experience in the matter being considered.
2. Be sincere and objective when speaking about it publicly.
3. Take full, personal responsibility for the consequences of their speech.
I have been studying PRC official speech since 1961 and comparing it to observable reality, and have yet to catch the Chinese government lying or making promises which they do not keep.
The Chinese–who have always held their officials in supremely high esteem–consider this unremarkable, while Westerners find it incredible.
Nevertheless, in multiple surveys by Western pollsters, for multiple decade, Chinese rank their governments, institutions and media the most trustworthy on earth.
I suppose it's true that people who haven't studied economics lean in favor of protectionism. But that doesn't mean they're wrong. People who have studied economic history, for example -- people with Ph.D's in this rigorous academic field -- also lean in favor of protectionism.
> If this seems implausible, remember the vast empirical literature on biased thinking. To take one of my favorite examples, people who have never studied economics are almost invariably protectionists. The reason can’t be “misinformation,” because people who have never studied economics spend near-zero time thinking about the subject. The story almost has to be, rather, that we’re predisposed to error. Protectionism is much more emotionally satisfying for psychologically normal humans. The study of economics is necessary to move away from this default.
This all makes sense to me, especially after reading "The Myth of the Rational Voter". But can you think of any reason why people would, by default, believe Ukraine to be at fault in the war? Here in Europe it does have to do with anti-Americanism, but what about people in US?
Great points! This is my take on the misinformation craze of late - it's a little orthogonal but feels related in spirit.
Imagine a world where social media, news outlets, etc, all had access to an information oracle that was able to perfectly flag, censor or otherwise edit content to the point of having almost nothing but objective truth or possibly valid opinions (and marked as such).
Now, imagine 20 years into the future, and some unscrupulous people come into power (far-fetched, I know), and has the ability to put information out that circumvents the misinformation filter. People would be so susceptible to suggestion - so ready to swallow whatever is fed them. A tyrant would have little resistance if they had the ability circumvent the oracle (or whatever).
Curating information isn't necessarily a good thing, even if you believe it's possible. There's something to be said for developing the psychological thick skin of skepticism the hard way. I think we do well to continually tune our skepticism (not too pollyanna, but not too cynical), through exercise. Apart from getting bad info from time to time, how else can we learn to think critically about things?
I think there's been a huge shift in the last 5 years in the willingness of politicians to spout absurd lies. Maybe people have always been willing to believe them and there was an elite hesitancy to use a highly effective but immoral rhetorical weapon. Maybe the masses have become more gullible. I think I lean more toward the former. I think people give tacit approval to their side's liars and attack the other side's liars and the people who care about truth aren't numerous to matter politically.
Assigning blame isn't really productive. Clearly listeners are culpable. If I say "Nazi Bigfoot faked the moon landing therefore vote for me", yes my lie is blameworthy, but anyone who believes it is too. But so what? People like that aren't going to be morally shamed, they're not going to listen to reason, they are untouchable by normal persuasion.
Best case "misinformation" is something that prevents obtainable equilibrium between stakeholders from forming. If so it can be corrected with more accurate information.
More likely though, people have irreconcilable differences in values and interests. Given this they will try to shape the public information space to their own advantage. There is a taboo, for good reasons, against nakedly expressing ones self interest or declaring ones value system objectively superior to another. So instead of saying "I will make you do X" you say "If you had accurate information, you would agree with X".
I admit that sometimes being more open about conflict rather then passive aggressive might be a better way of doing things.
I think it makes sense to think about the dynamics of information, like an ecology or an economy. There are some bits of information (accurate or inaccurate) that tend to pop up on their own, some that are easier or harder to spread, some that make others easier or harder to acquire (it's easier to acquire views about handwashing if you have related views about germ theory of disease; it's easier to acquire views about George Soros if you have related views about Jewish conspiracies), and so on. But not all of the dynamics are internal to the information - some are dependent on social structure, and on communications technology.
Just as the global aviation system makes the dynamics of viral spread very different, so that pandemics are now a phenomenon that arise in a year or two, rather than taking decades (or centuries, like Black Death), the social media system makes the dynamics of informational spread very different. It's going to change the equilibrium behavior of the system, with certain types of information (accurate or inaccurate) becoming much easier or harder to spread to fixation than they used to be.
I agree that a lot of mainstream discussion of "misinformation" misses all these important points, but dismissive claims about how misinformation has always existed also miss the points. There really is something qualitatively different about the global information ecosystem now that we live in a world of social media rather than broadcast media (which was itself a very different information ecosystem from the largely illiterate world before the printing press), and it behooves us to get a better understanding of this, just as we need to have a better understanding of the global virus ecosystem in a world connected with air travel.
“Nazis run Ukraine.” “Biden stole the election.” “You can cure Covid by injecting bleach.”
This is pretty harmless misinformation. What about the serious one?
* Human capital increase thru spending in (public) education. Let’s increase that spending!
* Border protection is key to the US survival.
* Majority should rule. Voter's rationality will make politicians effective and accountable
* God love us (even Ukrainians) and sent us his/her beloved son as an irrefutable proof and to save us from evil (and this happened more than 2,000 years ago)
* I will love you forever. Till death set us apart.
* Yes, Daddy, I will take good care of you until you are old.
It seems to me that "misinformation" is like air to human beings. Our irrationality needs it to survive. That’s who we are. We are made out of "convenient missinformation"). We just die in its absent.
Being human and trying to survive on an exclusive diet of truths seems a little "Nietzscheske" to me.
it's demand, not supply