RE: Why Fake News Works, and What You can do About it
I reckon any security that was dispelled because one verified information would be but false security. I don't mind, in fact I appreciate it when people check me. I've been wrong, and more than one person voting up this post has seen how I approach being wrong.
I love to be proved wrong, TBQH. First, I'm grateful to find out I was wrong, and second, I'm glad to become right instead.
My investment in me, in my worth, isn't dependent on any outside factor, information, or story. I absolutely believe this is the right way to approach things, and it comes naturally to me. When I observe an information source continually employing shill tactics, logical fallacies, and prevaricating, any trust I give that source will harm me, at least by misleading me.
If I don't trust someone or something, and verify the facts relayed, but find they are accurate and true, then I have learned that source, at least once, was trustworthy. In my eyes that's about the only honest basis for trust in society.
We natively want to trust. We've come to expect honesty from most folks. But we do expect there are limits, and if we're polite, we try to allow folks their limits of honesty. When we trust within reason, and don't trust proven liars, we lose no security whatsoever. In fact, I'm pretty sure not being fooled leads to greater security, rather than less.
Wouldn't you agree?
You cannot argue against reasoning like this. You have gained another follower.
This small instinctive human behaviour to trust others as you trust is our downfall! Whilst blindfolded you will allow others to direct you off a cliff because of trust.
I would just like to know. Why would you continue to trust those that steal from you, those that harm you and those you know continuously conspire to gain more power.
My passing familiarity with a bit of biology reveals a very strong reason for this. It's vitally--existentially--important for people to be strongly integrated in communities. It's literally a matter of life and death, and it's easy to imagine how this mechanism evolved in humanity during short, brutish lives in intra- and interspecific competition for resources and security.
Once you've committed to an in-group, there's dopamine rushes doled out when you support or protect the group from danger. This isn't just people being too dumb to figger out they're being used, it's instinct to remain safely encompassed within a social group--even flawed groups (what group doesn't have flaws?)--as being alone and facing competition for resources is very difficult indeed.
Particularly when people are so often the resource.
This mechanism naturally creates a dynamic where leaders are rewarded for their being willing to stand out in defending their people against danger, and followers become fans. In our present plethora of numbers, the evolutionary pressures have changed, but we haven't been fully redomesticated yet. We still act as people in small bands foraging in the wilderness would, but our leaders no longer face the dangers for us--now they are the dangers.
We're the crop in people farms, and war is the reaper.
However, we're men, not animals. We have the facility of reason, and by this use we can realize our own instincts, and best them intentionally. This is how we detect fake news, and it's also why most people ain't much good at it. Most people are more strongly dependent on society than on their own reason, for very good reasons indeed.
The more divergent from actuality fake news is, the more difficult it is to pass off as true. But, once you have done so, you can count on fans to remain loyal to that lie until their dying breath. Not everyone. Just most people.
Most people is profitable enough, it seems.
Thanks!