Why Fake News Works, and What You can do About it
View this post on Hive: Why Fake News Works, and What You can do About it
6 years ago in #news by valued-customer (67)
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Simplify and repeat often enough. Then the lie becomes obvious truth.
by Joseph Gebbels
Seems the same mechanism will work for the truth as well as lies.
'Only law abiding citizens will not have guns when laws prohibit guns. Criminals, by definition, don't obey laws, and will keep using guns to commit crimes.'
Simple enough?
Great article. I just wish they put more emphasis on what kind of false info would be easily believed by the masses.
People know Saturn is big and Pluto is tiny. When they are not sure which is the biggest or the smallest, they'd believe what an authority figure tell them or whatever the information they come across first.
Also I stumbled upon this with an Ayn Rand quote:
"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist." | Galt's speech" --- Ayn Rand
Brilliant!
I need not say more.
We are born into a social structure that favors authority over query (regardless of how "free-thinking"-oriented western cultures purport themselves to be). From the cradle we are essentially programmed for conformity so that we can coexist in the social structure we will be forced to live within. This conformity can be viewed as a means of survival (eg: "what, you are not going to go to college...you will fail as a member of society!")
Of course there is variation in levels of conformity among people and my thought is that basically relates back to one's home life, how the parents chose to illuminate the world for the child during it's formative years. It is important we educate (at least our own kids) the next generation to be true free-thinkers, to know how to question, to know how to acquire knowledge about the world lest they become absorbed by it.
It sure is. Only our facility with reason might overcome our natural gullibility and protect us from being misled. Before the Civil War, Americans were notoriously independent minded, but since then the political class has better crafted our indoctrinations...er, educations, so as to more profitably count us amongst their fans, rather than their critics.
Thanks!
I think most older Americans get what you are saying. It's the younger crowd that's green behind the ears and can be easily misled by that propaganda.
I can look back at my youth and get a bit green in the gills just remembering some of the crap I believed!
No little naivete is battered out of us over time by hard knocks.
I agree with that. I remember in my early youth being highly influenced by a young couple living in our neighborhood. I am total polar opposite of them now that I'd be afraid to even admit it to them.
re fucking steemed.
Came here when @mikebluehair42 resteemed this post. Great read.
Popular science = popular + science
As we can see that the two words have nothing to do with each other. In fact whatever suits them they make popular and what they don't like, well let's just say that it never leaves the lab or goes beyond a patent
It's actually quite sad. If you look back at some of the earliest issues, there were some amazing articles and information in the magazine. Stuff that is still useful today, for folks that like to DIY.
It's nothing like that anymore, and after 9/11 and it's vouchsafing the official conspiracy theory, I totally lost respect for it. However, like a broken clock, there's still times when it's useful. I think this article is pretty watered down, but probably more than a lot of the folks I'm talking about can usefully absorb.
Thanks!
Curated for #informationwar (by @openparadigm)
Relevance: Fakenews
Our Purpose
This is true, though not trusting the media and other people around would cause more insecurity in the society don't you think so?
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!