[HN Gopher] Perverse Downstream Consequences of Debunking ___________________________________________________________________ Perverse Downstream Consequences of Debunking Author : ingve Score : 55 points Date : 2021-05-10 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (dl.acm.org) (TXT) w3m dump (dl.acm.org) | ch33zer wrote: | I wonder what kind of ethics are involved in this kind of study. | The recent linux kernel/UMN affair [1] has made me more aware of | what can or should be considered human research. | | [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/855479/ | rossdavidh wrote: | Presumably, if they put it before a review board, that board | would have found that correcting people's misunderstanding of | the facts of topic X is not unethical. Regardless of what one | thinks of public "debunking" generally, the position of most in | academia seems to be that telling people their news sources are | not sound science, is not unethical. | redis_mlc wrote: | Actually, no. | | Virtually everything the leftist media has printed in the past 4 | years has been shown to be false: | | - WaPo admitted Trump's phone call conversation to an election | official was faked (used in the second impeachment) | | - Twitter has admitted they shouldn't have suppressed the Hunter | Biden stories | | - fact-checking by many social media sites has been outsourced to | interested parties, often controlled by the Dem party or CCP | | - there was no insurrection, since the 5 people who died were not | killed by rioters, were mostly let into the Capitol by police, | and didn't have guns. | | I could go on, but it turns out the left/Dems are outright daily | liars. | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27108755. | | It is only going to take us to a Trump flamewar, and a Trump | flamewar isn't going to take us anywhere new. | weaksauce wrote: | > - WaPo admitted Trump's phone call conversation to an | election official was faked (used in the second impeachment) | | False: | | """However, Trump has used the correction to claim in a | statement that "the original story was a Hoax, right from the | very beginning," which is untrue. The original story that got | so much attention was Trump's call with Raffensperger, for | which we had the full and accurate transcript all along. It has | not been corrected. Furthermore, it remains the case that Trump | did in fact call Watson to insist he won the state and that she | should turn up evidence revealing fraud. "The country is | counting on it," he said. | | Overall, the Post's correction changes what we know about the | exact words Trump said to Watson, but it doesn't fundamentally | change our understanding of what Trump was saying and doing to | Georgia state officials at the time.""" | thomasmg wrote: | I would be interested in the sources of your claims. | Applejinx wrote: | I'm not. It's become my opinion that there's a substantial | political movement that will say or do anything for victory. | Back in the day we saw Nazis and fascists take these | rhetorical angles, because even many many years ago people | had worked out that you could seize power by negotiating for | victory rather than in good faith. The techniques of this are | really long established and not even the technology is really | new: back in the day, it was the existence of radio that was | the technological breakthrough, and now it's control of | things like Twitter and Facebook that correspond to that | situation. | | The poster you're responding to doesn't appear to be | operating in good faith, so the sources are irrelevant: | they're purely vapor. You can just make stuff up and claim | it, and if you can get someone to argue over the stuff, | you've just become ONE SIDE of a both-sides narrative and | legitimized the thing you made up. You can con yourself into | believing it if you're a paranoid type, or you can be just | out to manipulate. It does not matter whether you're sincere | or not. It's the outcome you're after. | | I'm not interested in their sources. They're giving enough | 'tells' that they're operating from sort of a post-reality | position, and it really doesn't matter whether that is out of | delusion or manipulation. | legerdemain wrote: | In the end, what works is propaganda, propaganda, propaganda. Not | truth, not facts, not numbers. | | Look at the "no campaign"[1] that got the ball rolling on | removing Pinochet from power. They won on rainbows, birds, and | flowers. "No" is happy good-feeling, "yes" is scary and bad. | | Don't correct, or debunk, or engage. Just flood the channels with | your message. Infiltrate. Buy the opposition. That is how you | govern effectively. | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Chilean_national_plebisci... | Applejinx wrote: | This isn't an indictment of any side, even: it is a fundamental | truth about the human mind. Not a one of us truly has | rationality: at some point we're building our realities on | sand. | | Anyone who's done therapy where they managed to deconstruct | some of their childhood crap, and gained some re-evaluation of | the deepest tenets of their existence (note: if that's you, | then it was probably a good thing because you probably were | suffering under some ugly nonsense absorbed as a child, that | you're better off without!) knows the truth of this. | | There's no specific moral position to propagandizing the human | mind. It's about what you're doing with it, and why. Bottom | line is you can't do without that story, without that | propaganda, so come up with a good story to go with your good | purpose. It's story vs. story, all the way down (or up, if | you're optimistic). | tunesmith wrote: | I think this is another booolean vs spectrum issue. If that | were universally true and people bought into it, it'd be a | very sad world indeed. Luckily, most people really do try | their best at keeping track of their values and living in | accordance with them, even if we often fail around the edges. | It's how we offer consistency and fairness to each other. | h2odragon wrote: | "false political news" and "fact checking websites" are small | band aids over large areas of contention that could alter the | conclusions here. | | Who decides which politics are wrong? If that isn't "every | individual who is faced with the choice, on their own" then is it | still politics, or is it more herd management? | commandlinefan wrote: | If there were any real trustworthy fact-checking web sites, | this study would mean a lot more, but there's a LOT of obvious | bias on any of the fact-checking sites. That's not to say that | nothing is objectively false (or true), but just to say that | it's been "fact-checked" doesn't tell anybody which it is. | burnished wrote: | Could you point to some examples? Most of the claims of bias | I've seen have seemed to come from a person whose position | isn't supported by reality, so it becomes easier to deny it | and claim bias. But I haven't made a study of it and would | love some counter examples. | skinkestek wrote: | Take the local one here, faktisk.no: | | They'll do real fact checks, but are very selective on | _what_ to fact check. | | So a journalist from the state broadcasting service states | on TV that "these soldiers will shoot at anything that | moves". | | She says that about what is known by everyone who has a | clue to be some of the more restricive and professional | soldiers that exist. | | Will it be fact checked if I submit it? | | No. I tried. | | They'd rather publish a bunch of factual but funny and | trivial fact checks than pointing out that a mainstream | reporter is - at least in my opinion - lying through her | teeth to make people hate a certain small nation. | octopoc wrote: | Here's one: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi- | healthcare-pass-the... | ahelwer wrote: | Here's a well-known one: https://www.snopes.com/fact- | check/joe-biden-no-empathy/ | | You'd have to be pretty biased to call a literal quote | unchanged by context a "mixture" of truth. | tunesmith wrote: | I'm at a loss. The claim is clearly "Former U.S. Vice | President Joe Biden once said he had "no empathy" for the | plight of younger people." If you read that broadly, like | in the sense that any normal person would read it the | first time they come across it, it reads as if Biden made | some sort of blanket statement applying to all plights of | all younger people, period. Like he's basically admitting | to be a sociopath against younger people. I mean... | that's clearly not what he said or meant. | SaintGhurka wrote: | You might take a look at this one: | https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/unemployment-low-trump/ | | The claim is that Trump got unemployment to a 50 year low. | Snopes rules it "Mostly False". | | The problem I have with that is that unemployment really | was at a 50-year low. Snopes just wanted to deny Trump any | credit for it so they throw up a lot of dust and smoke | about whether the president deserves credit for it. | | Compare that with this one: https://www.snopes.com/fact- | check/obama-created-more-jobs-tr... | | In this case, the claim is that Obama created more jobs | than Trump during adjacent 3-year periods. Snopes rules it | true, full stop. They don't throw in any caveats about | whether the president should get credit. | | Whether a sitting president deserves credit for economic | conditions is always a debatable point. Politicians will | just hold whatever position is convenient for them and | partisans will line up on their respective sides. I can't | help but notice that Snopes lines up pretty predictably on | one side of any political issue. | Viliam1234 wrote: | Liars adapt. Whatever becomes the popular method of checking | the truth, they will create their own version of that tool. | | There is a similar arms race in science: Charlatans use | scientifically sounding language. So you tell people "to be | real science, it needs to be published in a scientific | journal". Then the charlatans create their own journals. So | you tell people "to be real science, it needs to be supported | by a meta-analysis". Then the charlanatans create their own | meta-analysis. Etc. | | It always takes some time to adapt, but if you tell people | e.g. "always verify political statements at fact-checking | websites", as soon as your idea becomes popular, politicians | will create their own "fact-checking" websites. (Or take over | the existing ones, whichever is easier.) | | I have some heuristics that I use for myself to determine | what information I trust... but if they became public and | popular, it would be quite easy to subvert them. | shoemakersteve wrote: | Please stop peddling this post-truth bullshit. No one is | "deciding which politics is wrong", they're talking about | people spreading things that are verifiably false. | linuxftw wrote: | I disagree with your assessment. "Verifiably false" typically | means "Corporate media says it's false." | potta_coffee wrote: | Media on all sides cannot be trusted. You're being | downvoted by people that trust media. | h2odragon wrote: | Everyone who tells you something had a reason to do so. | If it wasn't "you paid them", then its a good bet someone | else did. Even when you paid them to tell you the truth, | you have to assess what they mean by "truth" and how | honest their effort to deliver it was. | | If a doctor says "take this pill," do you huck it down or | look it up and see if its something you actually wanted | to eat? | | People trust "authority" too much. | pessimizer wrote: | Saying that "fact-checking" websites are often crap isn't the | same as saying there's no such thing as true and false. And | have you read the paper? If you haven't, what are you | spreading? | oogabooga123 wrote: | Asking "who fact checks the fact checkers" is not post-truth | bullshit. | Ekaros wrote: | That is pretty reasonable thing. In science we do peer | review. So why not in fact checking? Not that peer review | process isn't corrupted in many ways, but still it is | there. | | Not that I think similar process was possible in fact | checking... | Natsu wrote: | Of course there's truth and falsehood, but the fact checking | is hardly 100%. | | For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp3gy_CLXho | | Or you can read, e.g. Snopes' explanation that being | convicted of making bombs to blow up a government building | doesn't make one a "convicted terrorist" because there's no | such crime as "terrorism." | anotha1 wrote: | If you indirectly contribute to terrorizing people based on | race because you provide aid and comfort to a racist, are | you a terrorist? | DyslexicAtheist wrote: | I think in that case the person is a racist. I find the | label and term terrorism extremely troubling as it always | can be spun as _" what is a terrorist in one group might | be the freedom fighter to the other"_ | | the label terrorism is usually only successful in the | most homogenos and brainwashed cultures, where all | complexity and nuance is stripped away. it's great for | propaganda or when you need to criminalize a whole | society of people. | dang wrote: | Could you please not post flamebait and/or unsubstantive | comments to HN? It's not what this site is for, and it | destroys what it is for. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | allturtles wrote: | I don't know what the relevance of the Maher clip is. I | stopped watching after a couple minutes, but all I saw was | about how Democrats have false beliefs about COVID. I don't | see what this has to do with fact checking. | | If you're referring to this Snopes | (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist- | rosenberg/), the "mixed" ruling seems perfectly reasonable. | Saying someone is a "convicted terrorist" is a fuzzy claim, | because there is no such charge one can be convicted of. | It's not like "convicted murderer". | Natsu wrote: | > I don't see what this has to do with fact checking. | | It's weird that the group that is getting the most | dangerous misinformation about Covid has a better idea of | the risks of it. And this is one area in which fact | checking has been prominent and possibly over-zealous. It | can shut down conversations too quickly instead of | letting people come to understanding. | | I think it's at least partially because it's hard to | advocate for a middle-of-the-road position, each side | thinks you're an undercover partisan for the other. So | it's hard to advocate for something like quit complaining | about masks, they're not that great but they are helping, | vaccines work and you should get them unless you have | medical issues, but they're not 100%, some lockdowns | probably cause more harm than help, some of the rules are | either nonsense or enforced in silly ways that have | nothing to do with Covid risk, and the virus is dangerous | but the risk isn't evenly distributed across all | populations, and even if it's not a big risk to you | personally, you're being a real jerk if you go out a lot | and help unknowingly spread it. | | For the latter point, bombing government buildings is a | central example of terrorism and nobody thinks there's a | crime of "terrorism" when they hear "convicted | terrorist." By the same standard, Snopes would have to | say that the 9-11 hijackers were not terrorists. The | slipperiness of the word is entirely a matter of people | who want it to be about the goodness or badness of the | person instead of achieving political goals by initiating | violence. | allturtles wrote: | I'd agree that the fact-checking infrastructure is not | well-adapted for COVID, or any kind of rapidly developing | situation where the facts are not entirely clear. | | As for Rosenberg, you're focusing on the terrorism and | ignoring the convicted. She was not convicted of | terrorism, or even of bombing buildings, but of | explosives possession. The word "convicted" has to mean | something. I believe that O.J. Simpson is a murderer, but | calling him a "convicted murderer" would be false. If the | claim was "convicted of felonies due to her involvement | with a terrorist organization", there would be a much | better case for "true." | Natsu wrote: | Snopes is the one choosing which version of the claim to | fact-check, though, so choosing that version to downplay | the whole "helped bomb a government building" thing is | not very reasonable here, just like the choice of saying | that "convicted terrorist" can only mean "convicted of a | crime called terrorism that does not exist" instead of | the meaning most people would use which is being | "convicted of a crime that involved bombing government | buildings, which is a central example of 'terrorism'". | allturtles wrote: | They are fact checking the particular claim that went | viral on twitter. Nuance doesn't go viral. If you care | about the veracity of the claim, presumably you will read | the extensive explanation of the 'mixed' rating and form | your own conclusions. That's why it's 'mixed' and not | 'false.' You can't just go to Snopes and say "oh snopes | says it's false" in this case. | | p.s. the crimes she was _convicted of_ did not include | bombing government buildings, that part of the tweet is | strictly false. | Jiro wrote: | Claiming that it's mixed because there's no such charge | is avoiding the question, which is "if a normal person | reads this, would he get an accurate impression of what | happened?" If someone is convicted of a crime which an | ordinary person would look at and say 'that's terrorism', | then it's true or mostly true. The fact that there isn't | literally a definition of "convicted of terrorism" should | at most change "true" into "mostly true". | | That's how fact checking sites usually introduce bias-- | they don't actually lie about literal facts, they just | have shifting standards about when things need to be | absolutely literally true, when they can give false | impressions, and what counts as "mostly" when something | is mostly true or false or mixed. | dang wrote: | " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation | of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to | criticize. Assume good faith._" | | " _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of | calling names._ " | | " _Eschew flamebait._ " | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | legulere wrote: | For a democracy to work you need a basis of shared facts with | opinions on top that need decision. In the later years we have | seen a movement to erode this basis of democracy to make | discussions on top of the basis of facts impossible and replace | it with tribalist attacks against each other. | | Preventing fake news and fact checking is not about attacking | sound political opinions, but about making them possible. | h2odragon wrote: | I agree with you up to the point where "consensus" becomes a | replacement for "verifiable fact", which is usually the next | step in this chain. | daenz wrote: | This seems hardly surprising. Publicly fact-checking someone | makes them feel vulnerable and potentially stupid, so if they are | not a person with integrity or humility, of course they are going | to double down and get defensive. This is always been the case. | | It doesn't help that we choose to ride these people for years and | never let them forget about their mistakes, so much so that some | mistakes can be a death sentence for your future career. So what | incentive is there to admit that they made a mistake? | Lendal wrote: | Defensiveness? Possibly, but that's just one. I believe they do | it mostly because they want to antagonize. They don't care if | the info is false because it's all just a game anyway. If | there's fact-checking, it proves that the information is | valuable enough to cause someone of importance to waste time | debunking it. Therefore, it is high-value material and should | go viral even more. | | It's the same reason my dog steals socks. If someone is chasing | them for a stolen sock, it must be of high value and therefore | it must be stolen more frequently, carried away, and buried in | the backyard. It's a part of the brain we share with dogs, | apes, sheep, and cattle. | daenz wrote: | Sounds like you interact with a lot of trolls. I know there | is some overlap but I think there is a distinction between | people who are wrong and trolls. They should be treated | differently because of this distinction. | r7f7udheg wrote: | >so if they are not a person with integrity or humility< | | >we choose to ride these people for years and never let them | forget about their mistakes< | | Maybe it's the people who refuse to acknowledge they're | contributing to that climate of douchebagery while producing no | dialogue of productive value who lack integrity. If you're | public fact checking someone in 2021 it's because you're either | an asshole or unaware that you're being an asshole. | schoen wrote: | Maybe people presume that corrections represent a political or | ideological attack. After all, I've seen people assume that | sometimes on HN, which tries _not_ to be a space for political | flamewars and dunking. | | If you think that someone trying to correct you is likely to be | a political opponent trying to score points, it makes sense | that you would be vigilant and defensive. | | https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/arguments-as-soldiers talks about | one aspect of this where people might feel like they have to | defend anything that "their side" says and dispute anything | that the "other side" says. | | Sometimes people online actively try to defuse this by adding | some context expressing sympathy or a non-judgmental or non- | confrontational attitude. (That is, assuming that they merely | want to counter mistaken ideas and information, and not people | who hold or spread them!) I wonder to what extent that works. | tinalumfoil wrote: | Correcting false articles with bot accounts and links to Scopes | should not produce a change of mind in an educated person. Snopes | hasn't been reputable since its original creator lost majority | control in a divorce, and twitter bots are irreputable for reason | I hope I don't have to state. | kingsuper20 wrote: | Since there's no such thing as news anymore, it's all op-ed, and | the debunking sites all have a POV, I mostly just ignore peoples' | politically oriented links except for primary sources. | | It's hard to argue with a video or a transcription. | pwdisswordfish8 wrote: | > It's hard to argue with a video or a transcription. | | You'd think so, but people either refuse to watch it, or claim | they have watched it but then have no trouble saying something | wild that's a complete contradiction. | andrewflnr wrote: | On the contrary, even with primary sources, there's almost no | event that can't have its narrative completely turned around by | additional context. In particular, such a primary source is | almost always an anecdote rather than data. Data always | introduces a possibility for bias. Truth is hard. There are no | shortcuts | briantakita wrote: | This begs the question, "who fact-checks the fact-checkers?" If | the institutional "fact-checkers" & institutional opinion is | incorrect, as it has been many times in the past, then the heavy- | handed "correcting" of the critics is counter-productive to | accurate & representative public discourse. | | IMO, a more useful approach is to bring forward all novel | perspectives on a topic and let people make up their own minds. | Many people don't like being told what to think & distrust the | notion of "authoritative sources". However, full disclosure of | knowledge & reasoned arguments demonstrates a good-faith account | of a particular issue. Institutions having to resort to | "correcting the record", especially when the title begins with | "No, ..." & the predictable comparison to the flat-earthers, only | sows more distrust in the institutions. The refutation by | strawman may make the proponents of the institutional narrative | feel more self-righteous & confident, but only insults & | strengthens resolves to resist such narrative from opponents of | the institutional narrative. | m0llusk wrote: | This study was limited to Twitter which may skew results | strangely kind of like how many University studies are limited to | wealthy young people of European descent. | tunesmith wrote: | I think it's really difficult to tease apart "believing something | that isn't true" from "going out on a limb and sharing it in | public". | | In other words, if someone responds badly, it's hard to say | whether it's more because they hate discovering they're wrong | about something, or more because they hate feeling humiliated by | being called out in public. | | When sharing information is intrinsically tied to risking public | shame if you're wrong... maybe that's what can be better managed. | dovrce wrote: | Can't find the paper text, but here's the video showing it was an | article about the Clinton Foundation and some snopes link | https://youtu.be/WUDiBiKQxPk?t=141 | dreamlayers wrote: | For the person doing it, sharing of such news can be more like | the person expressing their own emotions than like sharing | information. If that expression gets invalidated, the motivation | to express those emotions remains. | rossdavidh wrote: | So, whenever you see someone debunking on Twitter, be sure to | reply to that with a link to this study. :) | stephc_int13 wrote: | I think there is a lot more to say about this subject. | | I'll give a personal example, a few months ago, a leading French | newspaper (Le Monde) published a debunk about the coronavirus | origins, mostly trying to debunk that it originated from a lab in | Wuhan. | | The problem is that what was presented as undeniable facts was in | practice very poorly constructed, and we know today that things | are not that clear cut. | | In my opinion, when something is debunked, it should be done in | the most rigorous manner and stay as politically neutral as | possible. | | Unfortunately, this is not what I am seeing. | ergot_vacation wrote: | "Debunking" in the modern sense mostly just means calling | someone an idiot for having a different opinion than you, with | an added dose of self-assured smugness because obviously | "science" and "the experts" and "everybody knows" are on your | side. Debunking is bad enough when it actually comes from a | place of real science, because even then the self- | congratulatory nature of it makes people want to punch you | rather than engage in a conversation. But when "the science" is | really just a bunch of anecdotes, propaganda and Just-So | Stories people in certain social circles keep repeating to each | other ad nauseam, it becomes a complete joke. | kiba wrote: | People are not convinced by facts and science, but by people | in their trust networks. | | No amount of truth will ever convince someone who is | predisposed to not believe you. | pmoriarty wrote: | That's not debunking, that's dismissing. | | I'm not ashamed to admit that I've dismissed plenty of people | in my life. | | I don't have time to argue with and debunk Holocaust deniers | and Neo-Nazis, nor do I think it would be productive, because | in my experience almost all such people are way beyond | reasoning with. | | Also, when such people "debate", they're often just trying to | spread their propaganda to bystanders, and not engaging in | any kind of good-faith argument with you. | | Finally, I recognize that if these people ever get power they | will crush, in a very literal way, using violence, anyone who | doesn't agree with them, who is not "pure" enough for them, | or who stands in their way. | Applejinx wrote: | I find that's a vital realization to have. It's also more | than a bit sad: anybody from ANY political angle who's | desperate enough will sink to this level. That said, | there's some political angles that I see a lot of this | from. | | Nazis lie, is the way I frame it to myself. I try to | recognize the tells, the techniques that are being used, | the pivoting and debating attitude, the historical | precedents, if possible the escalation as masks are dropped | and the ideological payload is hinted at or delivered. | There's always a payload. Everything else is the game. | | Nazis lie. I'm interested in identifying them, not debating | them. If I can identify them, I can identify their payload | and odds are it's something I'm going to want to walk away | from, and I'll do just that. | kurthr wrote: | Yeah, at this point I can't tell trolls from idiots. Like | it's a lifestyle. | | You're at a restaurant on the ocean and some fairly | educated dude wants to go all flat earth. I'm like, "let me | go get some binoculars and you can tell me why the bottom | of the container ship falls below the horizon first. We can | even estimate the distance based on size of ship and | magnification factor to get a radius for the earth".... | "No, it doesn't work that way". | | Huh? Why are all the other planets round? Why does the | earth cast a round shadow on the moon (vice versa for | eclipse)? Why can you fly to India in either direction in | the same amount of time? It's conspiracy theories all the | way down. | | Stupid, angry, or willfully ignorant, they're painful to | talk to. | chmod775 wrote: | This. | | When you want to convince someone and win them over to your way | of thinking, never _ever_ lie, make your position out to be | stronger than it really is, or treat them as anything less than | an intelligent human being. | | If you can't do that it is better to stay silent, because | speaking is likely to have the exact opposite of the intended | effect. | | This applies to everything from parenting to political | discussions. | headmelted wrote: | I mean that would be nice, but it's also unrealistic because of | the imbalance in educating someone who _wants_ to be ignorant. | | The problem I've seen is that people want others to disprove | their crazy theories. Disproving _anything_ takes substantially | more time and work than just saying any old nonsense in the | first place. | | This is made worse by the hordes of crazy/stupid people on the | internet who demand (in bad faith) that everyone who disagrees | with their obvious falsehoods takes the time required to | provide evidence (that they'll never accept anyway) is the | biggest part of the problem. | | tldr; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. | Unfortunately most of the people spreading this kind of thing | online don't understand what actual evidence is. | | Try debating a flat-earther, and then explaining that we knew | the Earth was round for thousands of years prior to NASA. It | will not compute. | Applejinx wrote: | That, or: extraordinary claims require extraordinary empathy. | | If the story is horrible, you've got to understand what in | that is so desirable for the person to believe. Why do they | cling to that particular narrative? Something about it, | works, for them. | | I think there's a lot of people out there absolutely | terrified and right on the edge of un-survival. They are | genuinely in continuous, ongoing danger, and need a narrative | that will give them a target for their terror, one that could | maybe be attacked and fought back against. | | It is not terribly difficult to take panicked people and | persuade them to run away from the exits, or attack the | doctors, or otherwise direct their energy and panic towards | some goal. The reason to do that is not arbitrary, rather it | is to gain power through controlling those people, and it's | always worked very well. | | You take away that power and control not by arguing with the | angry, panicky people, but by persistently removing the | threats that generate their panic. The worst enemy of an | ousted demagogue is a boring, reasonably trustworthy rival | that does things to remedy the material distress of the | panicky and angry people. You don't have to argue them into | submission, you defuse them by making them comfortable, and | that's why we see desperate attempts to maintain the panic | and terror. | smogcutter wrote: | Not that you're wrong necessarily, but in my own anecdotal | experience the people clinging to the sorts of narratives | you're describing aren't exactly the picture of precarity. | | They're aging suburbanites whose TV came with a youtube | app. | kodah wrote: | This might be useful imagery for mockery but it's far | from accurate. That, and I mean, mockery is wrong in any | meaningful discourse. | zackees wrote: | The debunkers are highly biased and typically choose the | lowest hanging fruit of some fringe individual, debunk that, | and then claim that this represents the conservative | argument. | | This misinformation is therefore being laundered by the fact | checker. | | The people see the "fact checkers" as what they are: a highly | biased group being funded by shadow money that work in | lockstep to support the msm cartel's narrative. | dang wrote: | Anyone who wants seriously to look at this problem needs to | grapple with the following: preferring one's beliefs to | counterevidence is not just a property of "crazy/stupid | people", but of humans in general, including oneself and | everyone on one's own side. This is a difficult fact to face, | and to the extent one can face it, I think it changes | everything. Even if one makes the smallest beginning at doing | so, it already starts to change everything. | | For this we have to stop pointing the finger at the others-- | their ridiculous beliefs, their preposterous disregard of | evidence--and face that we ourselves are just as ridiculous | and preposterous. It is not that the others do it more; it is | simply that it is easier--much easier--to see it in them. If | you think you don't do it, or (an easier self-deception) you | don't do it _as much_ , this is because you are lacking in | self-awareness. (I don't mean you personally, of course, I | mean all of us.) And let's be honest: we all feel that we | don't do it _as much_. I feel it myself even as I write this. | | A timeless essay on this is Orwell's "Looking Back at the | Spanish War" (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell- | foundation/orwel..., discussed last year at [1]). The depth | of consciousness that Orwell reached in that essay is | profound, but its profundity is obscured by how simply he | states it, and no doubt also by the fact that we all think we | already know it and are the exception to what he describes. | | _Atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on | grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the | atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own | side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence. | Recently I drew up a table of atrocities during the period | between 1918 and the present; there was never a year when | atrocities were not occurring somewhere or other, and there | was hardly a single case when the Left and the Right believed | in the same stories simultaneously. And stranger yet, at any | moment the situation can suddenly reverse itself and | yesterday's proved-to-the-hilt atrocity story can become a | ridiculous lie, merely because the political landscape has | changed._ | | --- | | _Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly | reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I | saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the | facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an | ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had | been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men | had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely | denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never | seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary | victories, and I saw newspapers in London retailing these | lies and eager intellectuals building emotional | superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, | in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened | but of what ought to have happened according to various | 'party lines'._ | | [1] _Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24961407 - Nov 2020 (128 | comments) | headmelted wrote: | Oh I'm most certainly a stupid person on the Internet. I | have no problem accepting that whatsoever. | | To your point though, I don't think it's accurate to | suggest everyone is as consistently wrong as everyone else | when there are groups of people suggesting that the entire | concept of science itself is propaganda. | | I will read what you've linked though, as it seems | genuinely really interesting. | dang wrote: | It doesn't follow that everyone is as consistently wrong | as everyone else, and I'm not saying it does. One needs | to be extra careful about deriving consequences from this | phenomenon too quickly, precisely because it's so hard to | see it in the first place. More precisely, it's hard to | see _in oneself_ --but to only see it in others is not to | see it at all. | | Let's all practice simply seeing it for a while (I'm | tempted to say 20 years might be a good minimum), and | then maybe we'll be in a position to accurately derive | consequences in a way that doesn't just re-establish the | original self-deception. | | p.s. I took out this bit of my comment above: "Or, if you | prefer, we're all crazy/stupid in this way." because | after reading your comment I realized it was too baity. | Mentioning it that here because I don't want to deprive | your post of that context. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-10 23:00 UTC)