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from the That's-what-they-WANT-you-to-think dept.
In the Salon
There seems to be a lot of science being thrown at the "Trump Phenomenon." Salon covers yet another, and interviews the author.
A new paper, recently presented at the American Political Science Association's annual convention, suggests a widespread motive driving people to share fake news, conspiracy theories and other hostile political rumors. "Many status-obsessed, yet marginalized individuals experience a 'Need for Chaos' and want to 'watch the world burn'," lead author Michael Petersen tweeted, announcing the availability of a preprint copy.
Truth, in such a worldview, is beside the point, which offers a new perspective on the limitations of fact-checking. The motivation behind sharing or spreading narratives one may not even believe can help make sense of a variety of threatening or confusing recent developments in advanced democracies. It also sheds light on disturbing similarities with outbreaks of ethnic or genocidal violence, such as those seen in Rwanda and the Balkan nations during the 1990s.
Preprint of the paper available at PsyArXiv, here. [DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/6m4ts]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:41PM (10 children)
When your "fact-checking" is clearly fake... yeah, people will ignore it. The fact checkers all showed massive bias.
Does anybody seriously trust the fact-checking sites? I doubt even the leftists trust them, despite eagerly using them to "prove" nonsense.
(Score: 3, Funny) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday September 12 2018, @07:37PM
I just fact checked this and they tell me you're full of shit.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:01PM (8 children)
It's not about "trusting" a website, ya blithering fuckwit! Instead, you are supposed to look at the website to see what evidence they present. The evidence will speak for itself (or not). If you are trusting a website to spoon feed you the truth, then you are a fool!
Dear God! It's a wonder that people like you can even manage to walk and chew gum at the same time. While the internet is one of the most advanced tools ever produced, it is well nigh useless if you don't learn to use it properly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:12PM (6 children)
More generally, if you're trusting any single source of information to provide The Truth, you are a fool. That's true whether that single source of information is the Iraqi Information Minister, the New York Times, InfoWars, Fox News, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, Nature, The Lancet, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Joe down at the bar, the BBC, Al Jazeera, or your favorite politician.
Furthermore, if you encounter any source of information telling you to not look at the other sources of information, then that's a sure sign to be suspicious: People with good information will be able to provide evidence that supports their position and discredits other sources of information, whereas people with bad information don't want to have to bother with that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 13 2018, @12:50AM (5 children)
I think that's a good rule of thumb, but even that is not enough. We must always think critically, especially when the people telling us something are doing so with a writ of authority. Remember that little deal we had a while back, the Iraq War? Everybody, every government body, every media outlet, banged the war drums, telling us all they had evidence, nay, proof! that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. To me, and many others, it all stunk to high heaven of a snow job. Sure enough, that's what it was. All lies.
I have that same spidey sense now about the preposterous Russian collusion story. Cardboard is made of sterner stuff than that flimsy fiction. And having CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and every other MSM outlet repeat it day in and day out for two years, a la Goebbels's "a lie repeated ten thousand times is indistinguishable from the truth," has not made it any less fabricated.
But those are contemporary issues being fought in the agora now. Scientists and others who live and die by evidence and empirical research don't themselves agree on what that evidence means. Tomes have been written about great controversies in science. So if those folks can't agree on what the evidence is telling them, as superior to lesser humans as they are, then how can we expect those lesser humans to be great at it?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13 2018, @08:43AM
- Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President and Director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 13 2018, @11:48AM
Rule of thumb [wikipedia.org]? Can't do much damage with that thing, can we. Perhaps it should have been the rule of wrist [youtube.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 13 2018, @01:02PM (2 children)
Agreed. The "don't trust a single source" rule is one part of thinking critically. Another good rule is to be especially suspicious of information that appears to confirm your previously held beliefs, because you're more likely to be fooled by that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 13 2018, @02:31PM (1 child)
Especially if it's facile. Think of the Atlanta bombing when they arrested that Middle Eastern guy, and nobody questioned it. Of course it was a Middle Eastern terrorist, everyone said, because that's what they do. It turned out to be an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Eric Rudolph.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 13 2018, @04:09PM
Then there's Charles Stuart and Susan Smith, both of whom came awfully close to getting away with their terrible crimes by saying a big black guy did it. And an awful lot of people believed them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @08:53PM
First of all, most people just look at the pretty graphic. Aside from that issue though...
It's not just evidence presented. It's evidence left out. It's purposeful misinterpretation of the supposed fact being checked, in a way that makes it more or less provably true or false. It's the initial selection of which facts should be checked at all. It's ignoring minor details or caring about them. It's choosing what to do with old fact-check stories that now have new information to change the verdict: ignore, delete, or rewrite.
If an aircraft burns up on a taxiway and a politician says it burned on the runway, how should that be fact checked? If the politician is a democrat, the fact checkers pay little attention to the distinction between a taxiway and a runway. The supposed fact is rated true, or at least mostly true. If the politician is Donald Trump, that distinction gives him a "pants on fire" rating.