from the the-truth-is-out-there-but-so-are-lies dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
It is hoped a new "toolkit" will help people separate truth from lies and unsubstantiated opinion, and prevent the spread of misinformation.
The checklist, published in the journal Experimental Physiology, was written by scientists from the Universities of Portsmouth and Edinburgh.
They warn the "truth is under attack" and have highlighted the urgent need for critical thinking and scientific literacy to combat the rise of unfounded, misleading and often damaging claims which the experts say are amplified by social media.
From political debates to claims for new products or health-enhancing interventions, claims are frequently presented as "scientific findings" supported by "expert" opinions.
[...] "At the very least, the next time you hear phrases like 'they say this is great' or 'this is scientifically proven' start by asking 'who are they?' and 'which scientists, using which methods?' Be cautious and questioning; snake oil and its vendors still exist, and they come in many guises."
Provided by University of Portsmouth
More information: G. Drummond et al, How to spot the truth, Experimental Physiology (2024). DOI: 10.1113/EP092160
(Score: 5, Insightful) by krishnoid on Monday August 12 2024, @02:21AM (22 children)
But can you make it care about the truth? As has become clear to me over the last few years, and I ask my friends to credit me if they repeat it, "The truth will no longer sell itself." Sure, things are true or not, but with the concept of "alternative facts" and that people want to believe what they want to believe, this seems like more a social issue of wanting a truth that might not directly align with your current beliefs, than one of distinguishing fact from fiction.
I appreciate the tools, but I think the scientists need to consume some introductory marketing and public relations [wikipedia.org] material. They like learning, right? At the very least they could use what they learn to market and sell the tools, when their acceptance can't be assumed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Monday August 12 2024, @04:54AM (2 children)
A lot of people want their biases and prejudices confirmed, not the truth. As an analytical geek I like picking apart crap reporting or bogus claims but we're very much the exception (INT* are a single-digit percentage of the population). Most people just want to hear that this magic thing will fix all your problems or it's all the fault of those people over there who aren't like us, and don't even hear attempts to correct that, let alone actively seek it out themselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Monday August 12 2024, @05:14AM (1 child)
And then you have the vaccine deniers, even when the COVID-19 vaccine was supposed to be 90% effective, when epidemiologists were hoping for 60-70%. There you have a magic treatment, but ... ? Is there a break in the understanding of the germ theory of disease [youtu.be]?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by helel on Monday August 12 2024, @09:59AM (16 children)
I don't know that the truth has ever sold itself. Certainly this is not a new problem. There's a conversation I had with a political science student during Bush 2's reign that's always stuck with me. At the time Bush was censoring climate scientists [theguardian.com] and this student insisted that the scientists were the one's in the wrong because "Bush has made the decision that global warming isn't happening and it's their job to make that true." Nothing I said could convince him that reality... existed.
He wasn't even a global warming denier per se, he just thought that Clinton liked global warming so under his rule scientists made it exist and now that we had a different president with a different opinion it was scientists job to do the opposite.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 12 2024, @05:28PM (12 children)
While this is true in as much as confirmation bias has always been a thing, what's been going on in recent years is way beyond that. It's now common for large numbers of people to quite simply refuse to believe observable reality. That certainly seems to be almost entirely a byproduct of Trumpism. Some seriously fucked up shit going on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Monday August 12 2024, @10:18PM (11 children)
I think it's fair to say that there are plenty of reality deniers in both the conservative and progressive camps. I was just watching a video where a panel were trying to tackle the issues of free speech as it pertains to gender equity, and a bunch of blue-haireds walked out of the speech when someone mentioned that, on average, men are taller than women. On the other side of the zoo, we have the 2020 election deniers.
I honestly believe that this comes down to identity politics and the echo chamber effect of social media platforms. Once they (social media) tag you as 'zig' vs 'zag', they'll feed you everything that they think zigs want to see. Compounding the problem is that people now see strength in numbers as more important than having ones own opinion, so will align themselves to their 'team'. And we all know how objective fans of a particular sports team can be.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 12 2024, @11:56PM (4 children)
While there's certainly something to everything you say, given the difference in scale alone, this is just NOT the place for both-sides-isms. I mean seriously...I don't even have to look back at more than a few hours of headlines...with Trump claiming that Kamala's crowds were AI generated...silliest shit you could imagine, and just watch how the right eats that up. I mean JFC...not to mention the scope of election denial on the right, and others that you could list all day. The fact that there's really nothing on the left that's even in the same universe as all that...itself...borders on "observable reality".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday August 13 2024, @12:14AM
It's also worth noting that you can find all the truth denial I've referred to without even looking as far as the QAnon lunatics. Once you do that there's shit that makes the flat-earthers look pretty good.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday August 13 2024, @04:34AM (2 children)
The "hiring prostitutes to pee on the bed Obama had slept in" hoax?
The "drinking bleach" hoax?
The "fine people" hoax?
Most of Trump's departures from reality are insults and one-liners, meant as hyperbole and often understood as such. The anti-Trump claims are vigorously promoted by people so blinded by hatred that they can't understand that they're lying.
As for the "election denial" issue: the violation of the U.S. Constitution in Pennsylvania is a matter of public record. Illegality in other states is credible, although it may not be provable. The honest question is not "did the Democrats cheat?", but "was Democrat cheating big enough to change the election results?". We'll probably never know.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday August 13 2024, @10:56AM (1 child)
The "drinking bleach" and "fine people" hoax? OMFG. I'll let others weigh in on that. Not worth the keyboard strokes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday August 13 2024, @12:29PM
I should at least point out that you did a great job of making my point for me. So thanks for that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by helel on Tuesday August 13 2024, @02:24AM (5 children)
Even if we ignore the scale difference Digitalaudiorock has touched on I feel like there's a huge difference in the danger posed by the false beliefs of the "two sides." Sure, denial of sexual dimorphism in humans may be annoying but it's hard to foresee a greater risk than mixed sex sports in which female athletes (whether cis or trans) have a hard time competing. Maybe it's unfair but if people prefer to watch it over segregated sports that's just market forces in action.
By contrast conservatives who deny global warming, deny the results of the 2020 election, deny the effectiveness of vaccines, deny the history of the holocaust, deny the very existence of LGBT people, they do very real harm to our neighbors, our nation, and the world each and every day. There may be problems with mixed sex football but I'll take those any day of the week over another round of record breaking hurricanes and wildfires.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday August 13 2024, @04:32AM
I agree that denying Climate Change, vaccines etc is more likely to get us all killed, which (depending on your point of view ) would be a bad thing. On the balance, the MAGA's denial of reality is more dangerous than the left's.
That's not to say we should ignore the gradual erosion of free speech, thoughtcrime and other oppressions from the far left. After all, it would be nice if the planet we (hopefully) save is actually worth living on.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday August 13 2024, @04:46AM (2 children)
Holocaust denial is almost entirely the domain of the political left, properly understood. Those who think Nazism is the political right, do not understand.
(Score: 2) by helel on Tuesday August 13 2024, @01:10PM
If you think that Greg Abbot and the Republican Party [theguardian.com] are the political left...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 14 2024, @12:45PM
Reality doesn't "properly understand" either. Such ideological beliefs can't be shoe-horned into a single end of a political spectrum. It's not accidental that the name Nazi is short for National Socialism - a merge of right/left concepts right there. And if one looks at their early era platforms [ushmm.org], one sees a mix of left and right-wing promises that would appeal to a relatively large group of people. And the Nazis had their pseudo-military organization and traditions. Most importantly, there were issues like the Treaty of Versailles that couldn't be addressed by the political establishment (which was perfectly willing to violate covertly, but not overtly), but which Nazis could denounce publicly without consequence.
And of course, once they arrived in power, they swung right to stay in power. That's a universal feature of totalitarian governments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Monday August 12 2024, @08:55PM (1 child)
It's as if objective reality is under total control [goodreads.com] by the power (and most powerful) of intelligent organisms, when those powers deign to control it. And that those organisms' behavior is equivalent to acting in line with any objective truth, so that when they don't act, it's the truth and the STEM-types who say it must be wrong or have an agenda.
At any age, it requires piercing that veil to understand that sometimes people in power make things up [youtu.be], to further a specific agenda [youtu.be] or manipulate the populace [youtu.be]. STEM-types have been indoctrinated by a lifetime of repeatedly confirming postulates and understanding vs. observations, double-checking, and test suites to feel confident that the material world has persistent, consistent rules/existence outside of a human not/hearing the tree falling in the woods.
Hell, just reading a book and seeing a sentence, and then being able to open to that same page and see that same sentence, and mentally process the text in the same way is enough to confirm external reality. But if you work in some fields that involve human perception, apparently every time you read it, the answer could be "What do you want it to say?", being entered into an email via a mechanically-engineered keyboard, displayed via a consistent-color display panel, encoded electrically into a set of digital bits that guarantee it's transmitted, received, and displayed in perfect fidelity. After 2016 and onward opened my eyes, it's clear that the STEM-types are the ones that need more people training, notwithstanding people having access to all the objective truth they want in multiple media, for free.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday August 12 2024, @10:29PM
"STEM-types who say otherwise"
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday August 12 2024, @09:06PM
That's... a special kind of stupid. No wonder he was a poli-sci major.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 12 2024, @02:00PM
The truth never sold itself.
For a while, we felt like we could trust publications like Elsevier, broadcasters like Walter Cronkite - and for the most part, we could. But, even in the days when the journal industry and CBS News were "above" influence of most who would corrupt them, they weren't above all influences.
In effect, "the truth" is for sale. With enough money, you can buy your own truth, virtually indistinguishable from "more truthy truths" that were derived from less biased sources.
I've seen it done in medical devices 20-30 years ago: stacks of articles from "the best" journals, a wide variety of researchers, all finding a 30 to 35% efficacy rate for a particular treatment. After you've read a dozen articles from diverse sources published by the most well respected journals in the world, what more do you want? Well.... another dive into all the available research can find an even better backing for an efficacy rate of less than 3%, but you've got to dig deep to get that... so what do you think most people believe?
I think most people believe what they hear and see, from the sources that assault their senses most directly and most often. Thus: the power of advertising. Notice the total lack of truth as a part of this equation.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 13 2024, @03:23AM
Also, how are we to know their truth is the correct truth? I incline toward "show me the data" but is that the approach here?
Been plenty of historical instances where the "settled science" of the day proved wrong.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @02:23AM (1 child)
Since they burned The Great Library of Alexandria...
We're not experiencing anything new, it has just become more obvious
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday August 12 2024, @01:31PM
Don't believe ANY of the popular stories about the burning of the Library at Alexandria. They're all at least questionable. (And it burned several times, so probably some of the stories got mixed.)
But, yeah, there have always been lots of people who confused truth with Maat (or pravda), i.e. the official word. And some of them have been the people issuing the official word.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 12 2024, @02:52AM (16 children)
Carl Sagan's essay remains relevant [centerforinquiry.org].
Another term for this skill is "critical thinking". When you encounter a person or group of people trying to stop others from learning the tools and practicing using them, you can be reasonably confident that they are relying on some baloney to get something they want from those they want kept ignorant.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @03:19AM
Everybody knows that ignorance is strength
Always keep your adversary off balance
(Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Monday August 12 2024, @04:59AM (11 children)
I'm not aware of any school here that teaches critical thinking. You learn what's required by the test and by the education department/ministry/board/whatever and that's it.
There was actually one school a few years ago that made the news for having a critical thinking class, which included students being given a report or news story and being asked to analyse its correctness. I wrote to the school commending them for it but never heard back, and I haven't heard of it being repeated.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday August 12 2024, @08:51AM (8 children)
Any sane history or philosophy exam should include this. Even in high school history we covered primary/secondary sources, author bias, etc etc.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday August 12 2024, @09:28AM (1 child)
Was it actually actively taught though, with exercises using real-life data/stories, or just presented as an abstract concept? If it's just "you need to know this in case it's in the exam" then it's not much help. The school I went to covered, very briefly, a few types of dishonest arguments, but it went in one ear and out the other.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday August 12 2024, @11:31AM
> Was it actually actively taught though, with exercises using real-life data/stories
I can't remember the 16+ history exam - I think so, although IIRC the papers were mostly short-form (paragraph at most). At 18+ about 25 % of the grade was on a "sources" paper, where we had to build an argument based on mostly primary source material, which we were expected to know beforehand and be able to comment on the sources critically. IIRC we were expected to answer about 3 questions in a 3 hour paper, so each answer was a couple of sides of A4 i.e. essay format.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Monday August 12 2024, @09:37AM (5 children)
Any sane history or philosophy exam should include this. Even in high school history we covered primary/secondary sources, author bias, etc etc.
Which is why there is no philosophy taught in K-12 any more and what little history lessons which remain are so watered down as to avoid shedding light on those skills.
Even in high school history we covered primary/secondary sources, author bias, etc etc.
Things change. Or to paraphrase the guilty, things were changed.
The community here skews heavily towards 'older' and it can be easy to forget that there are now three generations which have grown up or are in the process of growing up without general access to general education, especially source analysis or critical thinking. The big change in regards to education was ushered in with the Reagan administration when the country's lone long term strategy became that of divestment from education, later knowledge and science, and lately competence in general. That was already several generations ago...
It'd take two generations to catch back up assuming the US starts now, which it likely won't.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday August 12 2024, @11:34AM (3 children)
Off-topic, but I am always struck by the "generational" aspect of education. This generation teaches the next one, which in turn teaches the next.
One can be on an upward slope or a downward slope, the effects take decades to be realised, and they are cumulative (exponentially so?).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by canopic jug on Monday August 12 2024, @01:00PM (2 children)
I'd say your comment is on topic due to the educational component in spotting and building upon the empirical truth. I'd modify it with the following though. Usually both of the preceding generations teach the incoming generation, those in their parents' and grandparents' generations. Older than that is too old to be active or to relate to the new crop.
However, both of those older groups have as a population missed out on a basic education especially compared to previous cohort [cornell.edu]s due to the ongoing massive compounded cuts starting from the Reagan administration combined with campaigns to underpay and denigrate the very profession of educator.
Back to the generational aspect. What we have now though is a double-whammy. First there are no older generations (yes there are individual exceptions, but no not at scale) who have an excellent education to base their handover upon. Second, the younger generation has already irrevocably frittered away most of their lives so far in Bytedance's Tiktok skinner box. It's 4 to 6 hours per youth per day. Not only won't they get that time back, it is lost at an age when the time counts for orders of magnitude more than when a young adult or even a late teen.
Time is worth more to the young because they learn so effortlessly, when the situation allows. With them spending most waking hours in Bytedance's Tiktok, however, that situation never arises. They could try to catch up, but that would require an awareness and a knowledge they neither have nor value. For the outliers that become aware of their lack of knowledge and their need to acquire it, their optinos are quite limited due to the long term divestment the country has engaged in regarding basic education.
Yes, time is worth more. Look at it this way. Cumulative hours awake compared to the ever decreasing fraction of that life which each single hour makes up. You can look at it as the area under a curve. The curve does not start at age 0 but at an arbitrary number of years, from 2 to 7, when the kids become fully sentient and human and runs to end of life. But for the sake of argument we can say it ends at 85. Plotting the curve, the area is at its halfway mark in somewhere in the teens wholly dependent on the year of sentience. That means that 5 years with all waking hours in a skinnerbox is subjectively 25% to 35% of a life.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday August 13 2024, @05:21AM (1 child)
Please do not confuse sentient (having senses) with sapient (having wisdom). Cats, dogs, and cockroaches are sentient.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday August 13 2024, @05:59AM
It's the closest I could come up with at the time. I mean a little of both. What I am looking for is a something combining both intelligence and self-awareness. Awareness is also kind of part of the concept, but it's not an all-or-nothing state nor is it permanent. One does also see a lot of people who peak and then fade back somewhat in their early adulthood.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Tuesday August 13 2024, @05:12AM
The "new math" of the 1950s and 1960s that Lehrer sang about was not a Reagan result, nor is the confused math that's being pushed today. The "whole language" replacement of phonics is not a Reagan product, and is generally opposed by conservatives.
There is some opposition to science on the right, and it's mostly due to religious anti-Darwinism and other religious idiocy. Fortunately, religion appears to be dying, and when it's essentially gone that will be a huge burden lifted from humanity.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 12 2024, @10:36AM
One thing you should be well aware of is that schools don't actually have to do a thing in order for politicians to rail against the school doing that thing. It's fairly easy to whip up an angry mob that comes to school board meetings demanding that, say, certain books are banned from the school library, and the response from the school librarian of "We don't have any of those" is not considered an acceptable response.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 12 2024, @02:04PM
My father got a PhD in education in the 1980s, and tried for 20 years to get "critical thinking" into the curriculum of schools in the U.S. Southeast... then he just quit fighting and worked on maximizing his income for minimal effort. Let's just say that "the system" was less than enthusiastic about his efforts.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday August 12 2024, @01:36PM (2 children)
Actually that's not true. You can be pretty sure they don't have a high regard for truth, and perhaps feel investigators will find they're wrong...but that may just be because they're insecure, not because they're actually wrong.
It's a plausible sign, and indicator, nothing more. And not even that strong an indicator. (OTOH, most possible statements are false, so that's a reasonable assumption if you're unbiased and uninformed.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 12 2024, @02:06PM
I worked for a company so rife with insecurity that they actively suppressed their internal R&D programs out of fear that any potential improvement we might identify for the technology might negatively impact the next quarter's sales numbers - people might wait to purchase until the new improvement was available, and in medical devices the news of improvements inevitably leaks out years before the improvements become available.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 13 2024, @02:10AM
That to me just affects whether they know they're up to no good. Being up to no good through ignorance is often as bad as being up to no good through malice in terms of impact, regardless of moral judgment.
Someone who is up to good will want to be damn sure they have their facts straight. After all, you wouldn't want to put all the time and energy into doing the thing if doing the thing will yield a bad outcome.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Interesting) by namefags_are_jerks on Monday August 12 2024, @03:36AM (11 children)
Misinformation is so 20th Century.
Malinformation (factually truthful information used maliciously) is where it's at. LLMs are also quite capable of generating that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @05:32AM (7 children)
What kind of society do we live when the truth is malicious?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday August 12 2024, @06:30AM (3 children)
The best lies are based on truths. In other words, one can frame a set of true facts, using tricks like cherry picking, to support a false narrative.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bloodnok on Monday August 12 2024, @05:37PM (1 child)
Indeed. When someone accuses someone else of something, it is often something that the accuser would do, or has done, or plans to do themselves. The thing alleged is true, it is just that the accuser is the one doing it.
I have personal experience of this, as well as the nightly examples from certain newsworthy folks.
__
The Major
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday August 12 2024, @09:12PM
AKA "projection".
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2024, @03:46AM
Yeah, sorry, I was thinking of the "whole truth and nothing but the truth". I mean, if it is poisoned with lies, it's not really the "truth", is it?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday August 12 2024, @07:03AM
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Monday August 12 2024, @06:08PM
The truth is never malicious. It can be used maliciously, as the poster phrased it. The most dangerous misinfirmation used to be the almost-truth with good data and wrong conclusions. "Used to be" because now there are numbers of mentally ill people who take obvious nonsense as fact and (for just this once!) I'm not even including religionists. The internet has given these people visibility and validation. Maybe it's not a lack of critical thinking, which so many people have never had, but a matter of visibility. Thanks to that great leveler the Internet those people are in our faces 24/7.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2024, @08:21PM
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/03/1077878538/legislation-restricts-what-teachers-can-discuss [npr.org]
we're in a society that wants a large group of people to not have hurt feelz at the cost of historical accuracy in our school system and injustice towards a smaller group of people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 12 2024, @02:09PM (2 children)
The senile orange lunatic clearly demonstrates: you can spew indefensible lies, falsehoods, and all forms of mis-information, as long as you do it loudly enough, with enthusiasm, your people will love you for what you say and internalize it as their own truths.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday August 12 2024, @10:01PM (1 child)
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,”
-- Joseph Goebbels
I like to put it as "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, Trump supporters will eventually come to believe it".
Just wait for the 'stolen election' to really ramp up again now that he is losing: it will be interesting if he does lose... will the GOP finally get the balls to pick someone else who has a chance to win (like they should have gone with Nikki Haley and dumped Trump).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 12 2024, @10:47PM
The GOP had a cohesiveness problem in 2016 that they still haven't gotten over, MAGA came in and mopped up more support than any single GOP candidate could muster, and the GOP has always been more about "their side winning" than the others are.
Slowly, and none too surely, serious GOP figures are starting to declare that MAGA is "not their side.". It's going to be interesting.
Funny thing about Vance: many things I dislike about him remind me of Tipper Gore, and of course Ted Cruz.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Monday August 12 2024, @07:01AM
There are endless cases of people on SN playing these games all the time (I can link to examples, if you really want them - they're pretty boring and monotonous). Pics or it didn't happen.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday August 12 2024, @11:57PM