The human species faces a number of threats that could damage civilization or, in the worst case, lead to extinction. A major nuclear war would at least significantly damage civilization. At least hundreds of millions of people would die. Polluting human activity could initiate a chain reaction that leads to a toxic environment and possibly human extinction. Various climate change episodes that caused mass land animal extinctions are known, e.g., anoxic events and the Permian-Triassic extinction event or Great Dying of about 252 million years ago. Given incomplete human knowledge, it is possible that human activity could trigger such an event without human awareness until it is too late to save the species.
If humans do wind up damaging or destroying modern civilization or even annihilating the human species, the ultimate cause would necessarily come from some sort of human behavior that is at least theoretically avoidable. The question is, what is mankind's greatest survival threat?
This discussion excludes threats that humans simply cannot affect or prevent, e.g., a mass extinction caused by eruption of a supervolcano.
Volcanic eruption - a micro-pipsqueak compared to a supervolcano blast
The human cognition threat: From a cognitive and social science point of view, the greatest threat lies in the nature of human cognition and the irrational politics it engenders. That directly reflects human biology. In turn, that directly reflects the intellectual firepower that evolution endowed the human species with. Whatever mental capacity humans have as individuals and when acting in groups or societies, it was undeniably sufficient to get humans to where we are today.
The unanswered question is whether what evolution resulted in is sufficient to survive our technology and ability to kill ourselves off.
Under the circumstances, humanity's greatest threat lies in the psychology of being human. The very nature of human sentience and the individual and group behavior that flow therefrom are the seeds of human self-annihilation. If, when and why the seeds might sprout are open questions. Nonetheless, the seeds are real and viable.
Within the last century, research from cognitive, social and other relevant branches of science proved that all humans are driven mostly by our unconscious minds, which are intuitive-emotional-moral. In terms of politics and religion, output from our unconscious minds are not mostly fact- and logic-based. Powerful unconscious biases heavily affect what little we wind up becoming consciously aware of. As a consequence, we are not primarily driven by objective fact or logic. Instead, (i) false perceptions of reality or facts, and (ii) conscious thinking (reason or common sense) that is heavily influenced by powerful unconscious biases drives thought, belief and behavior.
Although we are sentient and conscious, unconscious (intuitive-emotional-moral) mental bandwidth or thinking is 100 million to 100 billion times more powerful than conscious thought. For better or worse, the human mental constitution dominated by unconscious intuitive knowledge and thought was sufficient for modern humans to survive and dominate.
None of that is a criticism of humans or their intellectual makeup. Those are objective facts based on modern science.
That biology applies to politics and it always has. In other words, politics is mostly irrational and based on false information, conscious thinking (common sense) that is heavily biased by unconscious personal beliefs and morals and evolutionary biases that all humans share.
Misinformation is easy to acquire and very hard to reject, especially when it rejecting it undermines personal ideology, belief or morals. Often or usually, there is insufficient information or situations are too complex or opaque for true objectivity. The unconscious human mind nonetheless has to act in the face of that. In their 2016 book Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce responsive Governments, social scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels summarized the human condition in politics like this:
“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”
All modern societies operate under some form of government and political system. What nations, societies, groups and individuals do and don't do is governed by human biology. That is mostly governed by our heavily biased, unconscious perceptions of reality (facts) and thinking. That irrationality, disconnection from reality and associated group behavior, including a lack of empathy toward outsiders, is where the greatest threat to the human species resides.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/08ac2aa91bc4949a3f76eb5e07aebd51f89bb8bae7fc73a1b5295c3e48a32e56.jpg
Questions: Is humanity's greatest threat the imperfect cognitive and social biology that underpins politics? If it is, can our weak, usually deceived and misinformed conscious minds do anything to change the status quo? Or, as some cognitive and social scientists at least imply, are humans destined to never rise much above their innate cognitive and social biology, leaving the fate of the human species up to irrational biology?
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Book Review: The User Illusion
In The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down To Size (Penguin Books, 1991, English translation 1998), Danish science writer Tor Norretranders dissects the powerful illusion that humans believe that what they see and think is accurate or real. The User Illusion (TUI) relentlessly describes human consciousness and the biological basis for the false realities that we believe are real. TUI is about the constraints on knowledge. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the curse of always increasing disorder (entropy), information theory and mathematics all make it clear that all sentient beings in the universe operate under severe information constraints. That includes the limits on the human mind. To believe otherwise is a mistake, or more accurately, an illusion.
TUI’s chapter 6, The Bandwidth of Consciousness, gets right to the heart of matters. Going there is an enlightening but humbling experience. When awake, the information flow from human sensory nerves to the brain is about 11.2 million bits per second, with the eyes bringing in about 10 million bits per second, the skin about 1 million bits per second, with the ears and nose each bringing in about 100,000 thousand bits per second. That’s a lot, right? No, it isn’t. The real world operates at unknowable trillions of gigabits/second, so what we see or perceive isn’t much. It’s puny, actually. Fortunately, humans needed only enough capacity to survive, not to know the future 10 or 100 years in advance or to see a color we can’t see through human eyes with just three different color sensing cell types (red, green, blue). For human survival, three colors was good enough. Evidence of evolutionary success is a planet population of about 7.4 billion humans that’s rapidly heading toward 8 billion.
Given that context, that 11.2 million bits/second may sound feeble but things are much weirder than just that. The 11.2 million bits/second are flowing into our unconscious minds. We are not conscious of all of that. So, what is the bandwidth of consciousness? How much of the 11.2 million bits/second we sense do we become aware of? The answer is about 1-50 bits/second. That’s the estimated rate at which human consciousness processes the information it is aware of. Silently reading this discussion consumes about 45 bits/second, reading aloud consumes about 30 bits/second, multiplying and adding two numbers consumes about 12 bits/second, counting objects consumes about 3 bits/second and distinguishing between different degrees of taste sweetness consumes about 1 bit/second.
What’s going on here??: It’s fair to ask what's really going on and why does our brain operate this way. The answer to the last question is that (i) it’s all that was needed to survive, and (ii) the laws of nature and the nature of humans, which are severely limited in data processing capacity. The human brain is large relative to body size but nonetheless only it processes information at a maximum rate of about 11.2 million bits/second, most of which we never become consciously aware of. That's human bandwidth because that’s what evolution resulted in. What’s going on is our unconscious mind taking in information at about 11.2 million bits/second, discarding or withholding from consciousness what’s not important or needed, which is about 50 bits/second or less, and then presenting the little trickle of important information to consciousness. That’s how much conscious bandwidth (consciousness) that humans needed to survive, e.g., to finagle sex, spot and run away from a hungry saber tooth cat before being eaten, find or hunt food, or do whatever was needed to survive. In modern times, our mental bandwidth is sufficient to do modern jobs, build civilization and advance human knowledge. Where things get very strange is in the presentation of the little trickle to consciousness. Discussing that step is a different discussion, but a glimpse of it as applied to politics is in the Democracy for Realists book review. This discussion focuses on the human brain operating system and the inputs and outputs it deals with and creates.
If one accepts the veracity of the science and Norretrander’s narrative, it is fair to say that the world that humans think they see is more illusion than real. Other chapters of TUI and the science behind the observations reinforce this reality of human cognition and its limits. For example, chapter 9, The Half-Second Delay, describes how our unconscious minds make decisions about 0.5 second before we become aware of what it is we have unconsciously decided. Although there's room for some disagreement about it, we consciously believe that we made a decision about 0.5 second before we became aware of it. Current data suggests that decisions can be made unconsciously about 7 to 10 seconds before we're aware of the decision. We trick ourselves. In other words, we operate under an illusion that our conscious mind makes decisions when that's the exception. The rule is that our unconscious minds are calling the shots most of the time. When it comes to perceiving reality, the low-bandwidth signal the brain uses to create a picture is a simulation that we routinely mistake for reality. As Norretranders sees it, consciousness is a fraud. That’s the user illusion.
TUI’s chapter 6, The Bandwidth of Consciousness, gets right to the heart of matters. Going there is an enlightening but humbling experience. When awake, the information flow from human sensory nerves to the brain is about 11.2 million bits per second, with the eyes bringing in about 10 million bits per second, the skin about 1 million bits per second, with the ears and nose each bringing in about 100,000 thousand bits per second. That’s a lot, right? No, it isn’t. The real world operates at unknowable trillions of gigabits/second, so what we see or perceive isn’t much. It’s puny, actually. Fortunately, humans needed only enough capacity to survive, not to know the future 10 or 100 years in advance or to see a color we can’t see through human eyes with just three different color sensing cell types (red, green, blue). For human survival, three colors was good enough. Evidence of evolutionary success is a planet population of about 7.4 billion humans that’s rapidly heading toward 8 billion.
Given that context, that 11.2 million bits/second may sound feeble but things are much weirder than just that. The 11.2 million bits/second are flowing into our unconscious minds. We are not conscious of all of that. So, what is the bandwidth of consciousness? How much of the 11.2 million bits/second we sense do we become aware of? The answer is about 1-50 bits/second. That’s the estimated rate at which human consciousness processes the information it is aware of. Silently reading this discussion consumes about 45 bits/second, reading aloud consumes about 30 bits/second, multiplying and adding two numbers consumes about 12 bits/second, counting objects consumes about 3 bits/second and distinguishing between different degrees of taste sweetness consumes about 1 bit/second.
What’s going on here??: It’s fair to ask what's really going on and why does our brain operate this way. The answer to the last question is that (i) it’s all that was needed to survive, and (ii) the laws of nature and the nature of humans, which are severely limited in data processing capacity. The human brain is large relative to body size but nonetheless only it processes information at a maximum rate of about 11.2 million bits/second, most of which we never become consciously aware of. That's human bandwidth because that’s what evolution resulted in. What’s going on is our unconscious mind taking in information at about 11.2 million bits/second, discarding or withholding from consciousness what’s not important or needed, which is about 50 bits/second or less, and then presenting the little trickle of important information to consciousness. That’s how much conscious bandwidth (consciousness) that humans needed to survive, e.g., to finagle sex, spot and run away from a hungry saber tooth cat before being eaten, find or hunt food, or do whatever was needed to survive. In modern times, our mental bandwidth is sufficient to do modern jobs, build civilization and advance human knowledge. Where things get very strange is in the presentation of the little trickle to consciousness. Discussing that step is a different discussion, but a glimpse of it as applied to politics is in the Democracy for Realists book review. This discussion focuses on the human brain operating system and the inputs and outputs it deals with and creates.
If one accepts the veracity of the science and Norretrander’s narrative, it is fair to say that the world that humans think they see is more illusion than real. Other chapters of TUI and the science behind the observations reinforce this reality of human cognition and its limits. For example, chapter 9, The Half-Second Delay, describes how our unconscious minds make decisions about 0.5 second before we become aware of what it is we have unconsciously decided. Although there's room for some disagreement about it, we consciously believe that we made a decision about 0.5 second before we became aware of it. Current data suggests that decisions can be made unconsciously about 7 to 10 seconds before we're aware of the decision. We trick ourselves. In other words, we operate under an illusion that our conscious mind makes decisions when that's the exception. The rule is that our unconscious minds are calling the shots most of the time. When it comes to perceiving reality, the low-bandwidth signal the brain uses to create a picture is a simulation that we routinely mistake for reality. As Norretranders sees it, consciousness is a fraud. That’s the user illusion.
Monday, August 6, 2018
Cognitive Science: Reason as a Secular Moral
Monday, August 6, 2018
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images
A 2016 peer-reviewed paper by psychologist Tomas Ståhl and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests that some people see reason and evidence as a secular moral issue. Those people tend to consider the rationality of another's beliefs as evidence of their morality or lack thereof.
According to the paper’s abstract: “In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. . . . Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5).” Ståhl T, Zaal MP, Skitka LJ (2016) Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166332.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166332.
According to Ståhl’s paper, “People who moralize rationality should not only respond more strongly to irrational (vs. rational) acts, but also towards the actors themselves. . . . . a central finding in the moral psychology literature is that differences in moral values and attitudes lead to intolerance. For example, the more morally convicted people are on a particular issue (i.e., the more their stance is grounded in their fundamental beliefs about what is right or wrong), the more they prefer to distance themselves socially from those who are attitudinally dissimilar.”
ScienceDaily commented on the paper: moral rationalists see less rational individuals as “less moral; prefer to distance themselves from them; and under some circumstances, even prefer them to be punished for their irrational behavior . . . . By contrast, individuals who moralized rationality judged others who were perceived as rational as more moral and worthy of praise. . . . While morality is commonly linked to religiosity and a belief in God, the current research identifies a secular moral value and how it may affect individuals' interpersonal relations and societal engagement.” ScienceDaily also noted that “in the wake of a presidential election that often kept fact-checkers busy, Ståhl (the paper’s lead researcher) says the findings would suggest a possible avenue to more productive political discourse that would encourage a culture in which it is viewed as a virtue to evaluate beliefs based on logical reasoning and the available evidence. . . . . ‘In such a climate, politicians would get credit for engaging in a rational intellectually honest argument . . . . They would also think twice before making unfounded claims, because it would be perceived as immoral.’”
Since most people believe they are mostly or always quite rational, it seems reasonable to argue that rationality is a moral issue. The finding of personal value for evidence-based rational thinking about political issues suggests it be a possible basis for a political principle or moral value in political ideology.
A 2016 peer-reviewed paper by psychologist Tomas Ståhl and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests that some people see reason and evidence as a secular moral issue. Those people tend to consider the rationality of another's beliefs as evidence of their morality or lack thereof.
According to the paper’s abstract: “In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. . . . Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5).” Ståhl T, Zaal MP, Skitka LJ (2016) Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166332.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166332.
According to Ståhl’s paper, “People who moralize rationality should not only respond more strongly to irrational (vs. rational) acts, but also towards the actors themselves. . . . . a central finding in the moral psychology literature is that differences in moral values and attitudes lead to intolerance. For example, the more morally convicted people are on a particular issue (i.e., the more their stance is grounded in their fundamental beliefs about what is right or wrong), the more they prefer to distance themselves socially from those who are attitudinally dissimilar.”
ScienceDaily commented on the paper: moral rationalists see less rational individuals as “less moral; prefer to distance themselves from them; and under some circumstances, even prefer them to be punished for their irrational behavior . . . . By contrast, individuals who moralized rationality judged others who were perceived as rational as more moral and worthy of praise. . . . While morality is commonly linked to religiosity and a belief in God, the current research identifies a secular moral value and how it may affect individuals' interpersonal relations and societal engagement.” ScienceDaily also noted that “in the wake of a presidential election that often kept fact-checkers busy, Ståhl (the paper’s lead researcher) says the findings would suggest a possible avenue to more productive political discourse that would encourage a culture in which it is viewed as a virtue to evaluate beliefs based on logical reasoning and the available evidence. . . . . ‘In such a climate, politicians would get credit for engaging in a rational intellectually honest argument . . . . They would also think twice before making unfounded claims, because it would be perceived as immoral.’”
Since most people believe they are mostly or always quite rational, it seems reasonable to argue that rationality is a moral issue. The finding of personal value for evidence-based rational thinking about political issues suggests it be a possible basis for a political principle or moral value in political ideology.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Unchangable political beliefs
Neuroscientists at the University of Southern California have published a
paper, Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political
beliefs in the face of counterevidence (Scientific
Reports, 6, No. 39589, December 2016;
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589 ), describing brain responses
to evidence that contradicts personal political beliefs. Areas of the
brain that are activated by contrary evidence include the amygdala and
insular cortex. Those areas are associated with emotion,
decision-making, threat perception and feelings of anxiety.
When self-described political liberals were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held political beliefs, the amygdala and insular cortex were more activated than when they were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held, but non-political beliefs. When asked to rate their beliefs after seeing the contrary evidence, people’s beliefs about the non-political topics decreased in strength, but they didn’t significantly change the degree of their faith in their political beliefs. The contrary evidence was five statements of fact that contradicted each of the political and non-political beliefs.
According to the paper: “People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. . . . We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD* signal [detectable brain activity] in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.”
* BOLD: blood oxygen level dependent
The amygdala are the green areas in the brain scan
The amygdala and insular cortex are brain areas associated with thinking about personal identity and abstract or deep thinking that disengages from present reality.
The paper puts the research into context: “Few things are as fundamental to human progress as our ability to arrive at a shared understanding of the world. The advancement of science depends on this, as does the accumulation of cultural knowledge in general. Every collaboration, whether in the solitude of a marriage or in a formal alliance between nations, requires that the beliefs of those involved remain open to mutual influence through conversation. Data on any topic—from climate science to epidemiology—must first be successfully communicated and <em>believed</em> before it can inform personal behavior or public policy. Viewed in this light, the inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed in turn, stands out as a problem of great societal importance. Both human knowledge and human cooperation depend upon such feats of cognitive and emotional flexibility.”
Other observations from the paper: “It is well known that people often resist changing their beliefs when directly challenged, especially when these beliefs are central to their identity. In some cases, exposure to counterevidence may even increase a person’s confidence that his or her cherished beliefs are true. . . . One model of belief maintenance holds that when confronted with counterevidence, people experience negative emotions borne of conflict between the perceived importance of their existing beliefs and the uncertainty created by the new information.”
The human mind very much dislikes uncertainty. It is extremely adept at quickly and unconsciously removing uncertainty via rationalization and just making stuff up until uncertainty goes away.
The paper raises some obvious questions. Is an inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed, a significant social problem? Is it more ethical or moral to retain one’s core beliefs, even when faced with evidence that those beliefs are factually wrong? In other words, is it better to stand on ideological or moral principle, or, is cognitive and emotional flexibility (pragmatism) a more ethical or moral mind set?
ScienceDaily also discusses this paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161223115757.htm
When self-described political liberals were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held political beliefs, the amygdala and insular cortex were more activated than when they were presented with evidence that contradicted eight strongly held, but non-political beliefs. When asked to rate their beliefs after seeing the contrary evidence, people’s beliefs about the non-political topics decreased in strength, but they didn’t significantly change the degree of their faith in their political beliefs. The contrary evidence was five statements of fact that contradicted each of the political and non-political beliefs.
According to the paper: “People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. . . . We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD* signal [detectable brain activity] in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.”
* BOLD: blood oxygen level dependent
The amygdala are the green areas in the brain scan
The amygdala and insular cortex are brain areas associated with thinking about personal identity and abstract or deep thinking that disengages from present reality.
The paper puts the research into context: “Few things are as fundamental to human progress as our ability to arrive at a shared understanding of the world. The advancement of science depends on this, as does the accumulation of cultural knowledge in general. Every collaboration, whether in the solitude of a marriage or in a formal alliance between nations, requires that the beliefs of those involved remain open to mutual influence through conversation. Data on any topic—from climate science to epidemiology—must first be successfully communicated and <em>believed</em> before it can inform personal behavior or public policy. Viewed in this light, the inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed in turn, stands out as a problem of great societal importance. Both human knowledge and human cooperation depend upon such feats of cognitive and emotional flexibility.”
Other observations from the paper: “It is well known that people often resist changing their beliefs when directly challenged, especially when these beliefs are central to their identity. In some cases, exposure to counterevidence may even increase a person’s confidence that his or her cherished beliefs are true. . . . One model of belief maintenance holds that when confronted with counterevidence, people experience negative emotions borne of conflict between the perceived importance of their existing beliefs and the uncertainty created by the new information.”
The human mind very much dislikes uncertainty. It is extremely adept at quickly and unconsciously removing uncertainty via rationalization and just making stuff up until uncertainty goes away.
The paper raises some obvious questions. Is an inability to change another person’s mind through evidence and argument, or to have one’s own mind changed, a significant social problem? Is it more ethical or moral to retain one’s core beliefs, even when faced with evidence that those beliefs are factually wrong? In other words, is it better to stand on ideological or moral principle, or, is cognitive and emotional flexibility (pragmatism) a more ethical or moral mind set?
ScienceDaily also discusses this paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161223115757.htm
Saturday, December 24, 2016
The awakening: The mainstream media and post truth politics
In the last 6 months or so, and
especially the last month, the number of references to social and cognitive
science in politics and politics-related mainstream media articles and
broadcasts seems to have skyrocketed. That’s based on the MSM sources mostly
relied on for information cited as truth here at B&B.[1] The reason behind
the new interest in the intersection between cognitive and social science with
politics is clearly being driven by the explosion of fake news and the rapid rise
of post truth politics that coincides with the rise of Donald Trump and American
populism.
If interest in the biological science
of politics is real, it’s arguably literally the best thing that has happened to
both American politics and the MSM since the founding of the Republic.
Obviously, there’s a pro-science bias behind that opinion. Maybe B&B is
seeing something that’s not there, but it sure is a convincing illusion.
Getting to the point: The clearest and most pointed and detailed acknowledgement
of the role of science in post truth politics comes from the December 22, 2016
broadcast of Warren Onley’s program To
The Point (the 51 minute podcast is here, Barbara Bogaev guest hosting for
Olney).
The program’s title is The year in (fake)
news. Some of the program’s comments and their location in the podcast are described
below.
The program is in 3 parts. The
first part is irrelevant. The second is the 32 minute core fake news broadcast (The way forward in a post-truth world) and
the last 10-minute segment, Talking point,
describes (i) some of the science behind the human mind, (ii) it’s hard wiring
to be irrational, and (iii) it’s susceptibility to fake news via social media.
0:25 to 1:00: The rise of post
truth politics coincides with the rise of the power and influence of social
media and its algorithms, which have ‘supercharged’ fake news and its potency. Fake
news has sometimes caused violence. It’s now nearly impossible for opposing
partisans to agree on facts. This new free speech technology represents a new threat
to democracy. The role of the MSM, technology companies and educators will have
in untangling the bogus from the real is unclear.
8:20-9:00: Fake news is as old as
“news itself.” What’s new is social media technology and the speed and potency
it confers on fake news. Ad sales and algorithms help spread false stories,
e.g., Trump won the popular vote.
9:35-10:48: Fake news needs to be
defined because it’s in the eye of the beholder. Despite a long fake news
pedigree, it’s now different in terms of its power and speed. The modern
version of fake news differs from old fake news by the difference in (i) it’s
degree of intensity and speed, (ii) it’s reality distorting and persuasive
power, partly due to its ability to present one plausible sounding partisan
view without a counterpoint.
10:54-12:22: Fake news is also driven
by the conflation of entertainment and news. People now have a hard
distinguishing news from entertainment. News and entertainment are now more or
less the same thing. Donald Trump is a natural result of the conflation.
13:19-13:50: One effect of fake
news is its power to portray a sustaining image of the goodness of your side
and the evil of the other side. The data indicates that the effect applies to
both sides but is more pronounced for the conservative side, led by Fox News,
than for the left, meaning that people on the right tend to be more susceptible
to fake news compared to liberals.
14:27-15:34: Cultural change is
also relevant. General distrust of the MSM has risen, especially on the right.
Since the 1950’s, conservatives have been accusing the MSM of liberal bias. Conservatives
now tend to evaluate or weigh news based on its ideology, not its objectivity. That
opens the door for fake news that fits their ideological beliefs.
15:57-16:40: Some people run fake
news web sites for ideological-political purposes and some do it for money (discussed previously).
16:48-18:00: Motivated reasoning
(a powerful unconscious fact and reason distorting bias, discussed previously),
generates (i) a susceptibility to believe what fits personal ideology and world
beliefs, and (ii) reject what doesn’t fit. That biology feeds into why people
go to and believe in the content that fake news sites generate, even if the belief
is factually wrong. This happens to both liberals and conservatives, but is more
prevalent among conservatives.
19:05-19:33: Media literacy means
being more critical and skeptical, but calibrating those responses via personal
judgment. [A point of frustration: Once again, no one has any answer to the
critical question of who to trust. Everyone keeps throwing that responsibility back
on the individual. That ask is both unreasonable and literally impossible for
most people. It’s not going to happen now, or probably ever.]
19:39-20:36: Some recent studies suggest
that students through college level have trouble with distinguishing fake from
real news stories, especially for things you really want to believe.
20:50-21:48: One danger of fake
news is that it effectively makes all news fake whether it’s fake or not. Fake news
is a real threat to all news organizations. One upside is that real news outlets
like the New York Times are seeing an uptick in subscriptions, which seems to
be a response to the rise of Trump and fake news.
The rest of the podcast continues
in this vein. Incredible as it may seem to some people, one topic touched on is
discussing why true facts matter and how easy it now is to find ‘facts’, real
or not, to support just about anything that a person wants to believe.
Footnote:
1. B&B’s most relied-on sources for
information: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The
Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, NPR, and NPR affiliate broadcasts, e.g.,
Warren Olney’s To The Point program
that’s broadcast by KCRW in Santa Monica.
Social science & mainstream politics
Central themes here at Dissident Politics include the
intractable irrationality and incoherence of politics and the lack of
impact by modern social and cognitive science on the situation. In the
wake of Donald Trump's shocking election, that just might be starting to
change. This is something worth following to see if it's temporary, like a cat coughing up a hairball, or if something new
in political thinking is beginning to coalesce into some meaningful mind
set change.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 22, 2016, Hoover Institution senior fellow John H. Cochrane sounded like he was beginning to wake up to the reality of how democracy really works in the real world. The Hoover Institution is an influential, hard core conservative think tank at Stanford University. Cochrane, an economist, was refreshingly candid about his learning moments:
“I have learned some deep lessons from this election and especially its aftermath. Like most policy-wonk types I supposed that people care about policies, and about results, and vote accordingly. And are amenable to sensible discussion about policy, and sensible negotiation. . . . What has become very clear to me since the election is a fact probably blindingly obvious to real students of politics—that’s not at all how it works. Most people vote by cultural affinity, brand, values, and a sense of personal identity. To the extent policy matters at all, it’s part of the buzzwords, propaganda and tag lines thrown back and forth. These things are related to where you live and who you interact with on a regular basis, which is why geographic polarization is such a problem—and why measures like the electoral college, which push our democracy to have more even representation of tribal and partisan alignments and identities are so important.”
That’s an indication that what social and cognitive science, including political science, have been saying about politics and how it works is beginning to sink in with at least some members the punditocracy. Those folks are serious and principled about reality-based democracy and rationality.
Of course, pundits who are in it to win at all costs have been aware of the science for decades. They successfully used the knowledge to deceive and manipulate to get what they want. In 2016, that crass class of players finally got what they have been angling for. They have created the new world of post truth politics that’s now threatening American democracy and other Western liberal democracies. For that crowd, truth is irrelevant. Winning is everything. Deceit and lies are key ingredients.
What’s new is that some principled pundits and members of the mainstream media are beginning to wake up to the threat. A period of trial and error to figure out how to deal with the lies and deceit has started. Depending on which side of the truth you’re on, that’s either good or bad.
All of that raises some questions. Are we really in a new era of post truth politics, or has it always been post truth? Does the situation seem different only because of the rise of fake news sites and sources? Or, is it meaningfully different because social media and online propaganda sources have risen in influence? Or, is post truth politics nothing to be concerned with since lies and deceit in politics are constitutionally protected free speech?
Southern Steenbok
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 22, 2016, Hoover Institution senior fellow John H. Cochrane sounded like he was beginning to wake up to the reality of how democracy really works in the real world. The Hoover Institution is an influential, hard core conservative think tank at Stanford University. Cochrane, an economist, was refreshingly candid about his learning moments:
“I have learned some deep lessons from this election and especially its aftermath. Like most policy-wonk types I supposed that people care about policies, and about results, and vote accordingly. And are amenable to sensible discussion about policy, and sensible negotiation. . . . What has become very clear to me since the election is a fact probably blindingly obvious to real students of politics—that’s not at all how it works. Most people vote by cultural affinity, brand, values, and a sense of personal identity. To the extent policy matters at all, it’s part of the buzzwords, propaganda and tag lines thrown back and forth. These things are related to where you live and who you interact with on a regular basis, which is why geographic polarization is such a problem—and why measures like the electoral college, which push our democracy to have more even representation of tribal and partisan alignments and identities are so important.”
That’s an indication that what social and cognitive science, including political science, have been saying about politics and how it works is beginning to sink in with at least some members the punditocracy. Those folks are serious and principled about reality-based democracy and rationality.
Of course, pundits who are in it to win at all costs have been aware of the science for decades. They successfully used the knowledge to deceive and manipulate to get what they want. In 2016, that crass class of players finally got what they have been angling for. They have created the new world of post truth politics that’s now threatening American democracy and other Western liberal democracies. For that crowd, truth is irrelevant. Winning is everything. Deceit and lies are key ingredients.
What’s new is that some principled pundits and members of the mainstream media are beginning to wake up to the threat. A period of trial and error to figure out how to deal with the lies and deceit has started. Depending on which side of the truth you’re on, that’s either good or bad.
All of that raises some questions. Are we really in a new era of post truth politics, or has it always been post truth? Does the situation seem different only because of the rise of fake news sites and sources? Or, is it meaningfully different because social media and online propaganda sources have risen in influence? Or, is post truth politics nothing to be concerned with since lies and deceit in politics are constitutionally protected free speech?
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