How liars create the ‘illusion of truth’
bbc.com
bbc.com
Someone really should drill this into the head of every reporter and journalism student. Talking points put forward by political campaigns and special interest groups, if they are untrue or deliberately misleading, should not be given air time. Simply parroting such false statements does a grave disservice to society.
The simplest explanation is that "scoops" (being the first with a story) is more valuable than being second, so there is tremendous pressure to publish first. As your competitors (who are often lay journalists on the Internet) may have a lower standard of proof than you do, you risk being scooped if you are to stingy with your fact checking.
But the Internet is perhaps a much bigger problem in this regard. It is perceived as journalism while it may be either opinion, commercial speech, or simply hate speech. My Dad will tell me something is true and refer to a half dozen blogs that he reads which all say something is true (my favorite was that half the population of LA was illegal aliens). That is a statement which can be generally challenged on its face but it can also be challenged analytically by looking at the tax base for LA county, not to mention Census records vs available housing. The challenge though was that "every source he checked" said it was true, and they all got their bogus information from probably the same original source what ever that was.
As a result, while I think it is drilled into the heads of journalism students and reporters, it is not the standard operating mode of many more bloggers and vloggers, and as a result we get pounded by falsehoods if we aren't critical in our information sources.
I think the internet has been a massively positive thing for news in general, as it so quickly allows people to do rapid fact checking, get access to contrary opinions, see comments on the articles and so on. If your dad doesn't do those things he probably wouldn't have been more informed before the internet, he'd have just quoted you other one-sided sources too. Fact checking things you want to believe in takes discipline and commitment, it isn't something that was broken by the internet.
Crazy stuff existed, but in not easily accessible forums to the average joe.
Or the role of newspapers like the Boston Gazette during the lead up to the American Revolution, that mostly served to turn the populace against English rule.
Or the mass publication of seditious libels during Restoration England. If you want to talk about whacked-out conspiracy theories, you should see what was published in the 1660s through the 1680s. Popish Plot anyone?
The idea that journalists should be unbiased is a very, very modern one.
We've essentially returned to 18th century quality, except with pictures and video now.
No, the "both sides" thing and lack of fact checking is absolutely nothing new. It's a fear of being accused of bias, plus some sheer laziness.
On balance, I think the internet has been a hugely positive force for getting real information and marginalized views out there. Of course it can be misused, but some people are just going to choose to believe insane things and nothing can really be done to stop that.
This is a false dichotomy. What we get from CNN, NYT, FOX, WAPO is opinion, PR, and better veiled hate speech.
Supposed "fact checking" has become a major new weapon in the 2016 presidential fight. It has been horrifically bad. The favored team gets away with sarcasm, hyperbole, fuzzy matters of opinion, "oops I misspoke", jokes, and anything that can't be definitively proven beyond a doubt to be intentionally false. The disfavored team gets none of that leeway. When the favored team wrongly says "X, Y, and Z are so" it's counted as 1 lie, but it's 3 lies if the disfavored team says it.
Stupid literalism: https://heavyeditorial.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/cover32.j...
Inconsistent standards: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvNnfq2XgAQqE4T.jpg
(Real fact-checks, random Internet image storage.)
And Politifact once vouched for the statement "if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan", before recanting and calling it the Lie of the Year.
Fact checking for your stories at a paper is the essence of responsibility, but as a publishing genre in its own right it's mostly opinion journalism trying to give itself an imprimatur of impeccability.
The articles themselves are often good, but in aggregate they reflect a lot of bias.
The same applies all the way up the chain, from infowars to huffpo to the NYT.
The same thing happened before (the yellow press era) and, hopefully, it will run its course but right now, only the maximally sharable posts survive.
As an aside, I subscribe to a couple of online news outlets, one of which is mixed subscriber/ad supported. I wish that I, as a subscriber, could see more informational/less sensational headlines as a benefit of being a subscriber.
Papers like the Wall Street Journal want your subscription dollars, not your page views. They can access those by maintaining a reputation for quality. It's a nice stable revenue stream, too.
(I suppose it also helps that they cover things other outlets often don't, like international business news.)
The reason we don't get that as much in the US is that a lot of journalism is modeled on the wire service piece, which is meant as generic copy that almost any newspaper can reprint. It's what journalism prof Jay Rosen calls "The View From Nowhere".
One important distinction, also mostly lost on American journalism, is that viewpoint is different than bias. It's easier to see in the foreign press, though. The Economist, for example, has a very clear viewpoint, but they visibly work hard not to be biased.
For example, I can give novice programmers a reasonably unbiased overview of the strengths and weaknesses of various programming languages, even ones I don't favor myself. I can also talk happily about the flaws in the languages I personally prefer.
I see people do this pretty often with things like cities they've lived in, restaurants, books, and movies. Anybody who works at it a bit can do it. You just have to be able to distance yourself a bit from your preferences, to learn how to make an intellectual case that cuts against your biases.
So yeah, I've read The Economist for something like 30 years, and I think they do a good job of having a strong viewpoint without skewing their coverage much because of it. In particular, I think they keep their opinion-y activities well contained in the leaders and regular columns. The news still has a fair bit of viewpoint (e.g., numerical, humanistic, skeptical, and, well, economics-focused), but rarely do I find them shading the facts or juggling the numbers to force an outcome, which is what I mean by bias.
Do you think TE will write an article focused on crazy things said by leaders of the EU? Never in a million years. They will happily devote large amounts of coverage to statements by politicians they disagree with, however.
I also think "crazy things said by leaders of the EU" is an odd thing to ask for, as it is basically asking them to import your bias as to what's "crazy". I certainly see them printing things from EU leaders that I'd call crazy, if that helps. I also wouldn't call them deferential toward anybody; they're on average quite skeptical of politicians' claims.
I note that you didn't answer my question. Maybe you could? And let me ask another: you only respond here on a relatively small set of stories. Is that because you are biased? Or just because you have a viewpoint?
The TE has, I think, become worse under the new editor. It used to be better. A simple example of what I'm talking about is this:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21708680-smooth-brexit...
The article argues that Britain is being "boorish" towards the EU and doesn't understand its neighbours. It quotes Hollande:
in recent days François Hollande, Jean-Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel have all expressed concern at the noises wafting across the sea. “There must be a price,” the French president told a European gathering in Paris on October 6th.
But they are engaged in extremely selective quoting. The full Hollande quote is "There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price" which makes the EU sound significantly worse: what kind of supposed allies state flat out that they must threaten countries that leave? It makes the EU sound like some sort of mafia. Other news outlets reported the full quote but The Economist did not. They chose to slice out the worst sounding parts entirely in order to push their article's viewpoint: UK bad, Europe good.
I wouldn't trust a single thing I read in the modern TE about the EU, immigration or Russia. On topics the editor cares about they're just a more intellectual sounding version of Fox News.
The idea that there's no difference is poisonous to dialog and, ultimately, democracy. If all statements due to differences in viewpoint can be invalidated as biased, then there's no reason to talk to or learn from people with different viewpoints. All verbal interaction in that view becomes rhetorical combat.
If, on the other hand, we all come from different viewpoints but can overcome (or at least usefully manage) our biases, then dialog is how we work out a common understanding.
For example, as a youth I had no interest in team sports. American culture, though, crams team sports down your throats. It's just assumed that you'll be a partisan for some team, and you're treated as weird/defective if you don't. This was irritating to me, and eventually I developed a deep bias against all of it.
Older, and having lived for years among nerds, I still maintain my viewpoint: I have no interest in team sports. I still agree with this:
But because nobody's been a dick to me about this for years, and because I've become friends with people who do love sports, I've mostly lost my bias. I no longer bristle when the topic comes up. I can give a reasonable accounting of why sports fans love sports, and I can give a balanced list of the social costs and benefits. I still have a mild bias against the topic, but can recognize and override it.
The next-biggest use for me is evaluating other people as sources. I'm more likely to trust somebody if they display awareness of their biases, and especially if they're able to say nuanced things that at times cut against those biases. Because if they aren't wrestling with their own biases, they've outsourced the job to me.
Is that helpful? If not, try asking some sort of question, because you've left me just guessing at your objections here.
The reason they have different connotations is because twisting the facts is considered bad and having an opinion is not.
But as you say, that doesn't mean you have to twist the facts.
For example, his latest piece discusses areas where political coverage should not be neutral:
http://pressthink.org/2016/10/campaign-press-not-neutral-tow...
Saying, e.g., that they should be for deliberation and voter participation, while being against opacity and demagoguery.
And I strongly recommend his critiques of the View from Nowhere. E.g.: http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-question...
Are the extra voters brought into the process as informed as the voters that sought out participation with no outside push?
But my take is that yes, it's still clear cut. Becoming informed doesn't happen in a vacuum. I wasn't particularly informed when I started voting at 18. But being a regular voter and wanting to do it well has forced a lot of my activity around getting and staying informed.
Democracies are dynamic processes. We're always absorbing new, underinformed voters and turning them into better ones. If some potential voters are underinformed, the solution isn't to discourage them from voting; it's to educate them. And journalists are in the business of informing, so I think Rosen reasonably leaves out here that journalists are already openly in favor of informing voters.
For instance, you can mock vote, and then see whether that politician lives up to your expectations over some period of time.
As an example, they could just not talk about the people harmed by free trade. But quite often they do. Consequently, their editorial pieces regularly recommend taxing those who win on trade deals to help retrain those who lose their jobs.
They don't always succeed at being biased, but I think they do a better job precisely because they're explicit about their viewpoint. I prefer this to American "view from nowhere" journalism, where the effort to subtract viewpoint makes it harder to discern and excise bias.
It still manifestly fails in this on repeated occasions (virtually anything associated with limits, though that may be changing). I'd read the magazine for some decades before running across the prospectus itself, here, by the way:
http://www.economist.com/node/1873493
Which lays out that a paper called The Economist to be published "which will contain":
_First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day—political events—and parliamentary discussions; and particularly to all such as relate immediately to revenue, commerce, and agriculture; or otherwise affect the material interests of the country._
Long before this I'd noted that the slant of the leaders was often directly contradicted by the companion full stories further back in the magazine, most especially from foreign correspondents in developing countries -- India, China, and the various African states particularly.
Again: there are some grounds on which to consider The Economist fairly good, and its companion The Financial Times as well. Simply on a criterion of mentioning substantial figures, both rate quite highly amongst mainstream periodicals, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...
My view is that the paper has a specific bias and that that should be considered. In particular, it results in an inaccurate framing for economic and policy issues.
People in dissonance will attempt to spread the dissonance and will resist any attempts to break it. I've seen people bounce between two opposing beliefs in a matter of seconds and rationalize the whole thing as if it made perfect sense. The only way to "fix" this behavior in someone is to double bind them and then let it be - walk away from the dissonance least it spread to you. Pushing too hard on the dissonance will cause it to blame you directly for calling attention to it.
Journalists seem to be going extinct.
Journalism students are notoriously biased.
Then there is the matter of clear logical thinking... look, they didn't get computer science degrees and there could be a reason why.
My guess is either this process selects for journalists with the "right" views, or journalists themselves adapt their writing to keep their job (probably the latter).
It's more the fault of the lead editors than the reporters. They're the ones who put the time pressure on (which means fact checking is often impractical) and they're the ones who deliberately introduce editorial slants.
Hyperbole and sensationalism isn't driven solely by demand either, it's also driven by risk aversion. There's a high demand for thoughtful, well researched journalism, but the market demand often isn't fulfilled because that kind of journalism involves high up front investment and is risky whereas human interest stories and cats are cheap to churn out and their effect is consistent.
How about every citizen? If you want to know what an echo chamber looks like, it's us. We get the journalism we deserve.
Censorship is never the answer.
That is not a known falsehood. It is just speculation.
Myth: Student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy.
Truth: Student loans are dischargable in bankruptcy, albeit at a higher standard than other personal debts.
Now the myth, or what one might call the propaganda, is generally attributable student loan debt holders who don't want debtors knowing and worse availing themselves to their rights. However, what I find most odd is the myth/propaganda is now actually perpetuated more by people who know the truth but want student loan reforms. For example, they will generally ignore the ability to discharge student loans in bankruptcy at all or other methods of forgiveness such as "total and permenant disability". Also I notice when confronted with the truth they perpetuate the myth by exaggerating how many people actually qualify for relief.
So while it's not technically true, the ability to discharge student loans is such an edge case, saying they're nondishargeable is effectively true.
A 2011 study found only 0.1% of student debtors in bankruptcy even apply for discharge of student loans. Yet of that self-selecting group, 40% were successful. The question is why more don't apply for discharge, and how successful they might be.
Regardless, this does show that "student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy" is generally true, given a discharge rate of only 0.04%.
Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1894445
Iuliano, Jason. "An Empirical Assessment of Student Loan Discharges and the Undue Hardship Standard." Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Department of Politics. July 24, 2011. 86 American Bankruptcy Law Journal 495 (2012)
I'm guessing that upon release, your friend would be (have been) an outstanding candidate for being able to discharge the loans (and penalties and interest) through a bankruptcy proceeding.
Maybe a substantial number did the research and determined they weren't eligible?
>Maybe a substantial number did the research and determined they weren't eligible?
Everyone is "eligible" to argue that student loans are a substantial hardship and have the Court rule. Odds are the legitimate bankruptcy candidate can likely show hardship of significant crushing student loans. Moreover, there is no reason 100% of bankruptcy petitioners without student loans shouldn't list them.
Cost, time and effort can be reasons, surely?
E.g. if my loans are $50k, and I or my lawyer think that the odds of getting them eliminated are <1%, then based on the expected value, I should spend less than $500 of time and effort on it.
Leaving the probability aside, this assumes that expected values of money are linear. The negative value of debt grows faster than linear; a debt of $50000 is not exactly 10 times worse than a debt of $5000, if you can arrange your finances to pay the $5000 but could never successfully pay $50000 (for instance if the amount you can afford to pay down regularly would cover a large part of the principle on the former but almost entirely interest on the latter).
I think maybe your hypothetical is assuming the cost/benefit of a bankruptcy purely for a student loan as opposed to multiple debts, and I am addressing my desire to see 100% of those already filing bankruptcies to list student loans, and as you will see another comment listed the statistics, it is a tiny percentage of filers who list student loans, but of those who do nearly 40% are successful.
Generally the goal was to stay ten years with no payments so the loan would be dropped and removed from your credit score
This is all from ~5 minutes of research though, so take with salt as appropriate.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/k3/priming_and_contamination/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4/do_we_believe_everything_were_tol...
You learn that with camp fire based games like Mafia/Werewolf
He also helped spreading the lie that helped CIA overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan president [2].
[1] http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-...
Bernays' books are avaialble via the Internet Archive. Fascinating reading.
Certain things you will just naturally want to believe more often. For example, people are more likely to believe something fearful. Or something that feeds the ego. Or something that reinforces an existing belief. But the opposite of those things might not influence the person.
The illusion of truth is just a heuristic. It's probably how we learn everything as children. We hear things and every time we hear them they are reinforced. Teaching someone that something they've learned is wrong is incredibly difficult.
as an example, instead of saying "people will move away from the coasts once the sea levels rise due to climate change" i'll just start with "once everyone has moved away from the coasts etc"
usually people need some clarification.
"Contains 100% juice" - This one is clever, and true, albeit that the product probably only contains 3% of actual 100% juice.
"Packed in x" - Packed in x, sure. But in smaller print, Product of y.
"Cholesterol Free" - Thanks. I was terribly worried that my non-animal product contained some despite it not being an animal.
"Made from: pure a" displayed prominently on front label, while ingredients read: b,c,d,e,f,...etc, etc.
"No added growth hormones" - Clearly there's little point anyway, in adding hormones to a chicken breast or hotdog.
- fairtrade - organic - gluten free - suitable for vegans - kosher - halal
Now, I like the first one (and maybe the second one), 3 and 4 are just what I would expect from a product that, according to its ingredients, is just tea leaves. I feel that 5 and 6 are simply taking the piss.
https://www.bigelowtea.com/Special-Pages/Customer-Service/FA...
And there are non-gluten-free teas, they have barley malt, or roasted barley in them.
For example the same packaging line might have been used for something else that was not kosher. Or a flavoring might have a non kosher ingredient (or more likely, could be kosher, but manufactured on a line that also does non-kosher items).
-- conjecture below, 0 facts contained --
Grape juice is (I believe) made from different types of grapes than raisins are, so it wouldn't make sense to call it "raisin juice" because you would never make raisins from those grapes.
> Canned prune juice is the food prepared from a water extract of dried prunes and contains not less than 18.5 percent by weight of water-soluble solids extracted from dried prunes.
See: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRS...
I mean, the story isn't about liars at all. It implies some sort of insight about the workings of a liar's psyche or their methods, schemes, etc. But instead it's about how repetition affects our perception of truth, and the article (as well as common knowledge) is very clear about how it doesn't matter whether this repetition comes from a singular intentional actor (a liar), or if you get the statement repeatedly from a variety of sources. It even nearly admits as much by hand-waving that of course liars have many other, stronger, methods of manipulation but we're not going to cover any those.
A more honest title would be "How repetition creates the illusion of truth".
But then nobody would click that because people would think "um yeah, cool I already know that". And they'd be right.
Tying into this, are the rather bold and hard-to-believe claims made initially by the BBC article (as opposed to the research):
"people tend to rate items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not"
"[the] effect worked just as strongly for known as for unknown items"
"For statements that were actually fact or fiction, known or unknown, repetition made them all seem more believable."
Only to, in the second half, completely contradict these claims:
"What Fazio and colleagues actually found, is that the biggest influence on whether a statement was judged to be true was... whether it actually was true. The repetition effect couldn’t mask the truth. With or without repetition, people were still more likely to believe the actual facts as opposed to the lies."
Wait, what? You just spent half the article boldly claiming pretty much the opposite, and then surprise! If you found the earlier claims hard to believe, it's because they weren't actually what the research found at all! You don't say!
We'll have a nice and intelligent discussion thread about it on HN, sure, it's what we do, but c'mon the article itself is garbage.