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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

I'm a former journalist, and one of the mistakes I often see people make is to either give too much or not enough credence to whether the facts in a news story (or op-ed) are true.

Obviously, if you disregard objective facts because they defy your assumptions or hurt your argument, you're deluding yourself.

But an argument that uses objectively true and verifiable facts may nevertheless be invalid (i.e. it's possible that the premises might be true but the conclusion false). Similarly, a news story might be entirely factual but still biased. And in software terms, your unit tests might be fine, but your integration tests still fail.

So here's what I tell people:

Fact checking is like spell check. You know what's great about spell check? It can tell me that I've misspeled two words in this sentance. But it will knot alert me too homophones. And even if my spell checker also checks grammar, I might construct a sentence that is entirely grammatical but lets the bathtub build my dark tonsils rapidly, and it will appear error-free.

Similarly, you can write an article in which all of the factual assertions are true but irrelevant to the point at hand. Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they're cherry-picked to support a particular bias. And some assertions are particularly hard to fact-check because even the means of verifying them is disputed.

So while fact checking can be useful, it can also be misused, and we need to keep in mind its limitations.

In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat's postage.

View on HN

> Fact checking is like spell check.

No it's not. Spell checking relies on very precise rules. Fact checking relies on assessing context and, more often than not, the speaker's intention.

For example, let's take the statement "There are 300 million people in the US". Is this false? Well, it depends where I'm going with it.

If I was only relying on the figure as an approximation, I can say something like "therefore deaths from terrorism only affect 0.0x%, which is not something we should worry a lot about". This is obviously a factually valid argument, even though you might disagree with the conclusion b/c you think other facts are more relevant etc.

On the other hand, my argument can also be "and there were 300 million in 2007, therefore the population has been stagnant and we need to do something about it". This is factually quite false, since the population has in fact increased by ~18M.

Now should the original statement "there are 300 million people in the US" be rated true or false? A hostile fact checker may rate the first instance false, since there are actually 318+ million. A friendly fact checker will rate the second instance true b/c I obviously meant the rate of growth was low by historical standards etc.

I think this all a little besides the point and a bit of a red herring. The analogy, which is quite apt in this case (you can have fact-checking and something that is still overall misleading), much like how a spell/grammar-checker can ensure you have correct spelling & grammar and still a flawed sentence.

Your comment seems to nitpick at the flaws in the analogy rather than the issue itself. No analogy is going to be perfect at describing something and will break down under enough scrutiny.

You can put spell checking into an algorithm. You can't reduce fact checking to an algorithm. How is this besides the point? The algorithm they have is "whatever websites X, Y and Z say".

He's not talking about the process of fact checking, like you are. OP was using the analogy to say fact checking is not enough.

Here it is slightly different: just because you spell check a sentence doesn't mean it is grammatically correct. Just like: just because you fact check a document doesn't mean it is without bias.

Both are necessary but not sufficient conditions.

Remember, we're talking about Google introducing fact checking. In this context, "fact checking is not enough" is a very different position from "fact checking is subjective".

> Remember, we're talking about Google introducing fact checking

Exactly. And he is saying that even if Google's fact checking works, it still doesn't equate to the piece begin unbiased or truth,

Even more simply said again: You can lie with the true.

Fact checking isn't subjective, though. You either do fact-checking or you don't. If you do fact-checking, you're either checking if the statement is factually correct or not. There is no real in-between and no real "this is true because I think it is."

At least from a human perspective. You're right in raising the concern that from a machine perspective this is hard to achieve, but again that's a red herring to the OP.

> You can't reduce fact checking to an algorithm.

Can you elaborate on why you think fact-checking is beyond the capability of machines?

At some point the machine fact-checking relies on data input by humans. Or does the machine interpret data directly from cameras on the street to determine, e.g. that suspect A shot victim B with weapon C? Does it interpret a historical textbook and assess the veracity of its sources and claims? Or does it build a time machine to go into the past and acquire raw data to verify claimed facts?

Thanks for elaborating.

> At some point the machine fact-checking relies on data input by humans.

But so does nearly every ML model? In the case of a spell checker it is using corpora made by humans. If the majority of humans start spelling words differently, then facts about the correct spellings change with them.

> Or does the machine interpret data directly from cameras on the street to determine, e.g. that suspect A shot victim B with weapon C?

If the military gets their way this will happen sooner than later. It is not technically infeasible to do activity detection from drone footage.

> Does it interpret a historical textbook and assess the veracity of its sources and claims?

Yes. Just like a journalist would when fact checking an article about WWII.

> Or does it build a time machine to go into the past and acquire raw data to verify claimed facts?

Raw data is both an oxymoron and a bad idea. Data is brought into existence by human-made measuring devices.

It is color? Or colour? Should my English dictionary include "haiku"? What about "teriyaki"? "Shamisen"? Is it "Internet" or "internet"?

---

Everything has some wiggle room, but both fact checking and spell checking rely on precise rules to a great exent. You just have to recognize when something is really an opinion. Many things on Politifact, etc. are inferences and conclusions composed of facts, but not facts themselves.

"Aaron Burr was vice-president of the US in 1803." Fact.

"The Sun convert light elements to heavier ones via fusion." Fact.

"It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California." Falsehood.

"The US is in an economic depression." Too vague, can't be fact checked.

"The US has lower unemployment than in 2010, and higher unemployment than in 2000." Fact.

> "The US has lower unemployment than in 2010, and higher unemployment than in 2000." Fact.

Define "unemployment." Our labor force participation rate is down from 2010: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/563caf319dd7ccfc418....

I use "unemployment" in the way it is always used.

If I meant "labor participation" (a very good measure too), I would have said that.

"They way it is always used"

Dude. We're trying to talk about things in an absolutely neutral and objective way and you come up with that sentence? How can anyone ever prove what definition is "always used"???

The "unemployment rate" is a specific number produced by the government. Whether it's useful or accurate compared to other numbers (e.g. labor participation rate) is another matter.

Which of the several differently defined ways it is always used?

Take the definition that is given by the relevant government agency, which is the BLS's U-3 measure. (Now you might argue that U-6 is also a valid measure etc etc, but only a Breitbart writer or somebody willfully ignorant would confound unemployment with labour force participation.)

It's completely irrational to exclude "the percentage of people who aren't employed" from the set of possible definitions of "unemployment." Each of the various measures of unemployment captures meaningful information about the economy.

Labor force participation rate lets you look at important trends in the economy. For example, labor force participation went way up when barriers to women entering the work place were removed. Women didn't want to all be stay-at-home moms, but the economy didn't offer them any other opportunities. These days, drastically more of the population is going to post-secondary education, which tends to drive down the labor force participation rate. But that's really a paradoxical phenomenon when you think about it, because at the same time, the costs of such education are skyrocketing. Why do people eat the cost (including the opportunity cost) of going to college? Is it because of the love of learning? No, it's because the economy doesn't offer them alternatives.

Of course you can't count every student or retiree or stay at home mom as unemployed. Many don't want to be working. But it's equally irrational to assume (as the BLS does), that none of them want to be working.

Paul Krugman on U6:

"Again, this could clearly deviate from the Platonic ideal, but it’s a reasonable stab at the problem."

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/there-is-no-tru...

That last one about unemployment isn't from the realm of checkable facts because the data are vast enough to be difficult to verify, and because the definition of unemployment isn't settled or universally agreed. And you can't rely on government figures to overcome the first problem, because of the second. ("Official" definitions of unemployment are swayed by political motivations and are known to under-report certain kinds of unemployment that legitimately should be counted.)

An alternative way of doing this might be to annotate the story with which measures of unemployment the speaker must be talking about.

This is pretty naive. Do you think Google is now cross-checking news stories with the encyclopedia entries on vice presidents and nuclear fusion? Please go to factcheck.org, which is what they'll actually use. They're dealing with stuff that's almost exclusively like your item #4, and they'll definitely give it ratings. #3 and #5 are also much more open to argument than you want to admit here.

>"It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California." Falsehood.

...it looks like your bot didn't consult Wikipedia, which states otherwise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California#Open_ca...

...of course I'm not a lawyer and I wouldn't trust wikipedia for keeping me out of jail.

Wikipedia isn't a source of facts, but if you read your own link, you will learn that open carry used to be permitted, but since 2012 open carry of all firearms, loaded or unloaded, is prohibited.

"No license or permit is required to openly carry a loaded firearm in unincorporated areas where discharge is not prohibited by local ordinance."

...Maybe every county has adopted local ordinances prohibiting open carry in unincorporated areas?

"Prior to January 1, 2012, it was legal to openly carry an unloaded handgun in public. In October 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that modifies the law on openly carrying an unloaded firearm to match the restrictions for openly carrying a loaded weapon.[63] Legislation was later signed by Governor Brown to expand these restrictions to long guns and shotguns, except while hunting."

This seems to be making the law for unloaded carry the same for loaded carry, and doesn't address the legality of loaded carry.

> "It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California." Falsehood.

Except that it is true. Well, "licensed gun owner" isn't actually a thing at all (licenses aren't needed to own guns), but the natural interpretation of it as "gun owner who also has an appropriate license" makes the statement true, it's just that there are only limited places in California where you can be appropriately licensed for open carry of handguns (counties with a population under 200,000.)

Sorry, but that is factually incorrect.

"licensed gun owner to open-carry in California", as I read it, is "a gun owner licensed to open-carry in California".

Regardless, you can't get a license to open carry in California, as no such license exists, and open carry is illegal in California under California Penal Code Section 26350[1]. So, you may be able to legally carry a firearm in California, but unless you're a law enforcement, you may not carry openly. This has been adjudicated in court in Peruta v. San Diego[2], and the courts found that an outright ban on open carry for the citizenry comported with the second amendment.

So, as a private citizen, you might be able to carry a firearm, but you would have to do so in a concealed fashion, and only after being licensed to do so. In order to obtain a license, you have to apply with your county sheriff, they have to evaluate whether you are of good moral character, whether you have a legitimate reason for carrying a firearm, that you have completed 16+ hours of training, and that you are a resident of their county. Noting that 'self defense' is not a valid reason for issuance, most applications are denied, though that undoubtedly varies from county to county.

[1] - http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection...

[2] - https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/content/view.php?pk_id=00000007...

Your link [1] seems to be concerned exclusively with handguns. I see that there is still hunting that takes place in California:

https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting

...someone can correct me if it is limited to archery, or if you can only hunt with a "concealed" long gun or shotgun in the state of California.

A fantastic rebuttal, and you're probably correct. I don't know what it means in the wake of Peruta, but your probably correct for firearms (like rifles, shotguns) that aren't capable of being concealed.

Note though that the parent refers specifically to handguns. Regardless, thanks for the addition/correction.

>Note though that the parent refers specifically to handguns.

Also there are limitations on the locations where open-carry of unloaded handguns aren't allowed. Specifically, [1] states those locations as:

    (A) A public place or public street in an incorporated city or city and county.
    (B) A public street in a prohibited area of an unincorporated area of a county or city and county.
    (C) A public place in a prohibited area of a county or city and county.

...it would seem like you could open carry unloaded handguns in unincorporated counties where it isn't specifically prohibited. Are their any of those places in California? National Forest areas would be one area I'd first look at. A google search comes up with unincorporated areas:

https://www.google.com/search?q=unincorporated+areas+of+cali...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unincorporated_commun...

...in fact it appears there there are no incorporated cities in Alpine County:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_County,_California

...but of course there could be other regulations that prohibit open carry of handguns in those areas.

Is hunting with a handgun illegal in California?

> Regardless, you can't get a license to open carry in California, as no such license exists

Open carry licenses do exist, and you can get them, from the Sheriff of a County with population under 200,000; see Penal Code section 26150(b)(2).

> and open carry is illegal in California under California Penal Code Section 26350

26350 applies to unloaded firearms, and there are a whole slew of exceptions to it in sections 26361-26391, including, most critically, an exception for anyone permitted to openly carry a loaded firearm on the same circumstances (Section 26362) Which includes, naturally, people with open carry permits as described above. (see Section 26010)

Rather than linking each individual section mentioned above, I'll just link the Table of Contents for Division 5 of Title 4 of Part 6 the Penal Code, which covers all of them.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayexpande...

>Open carry licenses do exist, and you can get them, from the Sheriff of a County with population under 200,000;

It looks like the 30 California counties with population of less than 200,000 have a combined land area of 73,063 square miles, while the 27 counties with populations over 200,000 have a combined land area of 83,022 square miles. So about 47% of the state is composed of counties with a population less than 200,000.

There's either an error in one of the counts or a county left out somewhere in there, because California has 58, not 57, counties, but it probably doesn't change the percentage of land area much either way.

Good catch. I apparently was off by one in counting the over 200,000 population counties, but there are actually 28 counties in my spreadsheet, so the area should be correct (but someone might want to double check anyway).

> "The Sun convert light elements to heavier ones via fusion." Fact.

Do we have proof of that? Honest layman question.

Er... yes? That's how stars work. What is the alternative explanation?

The alternative explanation is that God created stars. And that He did it such that they seem to create heavier elements through fusion. But that's just an illusion. Because, you know, the Universe is only 5000 years old.

And that alternative will pass fact checking, unless they exclude literal readings of the Bible.

Seems to me that the question of how stars function is completely separate from the question of how they and the matter in the universe came to exist.

> And that He did it such that they seem to create heavier elements through fusion. But that's just an illusion.

[citation needed] ;)

I'm extrapolating there, based on arguments I've read about geology and evolution.

Why would you include religious texts in a fact checking process unless the subject is religion?

OK, so I picked an extreme example.

But as others have pointed out, choosing accepted fact checkers is subjective and contentious. Do we then need fact checkers about fact checkers?

Many claims have moved from conspiracy theory to fact in recent decades. Now there's a class-action case about CIA experiments with LSD, and the principal investigator will testify. Before Snowden's leaks, how many people thought that the NSA was intercepting so much stuff? Consider allegations about using poor people to study effects of terminal syphilis, measure Pu excretion rates for body-burden calculations, or look at symptoms of lethal full-body irradiation. Which of those (if any) are unconfirmed conspiracy theories?

Because some people believe them to be the ground truth? Any "fact" that contradicts their understanding of their favourite religious passage is obviously fake news. Dinosaurs? Fake. Evolution? Blasphemy. Round Earth? Idiocy...

You can do spectroscopy on the light emitted from stars and see what elements it's made of.

This, combined with our understanding of physics, both offer overwhelming support for the notion that stars are powered by nuclear fusion.

> support for the notion

So it's a theory, not a proven "fact." Can we know for 100% sure before we replicate a sun and see the expected behavior and output?

I'm just taking issue with the liberal use of the word "fact" in my comment's parent. It seems to have become as diluted as "literally."

Curious you drop the adjective "overwhelming" in your quote and confuse scientific theory with hypothesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory "In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand and either provide empirical support ("verify") or empirically contradict ("falsify") it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word "theory" that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which is better characterized by the word 'hypothesis')."

Seems like a fair point to me. If science is really about reproducibility, then this is a fair question. How can we say with absolute certainty until we run a falsifiable experiment?

Note that I'm not disputing our understanding of how stars work. The point is whether our understanding is based on reproducibility.

With that definition of fact, very very few facts actually exist at all.

Fact. Bears eat beets.

...Battlestar Galactica

Spell checking is distance between a word and the closest word in a set. But it's not like the set of allowable spellings for words is well-defined. You generally choose a dictionary (or /usr/dict/words) and call that canonical-enough. Which dictionary you use, and whether your spelling is actually a better choice for your context than what the dictionary says aren't generally considered. Even though they do fuzz the idea of what's properly spelled.

EDIT: I'm not trolling or trying to start a flame war on spellers. Just point out that almost every part of human life has some subjectivity to it.

> Spell checking is distance between a word and the closest word in a set

No, distance metrics might be used for suggested corrections, but spellchecking is just "is the word in the accepted list".

Note that for many languages there is an institution (often governmental) that decides what the grammar should be like, and which constructions are allowed. That English has many different language authorities, each with their own opinion is more of an anomaly.

I cringe to hear "fact checking" used in reference to news articles. A "fact" is something that can be falsified with the evidence at hand. It's a fact that the temperature of this liquid is 72 degrees--you can measure it.

Almost all of what news articles deal with, however, are inferences drawn from evidence, where the evidence is subject to dispute and many different inferences can be drawn from the same evidence. For example, take PolitiFact's analysis of Trump's assertion: "There is 'no system to vet' refugees from the Middle East."[1] To me that's not a "fact" that can be "checked." That's an assertion which could mean many different things. What qualifies as a "system" or "vet[ing]?" Is there an implicit assumption about who's system we're talking about? What is the definition of "refugee?"

Even if we decide that under all reasonable assumptions, that statement is still false, what even is the significance of it in context? Here, PolitiFact omits most of the quote: "Altogether, under the Clinton plan, you'd be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children." Are we talking about the system that exists now, or the system Clinton proposed? Are we talking just about vetting, or a system that vets them and prevents future radicalization?

Note the litany of assumptions in PolitiFact's analysis: 1) Clinton's proposal is the same as the status quo; 2) That we're just talking about vetting, not also future radicalization; 3) that "refugee" refers to the formal UN refugee status; 4) that various measures qualify as "vetting," etc. All of these assumptions may be perfectly reasonable, but when you pile them on, you've got a counter-argument, i.e. a proposal to draw a different inference, posing as a fact-check.

As a lawyer, I spend much of my life taking purported "facts" and asking these questions. Because between the complexity of human interactions, the need to make inferences from incomplete evidence, and the ambiguities inherent in human language, it's rarely clear what someone even meant to say much less whether that assertion was true or false.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/...

A very significant number of "fact checks" on sites like Politifact are in fact opinion articles masquerading as fact checks, with some links to sources added if we're lucky. Because a lot of people gave up on reading anything titled "opinion" since they already know what the opinion would be by just checking the name of the site. If you read lefty site, you know what they'd say on Trump or economy or immigration or whatever. Same on righty site. But people still may read something called "fact check" hoping to find anything other than propaganda. Until that well gets poisoned too.

> "There is 'no system to vet' refugees from the Middle East."[1] To me that's not a "fact" that can be "checked." That's an assertion which could mean many different things. What qualifies as a "system" or "vet[ing]?" Is there an implicit assumption about who's system we're talking about? What is the definition of "refugee?"

Come on, under literally any reasonable interpretation of those words Trump's claim is simply false. That's a perfectly valid fact check, which you could only dispute if you aim to change the English language.

I think Trump's statement is wrong under many reasonable interpretations. But literally false under "any reasonable interpretation" is in fact the criminal standard for falsity of statements. How do I feel about my chances of acquittal in this case? Pretty damn good!

First, he never said "There is 'no system to vet' refugees from the Middle East." That's your paraphrasing of what he said. Your charging him for saying something false when more than half the words in the allegedly false statement are your own.

What he actually said was:

"Altogether, under the Clinton plan, you'd be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children."

And it was in response to Clinton saying:

"Look, we’re facing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II, and I think the United States has to do more, and I would like to see us move from what is a good start with 10,000 to 65,000 and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in."

Second, he meant a "system" that both "vet[s] them" and "prevent[s] the radicalization of their children." The system described in PolitiFact's article only does the former, not the latter.

Third, "vetting" can mean lots of different things. When we "vet" Supreme Court justices, for example, we're not just checking to see if they have criminal records or are on terrorist watch lists. We're trying to see if they harbor secret desires to overturn Roe v. Wade at the first opportunity. Trump's reference to future radicalization confirms he's contemplating "vetting" to include digging into peoples' ideologies and motivations. Nothing in the process described in the PolitiFact piece gets into that.

Fourth, it makes total sense for Trump to have meant "vetting" to encompass more than just the checks performed today. He was responding to Clinton, who said that we would have to "begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in[.]" The obvious implication is that such "vetting" is not happening today.

Finally, by "no system," he meant "no effective system" or "no good system." It's common for people speaking extemporaneously to say the former when they mean the latter. Running checks on Syrians in U.S. databases isn't going to tell us much about what kind of people we're dealing with. Lots of very bad people won't be bad enough to show up on a foreign country's databases.

> Second, he meant a "system" that both "vet[s] them" and "prevent[s] the radicalization of their children."

Sorry, not a reasonable interpretation. No single system can both vet current candidates and prevent the radicalization of progeny that may not yet even be born. No single system can even prevent the radicalization of existing progeny and simultaneously vet the parents. The very idea is simply absurd, ergo, not reasonable.

> Trump's reference to future radicalization confirms he's contemplating "vetting" to include digging into peoples' ideologies and motivations.

The fact that he stipulated radicalization of progeny as a separate clause requiring a second system does not support this charitable interpretation.

> Fourth, it makes total sense for Trump to have meant "vetting" to encompass more than just the checks performed today. He was responding to Clinton, who said that we would have to "begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in[.]" The obvious implication is that such "vetting" is not happening today.

This merely implies that they were both wrong in stating that no vetting exists. Agreeing with Clinton does not somehow entail Trump was correct.

> Finally, by "no system," he meant "no effective system" or "no good system." It's common for people speaking extemporaneously to say the former when they mean the latter.

So then you agree that what Trump said was literally false, even if some would like us to be more charitable in interpreting his words. If this were an isolated incident, that may even be a reasonable expectation.

But I can cite a plethora of evidence of Trump constantly making such literally false claims, with others executing ever more elaborate gymnastics to interpret him charitably. This past and continuing behaviour suggests your charitable interpretation does not reasonably reflect Trump's actual meaning.

> Sorry, not a reasonable interpretation. No single system can both vet current candidates and prevent the radicalization of progeny that may not yet even be born. No single system can even prevent the radicalization of existing progeny and simultaneously vet the parents. The very idea is simply absurd, ergo, not reasonable.

Depends on what "prevent means." "Only you can prevent forest fires." Does that mean you can keep every forest fire from happening? Of course not. It means you can take measures directed at trying to reduce the number of forest fires. You can certainly take measures directed at trying to reduce radicalization (e.g. through ongoing contact).

> The fact that he stipulated radicalization of progeny as a separate clause requiring a second system does not support this charitable interpretation.

Grammatically, the function of preventing radicalization is ascribed to the "system" in the previous clause.

> This merely implies that they were both wrong in stating that no vetting exists. Agreeing with Clinton does not somehow entail Trump was correct.

Or it means that both are using the word "vetting" to mean something more than the process that exists now. That's a basic feature of human discussion: terms take on a meaning in context.

> So then you agree that what Trump said was literally false, even if some would like us to be more charitable in interpreting his words. If this were an isolated incident, that may even be a reasonable expectation.

You're the one who proposed the standard, which is literal falsity under any reasonable interpretation (which happens to be the criminal standard). In the context of an extemporaneous, spoken statement, "no good system" can be a reasonable interpretation of "no system." People regularly omit qualifiers when speaking. E.g. "nobody thinks that ketchup ice cream tastes good" or "everybody in the office hates the new guy."

> But I can cite a plethora of evidence of Trump constantly making such literally false claims, with others executing ever more elaborate gymnastics to interpret him charitably. This past and continuing behaviour suggests your charitable interpretation does not reasonably reflect Trump's actual meaning.

The purpose of this exercise is not to discern Trump's "actual meaning." (The legal standard for falsity of statements is objective, not subjective.) You can write a very good analysis of what Trump actually means and why you think he's wrong. But you'd call that "political analysis" not "fact checking." If you need to make assumptions and exclude charitable interpretations to falsify something, it's not a fact and the exercise you're engaged in cannot be called fact-checking.

> Depends on what "prevent means." "Only you can prevent forest fires." Does that mean you can keep every forest fire from happening? Of course not. It means you can take measures directed at trying to reduce the number of forest fires. You can certainly take measures directed at trying to reduce radicalization (e.g. through ongoing contact).

My point did not depend upon the interpretation of "prevent", it depended on the absurdity of a single system covering both prevention and vetting. It's simply not logically possible. So if we're being charitable to Trump, we must grant him logical consistency no?

> Grammatically, the function of preventing radicalization is ascribed to the "system" in the previous clause.

Except this is clearly logically impossible, therefore there must be two systems as previously mentioned, therefore Trump's disjunction was either not referring to the same system, or he's so misinformed that we can't take anything he says to be true. Either way, there's no reason to interpret this more charitably.

> Or it means that both are using the word "vetting" to mean something more than the process that exists now. That's a basic feature of human discussion: terms take on a meaning in context.

So without further clarification, which is also required in basic human discussion, their statements are de facto false given the commonly understood meaning of the terms employed.

> You're the one who proposed the standard, which is literal falsity under any reasonable interpretation (which happens to be the criminal standard). In the context of an extemporaneous, spoken statement, "no good system" can be a reasonable interpretation of "no system." People regularly omit qualifiers when speaking. E.g. "nobody thinks that ketchup ice cream tastes good" or "everybody in the office hates the new guy."

Even if I were to grant that point, you now have to establish that "no good system" exists for Trump's statement to possibly be true. What expert witness will you cite to assert that no such "good vetting system" exists? Because no informed article I've read suggests that the existing vetting process is so deficient. In any case, this is quite clearly a factual question with a factual answer.

> Even if I were to grant that point, you now have to establish that "no good system" exists for Trump's statement to possibly be true. What expert witness will you cite to assert that no such "good vetting system" exists? Because no informed article I've read suggests that the existing vetting process is so deficient. In any case, this is quite clearly a factual question with a factual answer.

You still don't seem to understand anything he's been trying to teach you. You're still adding arbitrary qualifiers: "informed article", "expert witness". Whether an article is "informed" is wildly subjective, and whether a witness is an "expert" (which is orthogonal to the question of whether his testimony is reliable) is also wildly subjective.

You are holding onto your bias like a rock in a storm. What you don't realize is that the rock is not attached to the seafloor, and it's pulling you down.

Then a different person comes along at noon, and the temperature is now 76 degrees. The 2nd person then starts a social media campaign against the 1st -- and wins because they had pictures and more followers.

You are feeding into what he is saying about there being a lot of context that gets ignored in the name of fact checking. In this case the implicit qualifier is that the liquid is RIGHT NOW 72 degrees. He clearly isn't stating that the liquid will always be that temperature. Of course if you come along later there can be a different environment.

You are feeding into what he is saying about there being a lot of context that gets ignored in the name of fact checking.

You have to understand that clunky little human minds can be easily swayed. The truth is absolute, but the human mind's comprehension of it is not.

In this context, the "dirty trick" is obvious to anyone who knows that coffee and bathwater change temps over time, and that the pool is warmer at noon. What about contexts in which specialized knowledge is necessary to fully understand what is going on? There is a reason why there is a 5th amendment.

Reality is logical and obeys the laws of physics. The social reality that exists across many people's minds is contradictory and treacherous. (If you are affluent enough and have never had extensive contact with the judicial system, it's hard to know this.)

Exactly right IMO. we are entering very dangerous legal grounds and belief systems with this rubber stamping of 'verified' information. Jared Cohen, former head of Google Ideas and now president of Alphabet has a pretty spooky background as Julian Assange will attest to...

The journalistic norm for years has been, as long as you don't lie, no one can prove you were being dishonest, so you get to keep your credibility. So, what happened instead is they used other tactics to insinuate, without stating. My favorite version of this is to leave out the facts and just get quotes. This is the "'Administration is lying about facts', congressman says", kind of headline. It allows the reporter to insinuate that something is true by getting a quote from someone, without having to put their name on the lie. No where in the article will there be any attempt to answer the question of whether it's true or not.

Yeah, citing someone is a cheap hack to put propaganda into an article. Nothing really is going to change much for an average reader, except for who is going to influence them and how much.

The whole fact checking thing is a bit subtle. They are essentially excluding all anti-western organisations from fact-checkers, weakening foreign anti-western influence over readers. Manufacturing consent is also going to get easier.

The other cheap trick is to write a news article and turn it into an editorial by finding random people who agree with the story writer's position and quoting them. This happens all the time with tv news where they interview the random guy on the street.They probably interviewed 20 people and only kept the opinion of the one person they agreed with.

This is too cynical. Citing your source is good practice and people should do it more (see Wikipedia for example). If you learned something by reading it on the Internet and post a link, at least then I know where you got it from, and there's less chance the message got garbled due to paraphrasing.

(Of course the source might not be reliable.)

That's all true. "Fake news" became a term recently due to a situation requiring far less nuance to understand and combat.

Stories were intentionally being made up from scratch and targeted to manipulate certain people for a specific tangible effect. And it worked. We have to stop the bleeding and address this very low-hanging fruit. And that much is not a difficult problem to solve, the Googles and Facebooks are the right places to solve it to provide the greatest visibility. We're not going to make the whole population critical thinkers in the short term.

The veracity of news or information in general is complex like you say and not something Google or Facebook should try to solve.

That original, pure form of "fake news" held onto the label for about 24 hours before the definition started expanding to include all this true-but-deceptive stuff we're talking about.

Nobody's defending "true" fake news like that, but I think that kind of fake news is actually a very small part of the picture.

The much bigger problem is the subtler dishonesties we're discussing here. Because they're more widespread, harder to catch, come from sources that are regarded as reputable, and thus ensnare smarter people in their falsehoods.

Honest question - has there been any research on how much reach and effect "true" fake news actually has? How big is that particular sub-problem, in reality?

The subtle dishonesties you speak of have existed as long as rhetoric. The true fake news is new, and a product of the internet.

Solving the first one is, in my opinion, pretty much impossible on a large scale—it requires critical reading, original research and a great deal of trust in fact sourcing.

Solving the second one is Google's goal here, and it's an important one. The Comet Pizza incident [1] was emblematic of how blatantly fake news can affect real people. Moreover fake news is engaging: it legitimately competes with real news [2]. So yeah, I think the sub-problem is large and efforts to solve it are a big deal.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Ping_Pong#Pizzagate_cons...

[2]: http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/16/13659840/facebook-fa...

>fake news is actually a very small part of the picture

I'm not sure that's true. Before the election at least a 3rd of news articles shared by family members on Facebook were completely falsified.

Pictures of "Bernie Sanders" driving a sports car. Stories about Obama's mother in law collecting a lifetime pension for babysitting the kids etc...

A guy fired three shots in the pizzagate restaurant because he thought it was true and wanted to "investigate." Fortunately no one was hurt.

I see your 3 shots and raise you 60 cruise missiles

You are assuming everybody who shared those memes actually believes they are factually true, as opposed to just feeling good trash-talking somebody the (re-)poster hates.

If someone says they believe a story and spreads the story as factual news to their friends, it doesn't really matter whether they actually believed it in the first place.

Eventually the story spreads to people who actually believe it and will take action based on it.

A large percentage of my family truly believes Bernie Sanders drives a $100k sports car because they read it on Facebook. They believe that Obama's mother-in-law is getting a pension for acting as the White House babysitter. Some of them even believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya.

They believe these things because of they read fake news stories on Facebook.

It's self reinforcing. They vaguely dislike someone; they read a fake negative story on facebook about the person; they believe it because they already dislike them; they dislike the person more because of the fake news story; they read more outrageous fake news; they believe it because it fits their now more biased opinion of the person.

It's keeps going like this until they hate the person and will believe almost anything negative you say about them.

How do you know they "spread it as factual news"? As far as I know, Facebook doesn't have separate setting for "spreading as factual news" vs "spreading as funny meme trash-talking that idiot I hate". It looks exactly the same.

> It's keeps going like this until they hate the person and will believe almost anything negative you say about them.

Like that "Trump is afraid of stairs" story that CNN featured recently? ;)

It's usually pretty easy to tell the difference if you're a human and not a computer program.

If I say "smsm42's mom is fat", or "smsm42 is an idiot" that's trash talking.

If I say "smsm42 defrauded the US government by awarding his mother-in-law a pension for watching his kids", or "smsm42 passed a law that give Muslims free health insurance because their religion prevents them from paying for it", or "smsm42 wasn't born in the country he says he was born in and I have proof that his birth certificate is fake"--that's fake news.

Nope. These are just different kinds of trash-talking for different audience. Somebody thinks an ultimate shame is to have a fat mom, and somebody thinks it's being corrupt or being a fraud or being of wrong religion. Insults should match the audience, otherwise it doesn't work - in a culture where being fat is considered a sign of prosperity, the insult should be "yo momma is so thin".

There is a difference between an insult that is clearly meant to be farcical (or an opinion/value judgment like "you're an idiot"), and damaging false statements.

In fact courts adjudicate the difference pretty much anytime someone brings a defamation suit. If you are unable to tell the difference, you can conduct this (potentially costly) experiment to see that other humans can usually tell the difference.

1. Find a civil litigation lawyer in your city. Let's call her Alice A. Attorney.

2. Take out an add in your local newspaper that says "Alice A. Attorney's mama is so fat that she gave Dracula diabetes."

3. Take out another add the next week that says "Alice A. Attorney is not a US citizen so her license to practice law is invalid. In addition she is untrustworthy because she embezzled money from her previous employer."

4. Wait and see which ad you're eventually forced to pay damages because of.

> There is a difference between an insult that is clearly meant to be farcical (or an opinion/value judgment like "you're an idiot"), and damaging false statements.

Not as much as you'd like it to be. In court, surely, maybe, though in court to get anything actionable you have to prove actual malice, which is not easy, and very very hard if one talks about a public figure.

If you are just shooting breeze on the internet, it would be super-hard to prove any malicious intent.

But that's what we're talking in courtroom. A place specifically designed to have procedures to rule between true and false. Most people outside of the courtroom do not behave like this. They won't apply "lack of reasonable doubt" or "preponderance of evidence" if they see an article trashing Trump (or Hillary, if you swing that way) on the internet. They won't research and double-triple-check the sources and quotes. They'd just share it because it feels good.

>though in court to get anything actionable you have to prove actual malice, which is not easy,

Actual malice is only required if it's a public figure being defamed.

>and very very hard if one talks about a public figure.

It's not any harder to prove actual malice when the person being defamed is a public figure than if the person being defamed is not a public figure. It's just only required if the person being defamed is a public figure.

>If you are just shooting breeze on the internet, it would be super-hard to prove any malicious intent.

I think you clearly missed the point of my previous post. It wasn't to try to prove to you that people spreading fake news are committing actionable defamation.

The point is that reasonable people are capable of distinguishing between fake news stories and farcical insults.

Saying that Obama is an idiot is an insult. Saying that Obama was born in Kenya because you have investigators on the ground in Hawaii who found evidence that his birth certificate is a fraud is almost definitely defamation (even though it would be difficult to prove that you acted with malice).

A large percentage of Trump supporters literally believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. They literally believe that he ordered Air Force One to pick up his dog. They literally believe that his mother-in-law gets a lifetime pension.

Sure it's possible that none of them actually believe these things in their heart of hearts, but if you ask them, they'll tell you they do. To an external observer they appear in every way to literally believe these things--if there is no externally detectable difference, is there a difference.

Or people sharing them saying "look how fake this is"

Not the case in my situation. Unless my Facebook circle is a complete outlier full of morons, fake news is a huge problem among older conservatives.

Yes, because we can generalize off of your specific example. It clearly is representative of all sharing.

Since you're responding to a thread about my specific example...

I'm also willing to donate $100 to a charity of your choice if you can find evidence that a significant portion, (let's say more than 25%) of fake news being shared on Facebook is just people doing it to say "look how fake this is."

What you are asking is impossible to my knowledge. I don't know of any tracking for why people share or the political affiliation of those that shared it.

This also means you argument is purely conjecture too.

Of course my argument is conjecture. I based it solely on my sample size of a few hundred Facebook friends--clearly stated.

Absent other evidence to the contrary, that is enough to convince me that people sharing fake news mostly believe it.

If you have some other evidence to present--please go ahead. Do the majority of your over 45, conservative Facebook friends and family regularly share fake news just to point out that it's fake?

> The much bigger problem is the subtler dishonesties

Maybe it's a bigger problem, but you're not going to solve dishonesty and you're not going to solve all the cognitive bias and intellectual unsophistication that lets it work. The best you can do is nudge society in a good direction that pays off maybe a generation down the road. Let's focus on stopping our elections from being manipulated since that's a significant easy win in the short term.

> Honest question - has there been any research on how much reach and effect "true" fake news actually has? How big is that particular sub-problem, in reality?

You should watch the open hearing from the Senate intelligence committee from 3/30. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings

It seems like there was a study from Stanford, regarding effect on the latest USA ellection:

> Gentzkow and Allcott find that the most widely circulated hoaxes were seen by only a small fraction of Americans. And only about half of those who saw a false news story believed it.

http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/18/stanford-study-examines-...

My favourite one that I use as a cliche from time-to-time is...

> The average European lifespan has more than doubled since Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to the continent.

This is a good one, also probably because by "lifespan" it means life expectancy at birth, as many "statistics" do, which has pretty much nothing to do with anything that happens to people after 15 or so.

It reminds me Adam Gopnik's idea of a "theory checker"

> [You would] get exactly the same incomprehension and suspicion if you told American intellectuals and politicians, post-interview, that a theory checker would be calling them. "It's been a pleasure speaking to you," you'd say to Al Gore or Mayor Giuliani. "And I'm going to write this up; probably in a couple of weeks a theory checker will be in touch with you."

> Alarmed, suspicious: "A what?"

> "You know, a theory checker. Just someone to make sure that all your premises agree with your conclusions, that there aren't any obvious errors of logic in your argument, that all your allusions flow together in a coherent stream -- that kind of thing."

(http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001482.h...)

I used to be one of those critical types. I have learned the errors of my ways and learned to ignore the news and the facts. The facts are that we don't control much in our lives, and the manufactured news is used to manufactured consent. Give your consent freely and you won't have to worry about a thing. It's already all decided for you anyway. They just want you to believe that you have made a choice. Instead of that game, which is emotionally exhausting, it's acceptable to me to instead simply give consent for whatever, it's all good. Nice writing style by the way, you get your point across very well.

Can't tell if /s ?

I am not entirely sure myself. But really it's where I am actually at. Exhausted of being critical of things we can't change.

It seems that a lot of people feel this way. Maybe the answer is getting involved in local politics, as quaint as that sounds?

I sort-of feel this way. Not enough to give up my voice (vote), but to a degree I think it doesn't matter if I'm worried about politics/news/Tomahawk missiles, or who I vote for, or whatever.

I "fixed" it by moving to a remote location where, at least, things affect me less. Our county is poor, not much money to mishandle. Our road isn't paved, no potholes to fix and no expectation to have a perfect gravel road. No building permits. Cheap property tax. Neighbors don't visit, no traffic driving by.

I go out and vote and then try to avoid political debate, news, etc. I'm not exactly burying my head in the sand, but it's sort-of close.

And then I'm building up my property (a homestead of sorts) and self-reliance.

I don't have any romantic ideas that I'm going to shut myself off from the world and do it all myself, but I do have the idea that I can limit my exposure to a large degree.

So far, it's been really nice.

The problem is that local politics don't really make the differences that people care most deeply about.

Maybe that should be different. This is why I'd like to see a more federalist approach. Where really passionate issues could be decided as locally as possible without everything having to be handled by the feds. That's how America was supposed to work, at least. A federation of states, not a country with administrative divisions.

You're right, and it's possible that fighting incorrect facts might be a losing fight. A news article can have many correct facts, it only needs one lie that fell through the cracks in order to bias the readers.

Talk to anyone from a country with a corrupt government. They often know at a very deep level exactly what's going on, since they were born in an environment where things only make sense if you are skeptical and look at the motivations behind a politicians actions.

It doesn't need any lies. The narrative is influenced by what people to choose to publicize as much as how they choose to do it.

> Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they're cherry-picked to support a particular bias.

IMO that is the single biggest issue with most of the stuff that I see out there. It's not about what you include but what you leave out. A reader can scrutinize what you put in but only somebody with existing knowledge of the subject will know what you're leaving out.

Correct.

Labeling stories "real" or "fake" news does nothing to advance human knowledge and understanding.

>In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat's postage.

ToMuchWork,DidNotThink;

I think, having a chain of trusted people, who i know too thin, vouching for a articles truth, would be nearly as good?

> one of the mistakes I often see people make is to either give too much or not enough credence to whether the facts in a news story (or op-ed) are true.

Sure, (subject to the limitations of "true/false" in context as many others have posted). (Warning: All of the below is US-based, because I know squat about politics elsewhere)

But I feel like the major problem is a total lack of critical thinking from readers. Confirmation bias is real, but very few are doing anything to try and compensate for it. So while I'd love to teach people the nuances of fact-checking, I'd first start by having them question what they read at ALL.

Gun Debate: Liberals think more guns = more gun deaths because there are too many trigger happy macho gun nuts. Conservatives think Sweden is a hellhole full of grenade throwing terrorists and rapists because guns don't keep them in check. Almost no one even TRIES to validate facts. If they did, context would become (very!) important...but they haven't gotten that far.

Terrorism: Liberals think Conservative policies spread fear and hate that increases terrorism. Conservatives think Liberals turn a blind eye to the problems "outsiders" are bringing in.

Immigration: Liberals think immigrants are good for the economy, and regardless people deserve a chance. Conservatives think immigrants are bad for the economy and that people deserve a chance _if_ they follow the rules.

You can even get to more basic, easy questions:

Build a wall: Liberals think it's an ineffective waste of money. Conservatives think it will reduce economy-draining illegal immigration and drug traffic.

Cut Taxes: Liberals think the rich have benefited more from the society and should pay back more. Conservatives think that the rich have earned their money, and that cutting taxes on the rich will increase growth which will actually raise govt income.

Climate Change: Liberals think it's human-caused and likely devastating to humans. Conservatives think it's highly disputed by scientists, and potentially good even if true.

Filibuster: Liberals think the Republicans have been so obstructionist and extreme, staring with Clinton and accelerating in the Obama years, that we've gotten where we are. Conservatives think Democrats have been obstructionist starting in the Bush years and were the first to go nuclear.

Voter Fraud: Liberals think it's rare, tiny, and efforts to combat it are just window dressing over minority voter-suppression. Conservatives think it's real, with large groups being bussed in to commit fraud in multiple places.

Benghazi: Many investigations. No charges. Yet most people on both sides don't actually KNOW that notable investigation has happened, so their opinions on what has/hasn't been investigated aren't based on reality.

It is completely true that with the above issues there is a lot of nuance, and fact-checkers like Politifact should but can't completely handle the nuance of context. But the average person doesn't consider that their "facts" can be biased, don't even bother to check fact-checkers, and usually don't even understand the position of the other side.

When people consider that a statement from either side may be wholely made up, or just misleading, then I'll worry about how we as a society hone their skills to determine that. But first we need to get them to even consider it.

>objective facts

alright...

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