Everyone is biased. Anything could be misinformation unless you experienced it firsthand. Is there a baseline rule that can be applied to say “I know this to be true?”
I slightly changed the title because I didn’t want the subject to be too broad. It’s created in response to President Biden’s AI executive order, since it sparked a discussion about whether he should do so. Should he be trusted to create a task force, given the use of misinformation/deepfakes in politics?If not him, than who?
I think your subject is broad, regardless of changing the title, so I’m confused on what you want to talk about. To answer the title, I trust online information usually if it can be verified with 2-3 (or more) sources that have proven themselves to be reliable. Fox news? Not reliable. WaPo? CNN? More or less reliable, but I still verify with other sources. I also use critical thinking skills, etc. etc. etc.
Or do you want to talk about Biden’s exec order? After reading the article, I’d agree with the headline: it’s a start, but needs Congress to really regulate it. For example:
in order to regulate, you first need to understand what’s going on.
On the other hand,
the executive order on its own is insufficient for tackling all the problems posed by advancing AI. Executive orders are inherently limited in their power and can be easily reversed. Even the order itself calls on Congress to pass data privacy legislation.
So where do you want to go with this discussion?
I think the discussion I’m hoping for is more about how to trust information and who should regulate misinformation. Does that help?
This is pretty much impossible, without resorting to government censure of news (which results in greatly increased misinformation). You can’t ever be secure in the information you get from any source, all you can ever do is be rigorous in checking out the important things, and adopt sensible rules of thumb for everything else. I think @Leo_Krupe has basically the right idea.
This is not a new issue with the internet age, you know. Previously, news consumers were lucky to have more than one source to check against each other, if they wanted to try to glean the truth. Newspapers were notoriously unreliable. Then came radio, which had network news but also a lot of rabble-rousing. TV network news seemed reliable for a while pre-internet, until it became a 24-hour consumable. So it’s the same issue as always – no matter the medium, it will always contain a large percentage of unregenerate bilge.
So this again boils down to: Everyone is biased. Anything could be misinformation unless you experienced it firsthand. Is there a baseline rule that can be applied to say “I know this to be true?”
Yes, everyone is biased. But that’s not the same as saying every news source / reporter is intentionally producing propaganda rather than trying their best to report the truth. If those sources which are doing the latter all report the same thing, then I’m going to believe them.
I’m having an issue with this. Is this a hard and fast rule? In other words, since I’ve never been to China (I haven’t experienced it firsthand), then I shouldn’t believe China exists? I didn’t experience the past before I was born, so does that mean I shouldn’t believe George Washington, Genghis Kahn, or Julius Caesar existed? I’m guessing you don’t mean that in that sense, but that’s how it comes across.
So why should I believe anything is true? Especially if I haven’t experienced it? I’ll check sources, use my personal experience if that applies, use logic, follow Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit, and yes, use a certain amount of trust/faith/going out on a limb/take a calculated risk.
What kind of information are you talking about? For regular news, you can just go to the NY Times, BBC, or NPR and you’ll be reasonably secure that their information is checked for you, and they will issue corrections if they screw up.
For more specific niches, say vaccine information, go to the NIH or CDC.
No one source of information can get you informed about everything. For any non-controversial, and even most controversial topics, Wikipedia is probably good enough.
My first impulse was to reply with “But how can you be sure they’re right?” or “reasonably secure” ?, but that can lead down into some weird paranoid rabbit holes. Everyone needs to find a place to set their feet as far as reliable information.
If you set it on the basis of the NYT, NPR, and BBC, you’ll be secure, as far as regular news goes. If you specifically want business news (M&A rumors, etc.), go the Wall Street Journal, but stay off the editorial page, because it’s filled with lies and omissions.
This is why you use multiple sources. If 2-3 sources line up, then you can probably say it’s true.
It is a tough problem that may never be satisfactorily solved. One thing I have thought about is a rating system for speakers. If you are not rated you should be taken with a grain of salt. Now the rating process may prove to be almost as tough as the original problem but it would be much smaller on orders of magnitude and thus slightly easier to address. Objectivity and smarts would rank highest.
Here’s my thought process when I read new information of interest to me (and I make a point of reading, not viewing TV or videos of whatever sort):
I assume the veracity is tentative. I look for other reporting on the same topic.
I’m extra dubious if it is something that I like. This is how I try to guard against my own bias. Plus, I acknowledge that I may have biases I don’t know about.
If it’s something I agree with, I ask myself what a really smart person, arguing in good faith, might say in disagreement.
If I relate it to another person I use words like “supposedly” when there are facts that aren’t known with certainty.
I acknowledge that while anything is possible, I’ve taken a few statistics courses and I apply what I learned aggressively.
I’m curious about all the misinformation you’re worried about coming across. I get a Snopes feed, and I read the NYT and this board, and I don’t think I’m misinformed. I assume everything on Twitter that’s too good to be true is fake, unless it agrees with something I’ve read on the Times. And, that’s it.
I wouldn’t bother with YouTube videos purporting to be revealing some truth that no one else knows, for example.
I have a series of mental filters, from very fine for subjects I actually have expertise in, to general BS detection based on being well-educated and ingesting online content since the mid-90’s. I’m aware of my own personal biases, so anything that gets past the general BS detection and fine BS-because-I-know-this-shit filters, I usually look and see what other sources are saying. Do they generally agree or not, that sort of thing.
This sounds like me. I also used to use my twitter (pre-X) people I follow - not as often now. I figure it’s about 80% good info and that’s good for my passive consumption to understand day to day news. I’m also actively trying to double source stuff and making sure the second source is actively original.
For small scale/local/etc objective stuff it’s different (e.g., did Russia fire a missile that hit that building in a remote part of Ukraine) - there’s only going to be a few sources and none of them will be legit reporters. On Twitter, they use to have groups or recommendations. So somebody I would follow re: say, the Ukraine war, would say here are 10 other people I trust and I think you should follow them to (e.g., Kyiv Independent). Here, it’s still the same 80% is good enough, but also to make sure to wait. Wait an appropriate time and see if it’s still the same story. Takes longer to verify and it may never be verifiable to a high enough level. It’s just part of dealing with small scale objective stuff - you don’t always get to know what happened.
For subjective, follow people or organizations that are open and systematically correct themselves (being wrong is fine, but be open about it). Who encourage an opposite viewpoint. Who actively point you to other sources (which is bad for business, but good for truth). Who have a track record. Things like that.
It goes well before that. Ancient books, written reasonably contemporaneously with their subjects, were often full of exaggerations to build up the powerful subject of the book or his followers. Look how unreliable political biographies are. Look at the myths invented by Parson Weems about George Washington only a year after his death.
But be careful the sources are independent. I’ve found multiple sources all copies of the Wikipedia article.
If a piece of information makes no sense, it needs to be specially checked. Ditto stuff which you find conflicting information about. Some sources treat an issue as settled which isn’t.
Well said. I should’ve put that in my response – if 2-3 independent sources line up…it’s amazing just how much copy/paste goes on in “legitimate” journalism today. That’s not to say the NYT et al are lying or unreliable, but their reporting can be lazy.
Discerning the truth about a topic is work…there are no shortcuts. It just depends on how important it is to you. For instance, I can read a headline about the Khardashians and fully accept it uncritically – because I don’t care enough to check it. If they were important enough to me, I’d follow through and look at multiple (independent) sources.
You seem to be searching for some kind of certainty. That’s never been possible, even among things that you witness yourself – just read the literature about how unreliable eyewitness accounts are.
What I want in a news source is: transparency about their methods and (as much as possible) their sources; checking and re-checking things before and after they are reported; neutrality about outcomes (i.e. they don’t change their reporting for any reason); willingness to admit and correct mistakes, and to try to prevent future ones. I won’t ever get certainty from such a source, but since certainty is not possible, I could live with that. If such a source exists.
Well stated. This could be the tagline for the straight dope.