Getting Faked Out By Fake News?

 I remain fascinated by the cult of Donald J Trump, their complete abdication of common sense and reason. I do not know if it is propaganda and brainwashing of decades from the Rush Limbaugh types and Fox News, or if there is an innate quality of people which the radical right's talk radio and Fox News have tapped into. But I know it has given me an interest in fake news.

The Boston Review recently published The Fake News about Fake News. I make no comment except for one thing at the end.

s this a genuine risk? If we lived in environments plagued by misinformation, as the infodemic metaphor suggests, greater vigilance might be appropriate. But in reality the current panic about a misinformation epidemic is itself rooted in fake news. In well-studied Western countries, at least, the share of misinformation in most people’s information diet is extremely low; the overwhelming majority of people get their news from mainstream, largely reliable sources. It might therefore be genuinely harmful to persuade them—to misinform them—that their worlds are saturated with viral fake news that they should be more skeptical of.

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In short, inoculation theory rests on a flawed portrait of human beings as passive and credulous. Far from being gullible victims of mind viruses that plague our information ecosystems, we are sophisticated agents with complex goals and identities navigating environments dominated by largely reliable information, at least on simple factual matters. To the extent that people are misinformed on these matters, it is often not because they have been duped by encounters with unreliable sources; it is because they are overly skeptical of reliable sources that contradict their preexisting beliefs, or because the consumption and propagation of misinformation promotes their interests or goals.

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How, then, do we decide whether to accept what others tell us? For almost all contested questions of broad public significance, we have no ability to directly verify claims and so must draw on our preexisting beliefs—whether first order (about the issue in question) or second order (about whether the source of the claim is trustworthy). In epistemically ideal situations, people can be receptive to persuasive arguments that conflict with their gut feelings, intuitions, or prior commitments, but even in this case preexisting beliefs are also necessary to evaluate the premises of arguments and the trustworthiness of arguers. In less than ideal conditions, motivated cognition can conflict with the pursuit of accuracy, leading us to reject claims even if we possess good reasons for accepting them and accept claims even when they are counterintuitive or supported by sloppy reasoning. In those cases, we may be biased to accept claims that what we want to believe—for example, because they affirm our identity or signal our partisan allegiances—and too skeptical of claims that we find threatening or unpalatable

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First, there are two different metrics by which one might evaluate an intervention against misinformation: improvement in the detection of misinformation, or improvement in the ability to distinguish reliable from unreliable content. To appreciate the difference, suppose a study participant is asked to judge the truth of ten headlines, five of which are false. Suppose further that before the intervention, the individual labels all of the headlines true but after the intervention labels all of them false. By the first metric (improvement in the detection of misinformation), the individual has improved dramatically—their success rate at detecting false headlines has gone from 0 percent to 100 percent—but they may not have acquired a greater capacity to discriminate between reliable and unreliable content; they could simply have become more skeptical across the board.

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These features, I think, help explain why the misinformation-as-virus narrative has won such widespread endorsement. The belief that a dangerous misinformation virus is a major source of society’s problems is popular not because it is supported by evidence, and not because it has duped credulous individuals, but, most plausibly, because its apolitical, technocratic, and simplistic character resonates with the interests and biases of those who consume and propagate it.

When I was 18 I made the acquaintance of William James. It seems to me his idea of pragmatism and truth applies here: make a stand on a fact, act in accordance with the facts known, until better facts come along. 

 What then about the concept of truth? It often seems that James understands the concept of truth in terms of verification: thus, “true is the name for whatever idea starts the verification-process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience” (1907 [1975: 98]). And, more generally:

Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth, strength, etc., are names for other processes connected with life, and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. (1907 [1975: 104])

James seems to claim that being verified is what makes an idea true, just as having a lot of money is what makes a person wealthy. To be true is to be verified:

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation. (1907 [1975: 97], emphasis in original)

Like Peirce, James argues that a pragmatic account of truth is superior to a correspondence theory because it specifies, in concrete terms, what it means for an idea to correspond or “agree” with reality. For pragmatists, this agreement consists in being led “towards that reality and no other” in a way that yields “satisfaction as a result” (1909 [1975: 104]). By sometimes defining truth in terms of verification, and by unpacking the agreement of ideas and reality in pragmatic terms, James’ account attempts to both criticize and co-opt the correspondence theory of truth.

This does not mean completely ignore contradictory facts. It does not mean pillaging the United States Capitol Building just because Donald J. Trump says the election was stolen, even though he presented no evidence, no facts, just his blathering, to support his claim. It does not mean give up all rational judgment; it means the exact opposite. It means considering your own knowledge, the knowledge accessible to you, it means considering the interests of those advocating a course of action, it means knowing the desirable ends of your actions. 

I call it the failure of American education. That seems better than claiming a native mental deficiency in people I do not know, or suggesting there has been too much interbreeding between white people. Reading Mitchell man proud to be present, even for five minutes, during Jan. 6 Capitol riot in Muncie's Star-Press does make it hard to restrain myself:

And the FBI has charged him with four federal crimes for entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. Court documents filed in his case include eight closed-circuit camera photos of him inside and outside the building.

Wilkerson acknowledges being there. He's proud, saying he drove all night in order represent people he knows who couldn't get to Washington but believe what he does: that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and should be president today.

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He arrived as protesters were surging into the building. His then-girlfriend called to say she was watching coverage of the chaos on TV. "They're getting in, they're getting in," she said.

Wilkerson ran toward the Capitol, pausing to take a picture at the Washington Monument obelisk. Smoke was rising from his destination, and he arrived in time to be part of the riot.

"I wanted to see what was happening," he said, to join "fellow patriots like me" in shouting at police and moving toward the entry doors.

He returned home and told friends and family via social media he was proud to have been part of the Jan. 6 event. Those posts, and a security camera image of him selling scrap metal at JB's Salvage in Bloomington that confirmed his identity, are part of the case against him.

FBI Special Agent John Miller's affidavit says Wilkerson violated a federal statute that makes it a crime to "knowingly enter or remain in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do ... with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions."

Wilkinson lives in a sea of conservatism where support for Trump reigns. Seventy-four percent of Lawrence County voters, three out of four, cast their ballots for Trump in 2020.

Wilkinson predicts his children will be proud of him in the future when the family looks back on those five minutes in Washington, D.C., that brought him national attention.

"Twenty years from now, they'll say your dad went to the Capitol building on Jan. 6 to fight for your rights."

Somehow, this person has no ability to reason from the evidence, or has given up all interest in reason.

Donald J. Trump wears out the words witch hunt, says the government is coming for all his followers, but have his followers lied to the government about having classified documents, or falsified business records for his own gain, or advocated the overthrow of our Constitution and plotted a coup? Then he is not standing out in front of his followers, protecting them from a despotic government. He is using his followers as a barrier to the just enforcement of the laws.

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