Feeding My Ignorance

There is a bit of a furore about the perceived influence of so called fake news on the result of the US election. On the one hand this strikes me as extremely funny - on the other it is rather worrying (on a number of levels).

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No one can doubt that we are bombarded with "information" at a rate which is not only unprecedented but which is also beyond our capacity to comprehend and assimilate. The result is that we are faced with having to choose (sometimes unthinkingly) which pieces of information are going to 'stick' and which are going to fly 'in one ear and out the other'!!

How much of what we receive is "true" is anyone's guess - what is for sure is that it is certainly not 100%. There is a level of "fake" information whether deliberately propagated as some sort of propaganda; accidentally spread due to some misunderstanding; unknowingly distributed because of some level of ignorance; or created as a "hoax" - either for sinister purposes or for comedic purposes.

The best comedy often fails to strike home with everyone - many "don't get it" - political satire has been around for as long as politics and there are always those who "don't get it" (often those with opposing points of view) or simply don't find it funny. All comedy works on a thin line between what is acceptable and what is not (and I have spoken before about how that line moves.....) and a measure of acceptability is unique to an individual.

I won't rehash the arguments about the "grey area" here - simply restate that it exists.

Spoof news sites abound - often telling (what I think are) extremely amusing tales - that could be true - often we might even wish they were true. Every year on April 1st the entire media competes for the best "April Fool" joke - a story so astonishing that it couldn't possibly be made up - or could it? On that day we are all looking out for exactly that sort of thing. For the other days of the year we tend to completely suspect such judgement and accept whatever the media is spouting as the "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" - even when we are aware that there is such a thing as media bias; that rich men can control media outputs for their own ends; and that often it is impossible to tell whether something is true anyway.

Witness the "historic sex abuse" investigations - it has now emerged that on some occasions (at least) the accusations made against certain individuals were false ones (or were they - perhaps they were simply ones that could not be proved!) - the "news" so widely trumpetted in the media has proven to be somewhat less than 100% true.

Listening to the local news the other evening the top three stories ALL involved someone who was described as "a fantasist" - no doubt believing what they were saying was true - but seemingly it was only true in some separate far away universe. They each had - one way or another - woven a tissue of untruths that masked reality - for them and for other people.

It is my assumption that these "fantasists" were creating "fake news" because that is there own peculiar talent - unfortunately they each had created anguish, misery and pain for others by doing so.

These were people who are "manipulators" - something that is clearly seen as "a bad thing" in our society and culture. Once again though we have a "grey area" - at what point does the "manipulation" become wrong. We are manipulated in countless ways each and every day - most of these are benign and ensure that we make good choices - others are more insidious. Advertising of tobacco products is now almost entirely absent, but its not so long ago that it was a big revenue earner for advertisers.

The spoof news sites are, I guess, for the most part leaning towards the benign - but it is not many steps from there to manipulative propaganda - I guess of the sort that has caused the outcry following the election. The problem is - just as many people are taken in by the April Fool japes - so we are all often guilty of excessive gullibility!! We will each have small areas of expertise where it would be hard to fool us - but for the most part, we must judge the source of the news and rate the likelihood of it being 'reasonable'.

Reputation is something that all information sources must work hard to maintain. Often the reputation is greater than the reality - certainly some question the "independence" and "even-handedness" of BBC reports - when at times in the past they were the "gold standard" againt which others were judged.

An article the other day pointed out that one of the big problems of our new wired world with instant access to countless information sources is that - rather paradoxically - we each become ever more parochial as we are forced to choose what to spend our limited attention on - and we tend to choose what is "familiar" and doesn't challenge our boundaries. So we get more and more reinforcement for our own view - ignoring the diversity that is available.

We select our news feed (or in the case of sites like Facebook - an algorithm chooses what it thinks we would be interested in) based on prior experience. As that conntinues to spiral inwards there are fewer opportunities to experience what its like on "the other side of the street". Not only does that mean we do not agree with other's points of view it also reduces the chances that we can possibly understand why they hold such different views - we have not been exposed to the arguments - simply a never ending stream of confirmation bias - a cognitive failure that everyone exhibits.

Its easy to ask why people don't spot the fact that many of these fake stories are "jokes" - but that misses the point that the damaging fake news is deliberately put out there to pander to the confirmation bias that I just talked about. Propagandists know this - they prey on it. Those being taken in bythe propaganda do so because it fits with their picture of the world.

The idea of mental models and a personal "worldview" goes right back to the very early posts in this blog. Our knowledge and experiences build up into a big picture of what "reality" is for each of us. It is, necessarily, flawed because that knowledge and experience cannot possibly be complete - the dangers arise when we stop realising that it is flawed!!

So - did "Fake News" influence the US election? Probably yes - but no more than it influences every other aspect of our lives if we let it. We can only guard against that danger by being aware of the implications of "news" coming from a single source and recognising that every source will have its own built in biases which will flavour the way in which it reports each and every event.