"But part of guarding against the illusion is the obligation it puts on us to stop repeating falsehoods. We live in a world where the facts matter, and should matter. If you repeat things without bothering to check if they are true, you are helping to make a world where lies and truth are easier to confuse. So, please, think before you repeat."
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.
That has always been a core tenet of journalism, as taught, but the ability to get information from the Internet has put massive pressure on that.
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 there was never some mythical golden age of pre-internet quality journalism, to be honest. I frequently read newspaper articles in supposedly respectable outlets that are not about breaking news yet are still riddled with serious flaws or biases, sometimes outright falsehoods. This problem becomes a hundred times worse when exploring their opinion columns or editorials. If "journalism school" (whatever that is) tries to teach journalists to be unbiased fact checkers then it's not done a good job.
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.
No, you had something far more dangerous: plausible-sounding false claims that were repeated without any challenge and therefore ended up being believed without question by a far higher percentage of the population. At least with the Internet, you can find refutations of false claims if you care to look.
You're forgetting about the Yellow Journalism era of the late 19th century.
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.
What I'm really curious about is what changed between the era of yellow journalism and the mid-twentieth century. I absolutely agree that people hearkening back to print journalism as a time when everything was fact-checked and reliable are mistaken, but it really does seem that journalism now is more sensationalist than in the recent past, just not the distant past. That means that print isn't the answer; there's something else to a society that makes its reporting either good or bad. What is it? Corporate power? General partisanship?
I've read that some posit that the switch to a subscription model in part effected the decline of yellow journalism. The subscription customer's purchase decision is potentially less driven by in-the-moment attention-grabbing and more by characteristics like informativeness and accuracy.
> but the ability to get information from the Internet
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.
> 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.
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.
(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.
I recently read Trust Me, I'm Lying (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542853-trust-me-i-m-lyi...) and one of the central points of the book is that journalists HAVE to act this way, especially at the moment. If everything is page view driven, the bloggers MUST come up more more and more anger/fear/happiness in their headlines to survive. They also must chase the breaking news, even if it's false. If they don't they will perish.
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.
IIRC, Holiday posits that the turn away from yellow journalism was the advent of the subscription model, where papers didn't need to sell each issue. Subscribers then could look at the overall quality of the product rather reacting to the sensational headline du jour.
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.
> If everything is page view driven, the bloggers MUST come up more more and more anger/fear/happiness in their headlines to survive.
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.)
That's a very fine line to walk -- few of these talking points are strictly true or false and almost everything on either side of the issue is deliberately misleading (or "persuasive" if you prefer). Who is deciding what truths are getting air time? Humans are notoriously terrible at seeing our own biases, why are reporters/journalism students any different?
The difference is that journalists are supposed to be professionals who discern the reality of a situation and report it to those of us who can't be there or don't have time to sift through all of the details.
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.
I'm not sure how you can describe The Economist as both having a clear viewpoint yet also not biased. It's more that TE is very open and honest about being biased, it doesn't try to hide that fact, so that helps it come across as a more mature publication. But nobody rational would read TE and think they're getting an unbiased view of the world on any topic that the editor feels strongly about (immigration, the EU, Russia, etc). For tech stuff, the politics of Malaysia and the myriad other topics TE covers that they don't have any strong opinion on, sure, it's great for that. For politics what you're reading are opinion pieces intended to persuade you.
Can you not think of a topic where you have a clear point of view but can write in an unbiased way?
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.
The big source of bias is the selection of what stories to include.
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.
What stories to include is also a matter of viewpoint. Note how complicated the line between "good story for HN" and "not right for HN" is. Sometimes I'd call that a matter of bias, but the great majority of the time it's just viewpoint.
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 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.
I note again that you didn't answer my questions, and don't really seem interested in understanding viewpoint vs bias, so I'm not seeing much future in this discussion.
You haven't explained what you think the difference is, nor even tried. I am not the only one who has pointed this out, so I agree, I think this discussion will go nowhere.
I have repeatedly explained it. And given many examples. And asked questions which you have repeatedly dodged. You haven't asked me a single question about what I mean. So if you are trying to understand, rather than just quibbling, you can see why I wouldn't be able to tell.
I obviously think there is, and I gave a bunch of examples. What more would you like? I'm glad to help.
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.
Well the reason I asked is because you did explain how you see it, but the only use I can see is the emotional manipulation of connotation management. I guess I just have this particular viewpoint.
The biggest use for me is self-management of emotional reactions. When I differ with someone apparently reasonable, I wonder if it's a difference in viewpoint or a difference in bias.
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.
I agree 100% on bias. But I think "viewpoint" is even broader/softer than "opinion". As somebody born and raised in America, I have an American viewpoint. As somebody who's been writing code for a long time, I'll always have the viewpoint of a programmer. You can't escape who you are.
But as you say, that doesn't mean you have to twist the facts.
One thing that is certain is that the pool of people who opine they can be unbiased in areas where they have favorites is not the same as the set of people who can actually do it.
Absolutely. I don't think anybody can fully succeed at that. But there's a world of difference for me between people who try and people who don't bother.
Journalism in all societies have the same problem: It is influenced by the power structure it is part of, and meant to objectively cover. It's just human.
This is true, but I believe current American journalism has additional problems beyond the generic ones. For those interested, I strongly recommend Jay Rosen's blog:
If you want to argue the point, I'd suggest you talk to Rosen, not me.
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.
Because, not to put too fine a point on it, but I suspect you are suggesting this standard not for people from your background, but for "those people". And America has a long, ugly history of applying voter qualification standards unequally.
That is what I'm calling viewpoint, not bias. Bias would be if they shaded their reporting to support their viewpoint.
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.
The Economist is, in general, pretty good. But it has a viewpoint. It's open about it, and compensates to an extent by also, mostly, believing in a full, frank, and largely accurate reporting of what's happening in the world.
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:
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...
Huh. I am using The Economist as an example of something with viewpoint that mostly manages to be unbiased, so I don't understand why you're telling me so vigorously that it has a viewpoint but mostly manages to be unbiased. I too have read it for decades and am familiar with its origin. What were you hoping I'd learn from this comment?
Well, I'm not intimately familiar with your own awareness of The Economist. I've established that we both seem to have a similar depth of awareness.
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.
Yes, but generally it's not journalists and reporters pushing the talking points, but the talk show hosts and bloggers. Journalism and infotainment, despite being deceptively blurred, are two very different things once you look past the charade.
If telling the truth was good for profitability, we'd see more of it. Confirming what people already suspect is how you get viewers, it's an uphill battle to tell someone something that will cause cognitive dissonance.
"Truth" is a slippery thing. Keep in mind you can't create dissonance in someone. Only they can do that, given it's an internal conflict of two opposing truths. You can, however, introduce a thought process that breaks dissonance by double binding them. Making someone choose between two undesirable options is a sure way to get rid of one of the "truths", leaving the one that best suits moving forward.
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.
This assumes journalists decide what gets into press. However, an editorial line is decided by the owners or other stakeholders (at the national level, it might be governments), a compliant editor is hired and made aware of the line, and the editor then selects which pieces get to go in.
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).
I think the problem there (coming from the internet) is that journalists switched from reporting about "official discourse" (which could have been a good thing) to reporting about "what people talk about". It doesn't really matter if the original story is really true, the fact they are reporting about is that people elsewhere are discussing it. Meta-journalism maybe.
>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.
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.
Not necessarily. Editorial stances are as often driven by the desires of the proprietor as they are the readership. E.g. there were newspapers recently in the UK that took strong editorial stances against a particular political leader in spite of the fact that the majority of their readers preferred him. The proprietors had an agenda and they risked (and ultimately lost) subscribers to push it.
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.
Every minute spent reporting that "X said Y but there is no evidence for this" repeats the lie and is a minute taken away from presenting legitimate information.
I have been thinking about the following lately...
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.
That's not really a "lie" per se. In the USA it would only be dischargeable by 0.01% of people, or some freakishly low number. The standard of discharge wrt student loans is so ridiculously high. The case law shows that a person, to get them discharged, essentially needs to have zero chance of ever being able to hold a job or work again. There have been quadriplegics who couldn't get them discharged for hardship. The bar is so high, it is essentially impossible for all but the severely, severely unfortunate among us. If you have the potential to hold any sort of job at any point in the future, it's effectively impossible to discharge.
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.
It's neither a lie nor a myth, yet the truth is surprising.
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%.
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 guess that means 60% are unsuccessful. My friend who was jailed for 5 years could not even get a deferment. He had large fines added to his loan for missing payments. In prison he could only earn some trivial amount (cents on the dollar) for working, so it was impossible to keep up with the loans.
The decision about whether one can discharge or not discharge in bankruptcy is determined by the court. The decision about whether one can defer or not defer is determined by the loan administrator.
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.
No it is because rather large percentages of people who file bankruptcy do so pro se, without a lawyer, or worse pay a "bankruptcy mill" who charges a low flat fee to complete cookie cutter bankruptcy petitions, but since they don't generally actually become attorney of record they don't represent the debtor at these hearings.
>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.
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.
> 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).
The cost, time and effort is the bankruptcy itself. Once that step is taken it would be the equivalent of omitting any other debts because the cost, time and effort it listing them.
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.
I once read one way of getting (sort of) rid of them is by moving abroad and no longer paying. The debt holder won't be able to collect. Then, when living abroad, you negotiate the debt down to 20-25% of the original amount, and you pay that in one lump sum. Result: you saved a ton of money. Doesn't seem too bad of a deal, given near bankrupt companies do this all the time. Financial engineering (or shenanigans, whatever you want to call it) ahoy!
With most these student loans the government guarantees the lender will get their money back, even if the loan is defaulted. Thus, the proliferation of bad loans as there's no risk to the lender.
Yes, you've hit the crux of the issue. The money lended has essentially no risk to the lender (assuming the US govt doesn't collapse). And schools can charge as much as they want. So since loans are riskless, anyone can get one, so schools just charge a bunch because, why not, why not have seventeen overpaid deans and a new recreation facility? The people who lose are the borrowers.
Is a student loan a full Full Recourse debt? My understanding with the bankruptcy process here in Australia is even though you may declare bankruptcy it is still up the proceeding Judge to make the determination based on your circumstance and sometimes can deny the claim for bankruptcy but require the creditor to re-adjust the term of the mortgage either via change in the debit amount or the repayment schedule.
I imagine this kind of thing varies between countries. It appears the standard in the US is that if repaying the debt would be an "undue hardship" then a judge may discharge it in bankruptcy. You can also file a different kind of bankruptcy that can change your repayment terms, though I think mostly the schedule rather than the actual amounts.
This is all from ~5 minutes of research though, so take with salt as appropriate.
The issue is that being able to discharge student loans is more a function of either becoming a near-vegetable or losing both arms and both legs. It's not really the result of bankruptcy as most people know it.
This is similar to the "Contamination" effect, of how completely false statements can affect a person's judgement, even if they are told the statement are false.
I don't know, the Contamination effect seems more like buffer overflow in our neural network and the Repetition effect more like a poor implementation of caching.
Consequently, repeating something too many times is a flag to detect a lie. Amateur liars usually forget that rule. Good liars create doubt. Bad liars create certainty. However, the former knowns how to gain ppl's trust.
You learn that with camp fire based games like Mafia/Werewolf
I wish people would stop parroting about Goebbels to this phenomena, because the real "innovator" in the propaganda was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays [1] (Goebbels was a big fan of him). His manipulation techniques and tricks are what started the profession of public relations (PR) in USA.
He also helped spreading the lie that helped CIA overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan president [2].
Yep, as soon I've found about him, I've checked out the documentary series, it should be viewed in schools. But that would probably be bad for business as it's not OK for masses to be aware of the techniques.
I am especially worried by the lies that we all create in our own minds by repeating erroneous thoughts with our own thinking. People being convinced about things that are not true or only partially true can be quite scary, more so when those people are in power. Fair chance that Goebbels really believed what he was saying. What we consider to be the 'truth' is very relative in my perception.
This only works if it's something people want to believe. If it goes against some existing strong belief, like, "there is a God that really exists", they will continue to believe what they want to no matter how many times scientists, atheists and the like say otherwise.
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.
sometimes i talk about things that haven't happened yet as if they've already happened because i'm so certain they will happen. i think this throws people off sometimes.
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"
I'm sorry to immediately take this off on a tangent, but the article lists "a prune is a dried plum" as a true statement. I agree with that, but does anybody know why it's "prune juice" instead of "plum juice"? It makes as little sense to me as saying that wine is made from raisin juice.
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.
For some reason (and not being very familiar with kosher law) I couldn't help thinking of shellfish-flavoured tea and wondering why anyone would ever want to drink that. Anyway, here's a little more information for anyone who's curious: http://www.learn-about-tea.com/kosher-tea.html
Tea almost always is (or can be) kosher. However unless a Rabbi actually monitors the production you can't be sure.
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).
For my Celiac friends, the gluten-free mark is a big deal. They like not having to squint at the back of a box, read all the fine print, and then take a guess as to whether there was cross-contamination.
Good nerd-sniping question. Just spent the last 5 minutes looking around for an answer, and it seems like the grape/raisin comparison is actually quite apt; both (raisins, prunes) are made from a specific cultivar of (grapes, plums) that is particularly well-suited to drying. Prune juice is made from the same cultivar of plum used for drying, so it makes sense to call it "prune juice" because it's more specific.
-- 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.
The juice is actually made from prunes as far as I understand:
> 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.
Is it me, or is this title actually not-super-obvious clickbait but clickbait nonetheless?
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.
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.