Misinformation

[twocoach]

You really couldn't have scripted it any better.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 290253007/

"Satire publication The Onion has won the bidding at a bankruptcy auction for control of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' website Infowars, which was put up for auction by court order to pay off the more than $1 billion he owes to the families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims.

Jones said in a post to social media on Thursday that his site was being shut down and was bought by The Onion. The families won a defamation suit against Jones in 2022 after they said Jones used his platform to push conspiracy theories that the 2012 mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults was a hoax.

The Onion plans to use a relaunched a Infowars site to mock people like Jones who spread misinformation online, The New York Times reported. Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun violence prevention, will advertise on the site, according to the report."

[japhy]

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.

Jack Kerouac

[KUTradition]

Elon Musk's AI turns on him, labels him 'one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X'

[KUTradition]

https://www.barrons.com/amp/news/end-of ... n-da59beb2

[jfish26]

https://www.barrons.com/amp/news/end-of ... n-da59beb2

"I'm not going to the zoo ever AGAIN," said the man without a face.

[jfish26]

This could go so many different places, but. Call the fight. This is a knockout of so much of the inane nonsense that pops up everywhere, very much including this little corner of the internet.

What The Fuck Is A “Vaccine Skeptic”?

https://defector.com/what-the-fuck-is-a-vaccine-skeptic

At darker moments, contesting this kind of stuff in the wake of the 2024 election—and all the shameless, shameful, unforgivable work the American media did to produce that election's outcome—feels as absurd as demanding the cannibal presently eating your legs use a knife and fork. In less dark moments, that contestation feels like just about the only form hope can take. The language still exists. Maybe someone will need it, someday, to accomplish some good in the world, while the world still exists. If that's ever to be possible, then our language has to retain some usefulness, too. It has to be tended.

"Trump Picks R.F.K. Jr. to be Head of Health and Human Services Dept.," reads the New York Times headline from Thursday, atop a story by health policy reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg about, well, pretty much what the headline says. We're fine up to that point. Then there's the subhed (emphasis [original author's]): "Whether the Senate would confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has unorthodox views about medicine, is an open question." That formulation repeats in the lead paragraph (emphasis [original author's]):

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, setting up a debate over whether Mr. Kennedy, whose vaccine skepticism and unorthodox views about medicine make public health officials deeply uneasy, can be confirmed.

"Vaccine skeptic." "Vaccine skepticism." What the fuck are we talking about here? I would rather chew through my own wrist like Shelly in The Evil Dead than deploy one of those "Merriam-Webster defines 'skepticism' as ..." sentences in a blog. I won't damn do it. But you don't often encounter a word being used to describe its exact opposite in the pages of one of the English language's most prominent publications. It's difficult to imagine a place where you might encounter that sort of usage. That's not really how language works.

What is skepticism? In my lifetime as a word-nerd, I have known "skepticism" to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence in place of things like dogma and "common sense." A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially, a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They're the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob.

There is no such thing as an adult "vaccine skeptic" in the year 2024. For all its factual value as a label, you might just as accurately call R.F.K. Jr. an esquilax. Any reasonable questions that a skeptical, critical-minded person might have about how and whether vaccines work can be answered by more hard, clear evidence than a person could exhaust in a year of nonstop research. To practice skepticism in this case, to approach the science of vaccination with a skeptic's demands, is to learn that vaccines work, and that vaccination as a practice has done incalculable good for humanity. The idea of a "vaccine skeptic" in 2024 is as nonsensical as the idea of a germ theory skeptic. A molecular biology skeptic. A heliocentricity skeptic. A spherical triangle.

How does a shit-for-brains like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. come to be described as a "vaccine skeptic" in the New York Times, in 2024, when he absolutely is not one, and when there is also no such thing as one? As a copy matter, "skeptic" certainly costs less column space than engaging with the question of whether Kennedy's anti-vax fear-mongering reflects the cynical calculus of a scumbag grifter or the sweaty but sincere raving of a dumb guy with grave mental illness, or both, or what. On the other hand, "skeptic" is one character longer than "denier," which is without question the more factually upstanding term here, as it merely describes what Kennedy does—he denies the efficacy of vaccines—and makes no claims about the basis of that denial.

Surely the incurable politeness of America's boneless legacy press plays a role in this. "Vaccine denier" simply is not flattering to Kennedy; "vaccine skeptic" makes him seem ... well, like the kind of person that antivaxxers like to think they are: serious, flinty-eyed question-askers, rather than stubborn assholes stamping their feet and refusing to learn what can be fully known because they want some special hidden truth of their own. At any rate, "vaccine skeptic" certainly is nicer and less contentious than calling Kennedy a motivated bullshitter, a peddler of antiscientific garbage, the type of dogshit-brained imbecile who will stiff-arm all that can be learned from centuries of medical research and practice because he preferred what he learned from a 25-second TikTok video made by a spiral-eyed homeschool casualty who'll be hospitalized next month with an illness that hasn't sickened a human being since the Bronze Age. That laundering does him a favor he doesn't remotely deserve, but it is especially egregious now that Kennedy seems very likely to end up holding a powerful position in national government. It's that last bit, as much as his famous name, that wins Kennedy that favor; if this clammy lummox is going to be in charge of something important, then the Times must do its customary job of dressing him for the part.

So much of what has brought us all to this unutterably bleak moment in American history—with eradicated diseases on the rise, the biosphere sweltering to death, a 34-times-convicted felon and twice-impeached rapist and bigot swept back into the presidency on a promise to exacerbate the real problems and fix the imaginary ones, all the levers of power in the hands of a tiny number of giddy sneering fascists, a shattered society eagerly transforming what's left of itself into a casino—seems crystallized in the decision to call a guy who thinks vaccines make your organs transparent a "vaccine skeptic," in an article about how he'll pretty soon be taking over what remains of the United States's woefully degraded public health apparatus. Wimpy deference to sneering bad actors and moneyed crackpots; slovenly ignorance and poisonous half-literacy; reflexive retconning of whoever and whatever attains power into the established forms of seriousness; and the narcotizing glaze of illusory continuity slathered over it all. It all comes together in this, in the cowardly refusal to see reality for what it is and describe it truthfully—to value skepticism, that is to say, and all that it demands.

There is sig-worthy stuff in here, all over the place.

[KUTradition]

A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They're the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob…

*swoon*

[jfish26]

A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus; a person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia, is not a skeptic. They're the exact opposite of that: a mark. A sucker. A credulous boob…

*swoon*

At any rate, "vaccine skeptic" certainly is nicer and less contentious than calling Kennedy a motivated bullshitter, a peddler of antiscientific garbage, the type of dogshit-brained imbecile who will stiff-arm all that can be learned from centuries of medical research and practice because he preferred what he learned from a 25-second TikTok video made by a spiral-eyed homeschool casualty who'll be hospitalized next month with an illness that hasn't sickened a human being since the Bronze Age.

[jfish26]

I’m old enough to remember when this sort of thing was enough for an election to be declared stolen.

[KUTradition]

every accusation

[jfish26]

I guess this goes here, because assumptions this poor fuel susceptibility to misinformation.

Americans Have One Very Strange Cognitive Bias

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/americans- ... -cognitive

Yesterday Jemele Hill recirculated a study YouGov did in 2022 about the gaps between people’s perceptions and reality.

YouGov asked a series of questions on “What percentage of Americans do you think are [fill in the blank]?” with the [blank] being all sorts of qualities: black, gay, Christian, left-handed, own a passport, etc.

The results were hilarious. Here are some of the percentages that Americans (on average) think their fellow citizens are:

* Transgender: 21 percent

* Muslim: 27 percent

* Jewish: 30 percent

* Black: 41 percent

* Live in New York City: 30 percent

* Gay or lesbian: 30 percent

We’ll get to the actual, in vivo percentages in a moment. First I want to point out the absurdity: 1-in-3 are gay/lesbian? Muslims and Jews make up 57 percent of the country? Blacks are 40 percent of the population?

Not to be crass, but if a third of the population is gay/lesbian then where are all the kids coming from?

If a quarter of the country is Muslim and a third is Jewish, then mosques plus synagogues would outnumber churches. Does anyone see more mosques and synagogues than churches as they drive around?

If 40 percent of the country is black then wouldn’t there be a lot more black people in Congress? I mean, there have only been 12 African-American senators ever.

You see what I mean: These perceptions do not square with any version of observable reality. Here the numbers as they actually exist in the real world:

* Transgender: 1 percent

* Muslim: 1 percent

* Jewish: 2 percent

* Black: 12 percent

* Live in New York City: 2 percent

* Gay or lesbian: 3 percent

We are talking about errors of perception measured by orders of magnitude. On the trans population, the average American’s estimation is off by 2,000 percent.

If you go down the list of characteristics YouGov asked people about, you see a persistent mistake in one direction: Americans vastly overestimate the numbers of people in minority groups. And by “minority groups” I’m talking not just about racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. They wildly overestimate all kinds of minorities.

For instance, in addition to believing that 30 percent of the country lives in NYC, the average American thinks that 30 percent of the country lives in Texas and 32 percent lives in California.

People think that 20 percent of the country makes $1 million (or more) per year (real number: less than 1 percent); that 54 percent of the country owns guns (real number: 32 percent); that 40 percent of the country served in the military (real number: 6 percent); and that 30 percent of the country is vegetarian (real number: 5 percent).

There’s something interesting going on here that speaks to a particularly American cognitive bias.

You might think that a normal bias would be to look around, see what is common in your experience, and extrapolate to believe that this is also for true of the rest of the world. Instead, we have the opposite.

People see very few of these characteristics in their everyday lives—and then decide that the rest of the world must be full of these minority groups they rarely encounter.

For someone living in a middle-class suburb of Cleveland, how many trans people, or Muslims, or millionaires do they meet on a daily basis? I’m guessing, just based on statistics, that the answer approaches zero.

But this average person takes the absence of those minority groups in their life and assumes that the rest of the country is chockablock with them.

That is a strange kind of bias. But wait—there’s more!

As YouGov kept going they found that people generally underestimate the size of majority populations. Here’s what they found on majority characteristics, where the number in blue is the percentage that people think exists and the number in red is the percentage that actually exists.



I would like to propose that this peculiar perception bias is indicative of something deep in the American psyche.

American politics has long been driven by concerns about The Other.

Often The Other is based on race or ethnicity. Sometimes on wealth. Sometimes it’s about class.

These perception gaps suggest that Americans in the majority are deeply paranoid about their own position relative to The Other. They believe that people who are nothing like them make up some massive but invisible bloc, while the people who are very much like them—whom they see every day at the store and in school—are more rare than they wish.

This distorted perception leads people in majorities to a combative, oppositional politics. They worry about being displaced by minorities they rarely encounter but fear are lurking somewhere, out there, in great masses.

Richard Hofstadter wrote about the paranoid style in American politics in 1964 and he was looking at both the contemporary and the historical. Developments since then have mostly confirmed his thesis. I think we can take it as read that paranoia is an important component of American social and political life.

And if this is the case, then I would say that our bizarre perception bias is both symptom and cause. People are paranoid about The Other, which is why they believe that hordes of The Other must exist. And the belief that their own majority group is small while The Other is large feeds the underlying paranoia.

I’m not sure how democracy is supposed to work with a population that is this paranoid, confused, and oblivious to reality.

And now we have shattered the rule of law and America's place in the world, because someone came along who could turn these profound failures in cognitive reasoning into ballot box gold.

[MICHHAWK]

you lost me at jemeal hill.

[KUTradition]

racist says what?

[jfish26]

Amazing. When the name is so right-in-front-of-your-face that it requires effort to misspell it - I mean, that's masks-off stuff.

[jfish26]

It’s almost like a corporate media that knowingly hyperinflates false crises can end up creating real ones.



There are seemingly now two outcomes that are (individually or in combination) much more likely than the rest: (1) Trump will carry out his stated plans, and cause inflation that is actually as broadly bad as what people were deceived into thinking occurred under Biden, and/or (2) Trump will NOT carry out his stated plans, and will take credit for the Trump
economy being something other than simply a continuation of the (quite robust!) Biden economy.

And of course of the bitch of it is that, in Scenario 1, Trump will likely succeed in convincing his flock that the inflation is the Democrats’ fault. Whether by the cake being baked, or by obstructing the full extent of His will.

[BiggDick]

chef's kiss.

[JKLivin]

It’s almost like a corporate media that knowingly hyperinflates false crises can end up creating real ones.



There are seemingly now two outcomes that are (individually or in combination) much more likely than the rest: (1) Trump will carry out his stated plans, and cause inflation that is actually as broadly bad as what people were deceived into thinking occurred under Biden, and/or (2) Trump will NOT carry out his stated plans, and will take credit for the Trump
economy being something other than simply a continuation of the (quite robust!) Biden economy.

And of course of the bitch of it is that, in Scenario 1, Trump will likely succeed in convincing his flock that the inflation is the Democrats’ fault. Whether by the cake being baked, or by obstructing the full extent of His will.

Ya know, you can keep saying these things and posting data that are skewed to support your claims, but the fact remains that I don't know anyone who feels better off than they were in 2019, and, if exit polls and election results are to be believed, not many others did, either.

Might be a note for future Dim campaigns to file away: telling people that their perceptions are wrong, that the are too stupid to see that their bank accounts are not an accurate representation of how great their financial situations are, and to stop feeling that way isn't a solid strategy.

[BiggDick]

what is going on here, exactly?

why would corporate media knowingly hyperinflate false crises?

What's the motive?

[jfish26]

It’s almost like a corporate media that knowingly hyperinflates false crises can end up creating real ones.



There are seemingly now two outcomes that are (individually or in combination) much more likely than the rest: (1) Trump will carry out his stated plans, and cause inflation that is actually as broadly bad as what people were deceived into thinking occurred under Biden, and/or (2) Trump will NOT carry out his stated plans, and will take credit for the Trump
economy being something other than simply a continuation of the (quite robust!) Biden economy.

And of course of the bitch of it is that, in Scenario 1, Trump will likely succeed in convincing his flock that the inflation is the Democrats’ fault. Whether by the cake being baked, or by obstructing the full extent of His will.

Ya know, you can keep saying these things and posting data that are skewed to support your claims, but the fact remains that I don't know anyone who feels better off than they were in 2019, and, if exit polls and election results are to be believed, not many others did, either.

Might be a note for future Dim campaigns to file away: telling people that their perceptions are wrong, that the are too stupid to see that their bank accounts are not an accurate representation of how great their financial situations are, and to stop feeling that way isn't a solid strategy.

You people play just the silliest heads-I-win-tails-you-lose games.

The data is wrong.

You are certain that is true, because you claim to not "know anyone who feels better off than they were in 2019."

This is like 10th grade stuff, man.

And, newsflash: Trump did not win a plurality of the votes solely because a plurality of the country believed the false narrative about inflation. A huge part of Trump's plurality - I would guess, a majority among that plurality - was going to vote for the bigotry and chaos even if that group felt economically secure.

[jfish26]

what is going on here, exactly?

why would corporate media knowingly hyperinflate false crises?

What's the motive?

It's, ah, right there in your post.