Error

One speculative, semi-vague, and perhaps hedgehoggy point that I’ve often come back to when thinking about this:

I think it’s quite possible that many people have a set of beliefs/​assumptions about democracies which cause them to grossly (albeit perhaps not ultimately) underestimate the threat of mis- and dis-information in democracies: in conversations and research presentations I’ve listened to, I’ve frequently heard people frame the issue of audiences believing misinformation/​disinformation as such audiences making some mistake or irrational choice. This certainly makes sense when it comes to conspiracy theories that tell you to do personally-harmful things like not getting any vaccines or foolishly investing all of your money in some bubble. However, I feel that people in these conversations/​presentations will occasionally confuse epistemic rationality (i.e., wanting to have accurate beliefs) and instrumental rationality (i.e., wanting to do—including believe—whatever maximizes one’s own interests): sometimes having inaccurate beliefs is more personally beneficial than having accurate beliefs, especially for social or psychological reasons.

This stands out most strongly when it comes to democracies and voting: unlike your personal medical and financial choices, your voting behavior has effectively no “ostensible personal impact” (i.e., on who gets elected and subsequently what policies are put into place which affect you). Given this, lines of reasoning such as “voters are incentivized to have accurate beliefs because if they believe crazy things they’re more likely to support policies that harm themselves” are flawed.

In reality, rather than framing the question by simply asking “why do voters have these irrational beliefs /​ why are they making these mistakes”, I think it’s important to also ask “Why would we even expect these voters to have accurate beliefs in the first place?”

Ultimately, I have more nuanced views on the potential health and future of democracy, but I think that disinformation/​misinformation strikes at one of the core weak points of democracy: [setting aside the non-democratic features of democracies (e.g., non- or semi-democratic institutions within government)] democracies manage to function largely because voters are 1) delusional about the impact of their voting choices, and/​or 2) motivated by psychological and social reasons—including some norms like “I shouldn’t believe crazy things”—to make somewhat reasonable decisions. Mis- and dis-information, however, seem to undermine these norms.

There is a lot of thought in this post and a lot of dense context provided in the links.

Overall, “misinformation” seems like an extremely broad area. I find it difficult situating and absorbing the information presented in the links.

The OP has put a lot of content into deep fakes. This seems important, but it’s unclear if this is the subject she is most interested, and it’s unclear how it’s related to “misinformation” overall.

I wish I had more knowledge about what misinformation is and how we should think about it, or its opposite, “Truth”. For example, related to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian aligned content has dominated western social media. This content isn’t entirely truthful, yet it probably serves the principles of justice and freedom in a way that most people like.

Maybe a way to get more replies and engagement would be for the OP to provide a few paragraphs on what they are most interested in (maybe it is deep fakes, or maybe something else) or provide their views and concerns.

Also potentially relevant: a skeptical talk on “media literacy” I enjoyed skimming: https://​​points.datasociety.net/​​you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you-7cad6af18ec2