Misinformation is the spread of false information. When false information is spread knowingly, the associated misinformation is generally referred to as disinformation.
Related entries
Wiblin, Robert & Keiran Harris (2021) Nina Schick on disinformation and the rise of synthetic media, 80,000 Hours, April 6.
Related entries
AI governance | AI risk | epistemology | information hazard | psychology | rationality
I deleted ‘misinformation’ and ‘infodemics’, since they covered very similar territory. I think we probably want to have one entry broadly related to disinformation, though I’m not sure the entry should discuss disinformation specifically rather than some broader phenomenon of which it may be seen as a manifestation. Something like ‘epistemics’, or perhaps ‘collective epistemics’, strikes me as perhaps more appropriate, though I’m not too pleased with these options either. LessWrong has an entry on epistemic hygiene, which could be an alternative. Do others have thoughts?
How about something like misinformation (Cause Area)? There are several posts on the topic and it appears under 80K’s list of potential cause areas.
This would be a subset of all forms of “improving collective epistemics”, but I think that it’s a widely enough discussed topic so that it makes sense to have it as a tag by itself
Thanks. Can you link to the 80k post? I wasn’t able to find it.
Also, I haven’t actually seen that many Forum posts on the topic, so if you or others could point me to the relevant ones, that would be useful. (Here are the search results for ‘misinformation’.)
Ah, I was thinking of Aligning Recommender Systems. I will find more relevant posts tomorrow
Recommender systems:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sX6mkaNN7mEKuWdRi/looking-for-collaborators-after-last-80k-podcast-with
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CHfuH58thMHPN8zHX/is-there-evidence-that-recommender-systems-are-changing
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xzjQvqDYahigHcwgQ/aligning-recommender-systems-as-cause-area
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zAsL6P4jPncK9zwBH/is-the-youtube-algorithm-radicalizing-you-it-s-complicated
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/E4gfMSqmznDwMrv9q/are-social-media-algorithms-an-existential-risk
misinformation proper:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pYHZ8dhZWPCSZ66dX/i-knew-a-bit-about-misinformation-and-fact-checking-in-2017
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ixLPyMNCLH2Jg7aBc/ea-philly-s-infodemics-event-part-1-jeremy-blackburn and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qsiFQyihEuQEeNsfJ/ea-philly-s-infodemics-event-part-2-aviv-ovadya
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SYzqYssnPTj7iMg8Y/day-one-project-technology-policy-accelerator
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vj3yGmc46nT4YY2K4/my-preliminary-research-on-the-adtech-marketplace
sort of related:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Xjo23zhn6CPoijLSo/a-love-letter-to-civilian-osint-and-possibilities-as-a-tool
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b4DC6o4vuPrncczQ2/are-we-doomed-memos#April_15___Cyber___Memos___Issue__9___jamesallenevans_AreWeDoomed__github_com_
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SitudkgqA5Gnwfxdz/ea-considerations-regarding-increasing-political
Thanks. I’d be tentatively in favor of an entry on aligning recommender systems. The highest karma post in the less-discussed causes tag, by a factor of ~3, is Aligning recommender systems as a cause area, which seems like a decent argument for creating such an entry.
My hunch is that an entry on the broader phenomenon may be better, unless there is more on disinformation specifically than I suspect.
“Epistemic norms” could be one option, though maybe it would not cover everything that you have in mind.
Thanks. Yeah, “epistemic norms” is another possibility. I actually don’t have a very clear phenomenon in mind: it seems we want to discuss stuff in a cluster that includes a number of slightly different topics.
I think I favour retitling this current entry to “misinformation”, and I’m neutral on the idea of also creating a separate entry for something like “epistemics”, “epistemic hygeine”, or (perhaps less good from my view) “epistemic norms”.
I see “misinformation” that as important and big enough to warrant its own entry (even if maybe “epistemic norms” or something warrants an entry too), and see “disinformation” as basically a subset that can be well-covered by the “misinformation” entry.
And I’m against having an entry for “infodemics”, since that seems like an unnecessary and relatively uncommon piece of jargon, and seems vaguely alarmist. (Like, I’d rather we discuss “how big a deal is the spread of misinformation and how does that occur?”, rather than using the term “infodemic” and thereby kind-of baking in the assumption that aaah this is a huge deal, look at it multiplying!)
But these are tentative views.
Okay, I renamed the entry to ‘Misinformation’. I’ll try to add some content later.
I don’t have strong thoughts about creating an additional entry. Maybe we can just mull over it, or leave the thread here for a while in case others have suggestions. For future reference, the proposals made so far are
collective epistemics
collective rationality
epistemics
epistemic hygiene
epistemic norms
quality of public discourse
(I’m the one who proposed ‘epistemic hygiene’ but in retrospect agree with Stefan that it’s not a good name. I’m leaving it for the sake of completeness.)
I agree that “infodemics” is too jargony. I think the same is true of “epistemic hygiene”.
I think things like “collective rationality”, “collective epistemics”, or “quality of public discourse” would be reasonable though.
One difference is that “infodemics” bakes in an alarmist vibe—that’s actually my main problem with it.
Though I do agree both are jargony, and I’m neutral overall regarding whether to create an entry covering something like “epistemic hygeine” and, if so, whether to use that name.