The rise of conspiracy theorists and entitlement culture

crunchman

prowla said:

I was uneasy about twitter banning Trumpf, I have to say.

I suppose it was the combination of him talking rubbish and being the most powerful man in the World.

Angela Merkel was uneasy about Twitter banning Trump.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/germany-s-merkel-finds-twitter-ban-on-trump-account-problematic/ar-BB1cEKyw

The problem with banning the fruitcakes and loons is that you also risk banning people with a legitimate issue that doesn't agree with the Silicon Valley version of what reality is.

If the price for legitimate freedom of speech is giving a voice to fruitcakes and loons then it's a price worth paying.

LastMantra

Emp_Fab said:

So.... again.....  we've established that the rapid (rabid?) proliferation is a relatively new phenomena and that social media is the vehicle...

We have? 

Axe_meister

I think there is a bigger role for the press and bigger responsibility. Remember the "alternative facts" debarkle, every newspaper left and right should have jumped in that one. 
The problem with the press is ownership, I think the Merdoch empire should be split up.

A button you can hit that says, "proof" that alerts the social media company that an article may be bullshit,
After which an AI can travel through articles trying to find proof of it can't a bi-partisan group of fact checkers will take over.
After a while some sites will deemed on the whole trust worthy, others not so.

Roland

JezWynd said:

Trump realised the power of the big lie repeated again and again. Imagine being a Trump follower on Twitter for the past 5 years. Every day your phone will ding multiple times to reveal another lie sent directly to you by your President, complete with helpful links to draw you ever deeper into into the warren of alternative facts.

Trump wasn’t the first. Herr Doktor Goebbels said “If I say something five times then it becomes true”. The Nazis used the news media, particularly the new fangled reproduction of photographs, to influence public opinion.

Roland

crunchman said:

I work with a tin foil hatter who is about 66.  She has a physics degree and should know better ... she basically said they have lots of technology they aren't telling us about.   That seems to be the default answer.  Something that doesn't stack up in their theories always seems to be linked to hidden technology (maybe linked to Roswell).  

Sabine Hosenfelder made a video about this. Her solution is effectively Occam’s razor: any proveable theory must contain fewer degrees of freedom than the phenomena it describes. Otherwise you can add another item to explain away observable facts which don’t fit the theory.

Bridgehouse

Roland said:

crunchman said:

I work with a tin foil hatter who is about 66.  She has a physics degree and should know better ... she basically said they have lots of technology they aren't telling us about.   That seems to be the default answer.  Something that doesn't stack up in their theories always seems to be linked to hidden technology (maybe linked to Roswell).  

Sabine Hosenfelder made a video about this. Her solution is effectively Occam’s razor: any proveable theory must contain fewer degrees of freedom than the phenomena it describes. Otherwise you can add another item to explain away observable facts which don’t fit the theory.

I’m a strong believer in the principal of Occam’s Razor. 

For most conspiracies you come across there is a huge degree of mass-collusion, organisation, technology and control required to carry off the conspiracy. As such, for me the believability is inversely proportional to the degree of complexity required for it to work. 

Conspiracy that coronavirus is planned? Hardly. Would require huge amounts of all of the above. Conspiracy that some people in power have used it as an opportunity to make some dosh for them or their mates? Far more likely to be true.

stratology

Emp_Fab said:

So....  how do we push back against this tide of idiots ?  How can you divest someone of their crazy beliefs when they lack the basic cognitive tools to think rationally ?

Long term:
- double down on education (like what Apple has announced last week re minority education, and the DeVos firing)
- cut off their communication (report every FB misinformation post, because FB management still wants to pretend they are more than a site where misinformation providers can meet misinformation consumers)
- cut ties to any businesses that associate in any shape or form with conspiracists - losing money hurts much more than losing an argument (e.g. health food store where staff does not wear masks)
- isolate their means of communication (meaning, when a platform like FB spreads misinformation, do not use the same platform to post factual information - all information on these platforms is compromised, posting facts only lends credibility to the lies)


Short term
- conspiracists want to feel special, important and victimised, and they crave attention. Do not engage in any discussion or argument with them. Starve their attention seeking.
- if they're friends, keep your distance, but don't end the friendship. Think of them as victims of a religious cult.

crunchman

The establishment also needs to have some credibility.  Unfortunately, they keep spewing out stuff that is demonstrably false - like the 4000 deaths per day prediction before the second lockdown.

They have done it again with this lockdown.

Lockdown 1:  working back from the peak of deaths, peak infections was approximately a week before the lockdown was announced.

Lockdown 2:  same thing - new infections were falling before the lockdown was announced.

Lockdown 3:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases#card-cases_by_specimen_date

Positive tests peaked on Jan 1st.  Lockdown announced Jan 3rd.

I know the government has to err on the side of caution a bit, but all those predictions about how it was rising exponentially and would keep going up were wrong (again).  Maybe not quite as bad as the 4000 deaths per day figure they came out with before the second lockdown, but they were feeding us misinformation (again).

This is another reason why people no longer trust what the establishment is saying.

In this case, it's not just the fruit loops who are questioning it.  It's people like Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta who are openly disagreeing with it.  They are both professors of epidemiology at Oxford.

I know the government wants a simple message to give to people, but when they just present numbers from the likes of Ferguson (who has been shown to be wrong several times) as gospel fact, they are giving ammunition to the nutters when it turns out they are wrong.

stratology

A prediction is not a fact, it's an educated guess. Guessing wrong is not the same as wilful misinformation. Here in Ireland the government hopelessly under estimated how bad the effect of loosening restrictions over Christmas would be.. 

VimFuego

it's important to note that anti vax sentiment is not limited to the UK and was around a long time before the current pandemic. It's also important to note that the whole covid is a hoax thing is not limited to the UK.

crunchman

stratology said:

A prediction is not a fact, it's an educated guess. Guessing wrong is not the same as wilful misinformation. Here in Ireland the government hopelessly under estimated how bad the effect of loosening restrictions over Christmas would be.. 

The problem is that they are using "educated guesses" from people who have repeatedly been wrong.  It is undermining their credibility, which is another factor in the rise of the distrust of the conspiracy loons.  When people know they have been wrong about one thing, it makes them more likely to think they are wrong about something else.

When it's so obviously, blatantly, wrong as that 4000 deaths a day figure was**, it also starts some people start thinking there is some kind of agenda behind it.  They don't think anyone in that position in the establishment can possibly be that incompetent, so they they jump to the conclusion that it's deliberate.  It it's deliberate, then there must be a reason, and we are in the realms of conspiracy theory.

**Fatality rate is well under 1%.  There are studies that put it as low as 0.2%, but even using the 0.9% figure that Imperial were using in September, that means that 444,000 people would have to be catching it every day to get 4000 deaths per day a few weeks later.

We were running at just over 22,000 positive tests per day at that point.  I think the ONS study put the true rate at about twice that number.  Based on the ONS figure, the number of cases would have had to increase 10 times to get to the number of cases required for 4000 deaths per day.  They were saying the R rate was a bit over one.  With an R rate a bit over 1, there was no way that it was going to increase 10 fold in just a few weeks.  It's just simple maths.  That's without factoring in increasing immunity in the population slowing the spread.

stratology

crunchman said:

The problem is that they are using "educated guesses" from people who have repeatedly been wrong.  

That's not what I'm seeing. When politicians don't listen to virologists and epidemiologists, their predictions - predictions based on economic and political considerations - are usually wrong. 

There is a fundamental difference in how politicians and scientists think. Scientific thinking is exclusively fact based. Political thinking is based on negotiating and compromising. Politicians, more often than not, have difficulties comprehending that you can't negotiate with a virus. That a virus does not accept a compromise, because families, understandably, would like to spend Christmas together.

Politicians with a background in science - like Varadkar and Merkel - seem to be more capable of comprehending what they're dealing with.


One major issue I see here in Ireland is that - unlike in Germany - there is no direct communication between scientists and the general population. These days, everybody and their dog in Germany can tell you the difference between a PCR and antigen test. Because scientists have found ways of communicating directly - not via politicians - with the people.

stratology

VimFuego said:

it's important to note that anti vax sentiment is not limited to the UK and was around a long time before the current pandemic. It's also important to note that the whole covid is a hoax thing is not limited to the UK.

Facebook has facilitated communicating misinformation from the US religious right anti vaxxers with its algorithms: when FB sees you have an interest in health food, it starts serving anti-vax conspiracies.

And the conspiracists have learned how to communicate more effectively: instead of saying "if god wants your kid to die, you should let it die, not give it medication" they now say "if you give your kid a vaccine, it will get autism".

This is clever - it exploits the natural fear that parents have for safety of their kids, and the misconception that half of a lie is a half truth.

Emp_Fab

A big +1 to that @stratology. ;;; Facebook and Google hold the keys to this.  Their algorithms effectively pigeonhole people and force-feed them the same diet every day.  This is not normal.  In real social circles you will hear opposing views and other angles and nuances that you may not have considered.  I know their algorithms are written to maximise their revenue and (hopefully!) not as part of some giant societal-control plan, but that is what's happening - and it's a very very dangerous side-effect.  Their algorithms are quite literally positive feedback loops without any controls - which as any electronics engineer will know, leads to bad things happening.  The more extreme your reading material, the more extreme stuff you will get fed and so on.

The traditional media has limited effect and I think they just react to the trends set by social media, which, in turn, are set by the algorithms.  Absolutely they will feed their viewers whatever they think they want to see (translated: whatever will maximise their viewing figures and ergo, ad revenue).  Well, the less scrupulous ones will forgo all principle anyway.  I'm quite sure that if Fox thought a trending rumour that they knew to be bullshit could get their ratings increased, they wouldn't hesitate to put together a two-hour 'special', fanning the flames of the rumour.

Unless the likes of Facebook and Google are made to alter their algorithms to provide a more balanced feed, I can't see how this can end well.  The world population divided into enclaves of differing beliefs, all having their beliefs reinforced daily.  

In the Terminator franchise, the machines turn on the humans once Skynet becomes autonomous.  I think we are witnessing our own version of Skynet slowly turn the humans against each other.

prowla

That’s a problem with headlines; someone says it could be up to 4000 deaths and the headline becomes there will be 4000 deaths. 

TeleMaster

Roland said:

crunchman said:

I work with a tin foil hatter who is about 66.  She has a physics degree and should know better ... she basically said they have lots of technology they aren't telling us about.   That seems to be the default answer.  Something that doesn't stack up in their theories always seems to be linked to hidden technology (maybe linked to Roswell).  

Sabine Hosenfelder made a video about this. Her solution is effectively Occam’s razor: any proveable theory must contain fewer degrees of freedom than the phenomena it describes. Otherwise you can add another item to explain away observable facts which don’t fit the theory.

Wow thanks for introducing this channel to me. Very cool!

dano

crunchman said:

The establishment also needs to have some credibility.  Unfortunately, they keep spewing out stuff that is demonstrably false - like the 4000 deaths per day prediction before the second lockdown.

I know the government has to err on the side of caution a bit, but all those predictions about how it was rising exponentially and would keep going up were wrong (again).  Maybe not quite as bad as the 4000 deaths per day figure they came out with before the second lockdown, but they were feeding us misinformation (again).

Was it really a predicted 4000 deaths a day that put us into Lockdown 2? I can't recall that number. Have you got a link ? 

crunchman

dano said:

crunchman said:

The establishment also needs to have some credibility.  Unfortunately, they keep spewing out stuff that is demonstrably false - like the 4000 deaths per day prediction before the second lockdown.

I know the government has to err on the side of caution a bit, but all those predictions about how it was rising exponentially and would keep going up were wrong (again).  Maybe not quite as bad as the 4000 deaths per day figure they came out with before the second lockdown, but they were feeding us misinformation (again).

Was it really a predicted 4000 deaths a day that put us into Lockdown 2? I can't recall that number. Have you got a link ? 

The "central figure" was 2000, but they presented a graph with various different scenarios, which included the 4000 per day by the end of December.  That extreme one was fed into the central one.

The 4000 figure made all the headlines because it was so extreme, and was so ridiculous.  The problem is that it lost them all credibility by being included in the range of scenarios.   They actually admitted a few days later that it was based on out of date data.  Even with the out of date data, it was extreme though.  They were using far too high a figure for the fatality rate.

SPECTRUM001

With the rise of supposed ‘fake news’ (which of course is the self definition of ‘fake news’), I do wonder if courts need to make slander and libel claims easier to manage.

It is so expensive, protracted and exhausting to sue, that it is not a common or viable option.

Which of course means that statistics, suggestions and complete bullshit are all too easy to publish.

If there was easier access to recourse, it may slow down the propaganda.

prowla

crunchman said:

dano said:

crunchman said:

The establishment also needs to have some credibility.  Unfortunately, they keep spewing out stuff that is demonstrably false - like the 4000 deaths per day prediction before the second lockdown.

I know the government has to err on the side of caution a bit, but all those predictions about how it was rising exponentially and would keep going up were wrong (again).  Maybe not quite as bad as the 4000 deaths per day figure they came out with before the second lockdown, but they were feeding us misinformation (again).

Was it really a predicted 4000 deaths a day that put us into Lockdown 2? I can't recall that number. Have you got a link ? 

The "central figure" was 2000, but they presented a graph with various different scenarios, which included the 4000 per day by the end of December.  That extreme one was fed into the central one.

The 4000 figure made all the headlines because it was so extreme, and was so ridiculous.  The problem is that it lost them all credibility by being included in the range of scenarios.   They actually admitted a few days later that it was based on out of date data.  Even with the out of date data, it was extreme though.  They were using far too high a figure for the fatality rate.

And then they wonder why ordinaryfolks don't trust the experts.

Of course, we also had Professor Pantsdown, Dominic Whassisname, and others breaking the rules they helped formulate.

No wonder ordinaryfolks treat the experts with a healthy dose of scepticism.

Not forgetting two women who separately drove 5 miles for a socially-distanced walk in the open air and being fined, whilst the PM cycled 7 miles away from his residence.

Can you blame ordinaryfolks for not respecting the guidance & rules?