rigorousintuition.ca

Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories

Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?
By Evgeny Morozov|Posted Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, at 7:43 AM ET

In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened—but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles—with no or little quality control.
Such democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

People who deny global warming, oppose the Darwinian account of evolution, refuse to see the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and think that 9/11 was an inside job have put the Internet to great use. Initially, the Internet helped them find and recruit like-minded individuals and promote events and petitions favorable to their causes. However, as so much of our public life has shifted online, they have branched out into manipulating search engines, editing Wikipedia entries, harassing scientists who oppose whatever pet theory they happen to believe in, and amassing digitized scraps of "evidence" that they proudly present to potential recruits.

A new article in the medical journal Vaccine sheds light on the online practices of one such group—the global anti-vaccination movement, which is a loose coalition of rogue scientists, journalists, parents, and celebrities, who think that vaccines cause disorders like autism—a claim that has been thoroughly discredited by modern science.

While the anti-vaccination movement itself is not new—religious concerns about vaccination date back to the early 18th century—the ease of self-publishing and search afforded by the Internet along with a growing skeptical stance towards scientific expertise—has given the anti-vaccination movement a significant boost. Thus, Jenny McCarthy, an actress who has become the public face of the anti-vaccination movement, boasts that much of her knowledge about the harms of vaccination comes from "the university of Google.” She regularly shares her "knowledge" about vaccination with her nearly half-million Twitter followers. This is the kind of online influence that Nobel Prize-winning scientists can only dream of; Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous working scientist, has only 300,000 Twitter followers.

more..

I was going to call this thread "Personal Autonomy" but I thought it better - and more appropriate to the RI community - to keep the original title of the article. However, I think I am starting to understand the gulf between my career as a scientist and my attraction to this site and all the weirdness that is discussed here.

It has to do with creativity and personal autonomy.

I don't believe everything I read here, I don't agree with everything that is posted, and there is a fair bit I'm on the fence about. But I believe very strongly in a person's right to believe what they want and act on those beliefs. If they believe something pseudo-scientific and do not want to vaccinate their children - even if there is overwhelming scientific evidence of a health benefit - then I firmly believe in their right to opt out of vaccination. I extend this value to my cultural enemies: although I think gay people run the spectrum from good to bad companions, same as straight people, and I think some people are missing out by avoiding gays entirely, I firmly support their right to "protect" themselves and their children by avoiding me and my ilk, as long as I am accorded the same freedom to go my own way and live my own life free from their interference.

What frightens me is the creeping totalitarianism of thought that insists that we must believe in all propositions that are accepted as Truth by the mainstream, consensus reality, by "authoritative sources", and that we have no freedom to test, empirically by our own means, the value of these "truths" in our own lives. The idea that the state and its organs, and Authorities of all types have a right and a duty to force orthodoxy upon the unwashed masses is the fundamental atrocity that, for me, underlies much of what is discussed on this forum.

Yeah just saw this over at Cryptogon. Glad you posted this.

I really thought the article would be one of those "you can't believe what this guy is proposing!" types of things.

But no, it's actually a piece written by the guy who is proposing, on Slate, that websites do this! He's serious and apparently they are, too, if they're posting this without commentary.

Wow.

The Truth Police are right behind the Thought Police.

Has any serious, objective study has been done to compare the level of general knowledge, critical thinking skills and susceptibility to demagogic propaganda, between individuals who rely solely on corporate "mainstream" media and those who also conduct their own research on the internet or in books?

I grew up when there was no internet and necessarily obtained most of my news from mainstream media. Even after I bought a computer and learned how to use the net (in mid-2001) I used it mostly to send emails to friends. On a morning in April, 2002, I turned on CNN and heard about how the people of Venezuela were celebrating the toppling of the brutal dictator Hugo Chavez. I knew almost nothing about Venezuela at the time, but I was happy for them. On the BBC and all the other international news channels, it was all joy, joy, joy. My interest was piqued, but I was dissatisfied with the images and sound-bites and the scarcity of context, so I decided to see if I could find out more online. Damn.

If it weren't for the internet, especially the websites and blogs that provide evidence which contradicts the "official story", life would be so much easier for the likes of Cass Sunstein and his employers. In fact, we probably wouldn't even know who Cass Sunstein is.

"rogue scientists"

slomo wrote:...What frightens me is the creeping totalitarianism of thought that insists that we must believe in all propositions that are accepted as Truth by the mainstream, consensus reality, by "authoritative sources", and that we have no freedom to test, empirically by our own means, the value of these "truths" in our own lives. The idea that the state and its organs, and Authorities of all types have a right and a duty to force orthodoxy upon the unwashed masses is the fundamental atrocity that, for me, underlies much of what is discussed on this forum.

spot on.

the converse reaction would be: "That is completely irrational, slomo. Of course you can legislate thought."

*

I would assume most of the myth based religions are just fine with this guy, and that he has no problem with the lies people spread based on their interpretations of the bible and other so called holy books? I bet in his world, these books are the 'truth' and should not be questioned.

...

Nordic wrote:Yeah just saw this over at Cryptogon. Glad you posted this.

I really thought the article would be one of those "you can't believe what this guy is proposing!" types of things.

But no, it's actually a piece written by the guy who is proposing, on Slate, that websites do this! He's serious and apparently they are, too, if they're posting this without commentary.

Wow.

The Truth Police are right behind the Thought Police.

Dream Police?



...

2.0 out of 5 stars Gloomy Diatribe, November 23, 2011
By
DJA - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (Hardcover)

While Morozov's goal, to provide a corrective to all the hype, punditry and 'cyber-utopianism' surrounding much of the discourse of the debate on the Internet and political change his book 'The Net Delusion' is little more than a rambling diatribe. Considering Moorozov is a Professor at Stanford University one would have expected that his analysis would be systematic, considered, balanced and academically rigorous. Far from it.
Morozov mostly relies on opinion as fact, providing little if any substantiation of the numerous assertions he makes about the Internet. He asserts for example that the Internet makes it "considerably easier" (p. 117) to produce and disseminate government propaganda in authoritarian regimes basing this on nothing more than the fact that Hugo Chavez chose to start using Twitter. What this assertion completely misses is that while it might make it cheaper and easier it is certainly less effective than propaganda was in an era where state controlled TV, radio and newspapers were the only source of mass information.
Today's audiences are no longer either captive or passive. They can 'fact' check such disinformation, lampoon and parody it, or simply ignore it. Indeed in one chapter Morozov discounts the impact of the Internet by arguing that everyone is too busy downloading pirate movies, watching pornography and sharing pictures of cute cats to take any notice of intellectuals and dissidents, but then seemingly contradicts himself by subsequently arguing that governments can "reinforce their ideological supremacy".
Furthermore in over 300 pages of text there are no citations or footnotes, no quantitative data, little if any primary research and so forth.
Moreover Morozov 'cherry picks' the cases he selects to dismiss the democratizing effects of the Internet choosing to focus on 'failures' such as the Green Revolution in Iran rather than on cases that could be presented alternatively as successes.
Finally his deeply skeptical view of the Internet seems somewhat at odds with the events of 2011 in which Internet activism played a contributory role in helping to coordinate protestors and demonstrators across the Arab world in what has become known as the Arab Spring.


TL;DR Morozov talks bollocks

...

Dream Police?

I know not whether I dream.

Unless my eyes are open.








...

Given that censorship of search engines is not an appealing or even particularly viable option, what can be done to ensure that users are made aware that all the pseudoscientific advice they are likely to encounter may not be backed by science?

So consensus belief is science and non-consensus belief is pseudoscientific, my my that is handy.

Unfortunately, Google's recent embrace of social search, whereby links shared by our friends on Google's own social network suddenly gain prominence in our search results, moves the company in the opposite direction. It's not unreasonable to think that denialists of global warming or benefits of vaccination are online friends with other denialists.

The fella is right here anyway, we do better to have our pretences challenged than to have them supported. Oh, but that spoils the logic of the rest of this paper, nevermind.


It does not require a sophisticated person to realize that considering how large the world is, the events that are presented to us as news will be a very small portion of the class of all events indeed. On top of that, the manners by which these events are presented are bound to reflect the base interests of the sponsors. A natural response will then be for sensitive folk to try to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately most of the blank fillers are working off of ‘sorting programs’ that were provided by the intellectual types that do best at licking the boots of the alpha types. That is, the media and monopoly owners.

Personally I’m not much drawn to conspiracy theory in that there are hazards to making hypotheses with too little evidence. Still, considering where a confluence of interest lies for a given group of people could serve to focus ones search for proper evidence that may provide understanding of that group’s methods and motivations.

I enjoy hearing stories about when the penny dropped, and pray that many of us can be part of others stories in due time. In my story the cynicism came long before the internet, such that any major events were immediately seen as confidence games on their way to becoming mainstream narrative. I can hardly think of any major events that were not that way, maybe the O-ring business on the Challenger, and maybe some pedo scandals, and OK maybe going to the moon (but on the tech of a small east European country, ha,ha,ha,ha)

My story involved looking at a 1917 penny when I was seven years old early on the day that Kennedy was murdered. I realized then that any narrative could only be a very simple picture of what actually goes on. (not in those words of course, jeese I was only seven years old.)

Yet has this wider perspective served to benefit my fellowman? Not hardly. My personal benefits are great in that much time and misspent energy is saved that might otherwise be directed toward unproductive emotional engagements. However, being aware for so long without moving along toward being awake is surely more of an embarrassment than it is a point of pride. It is one thing to be able to handle cognitive dissonance and a quite different thing to reconcile that dissonance.

As the vertical authority distribution system salesmen encounter more resistance to their product, they are bound to become more uncouth and shrill. Therein lays opportunity for fresh expressions of understanding that may at some point make more sense, to average folk, than does the current system that seems largely based on coercion dressed up as rationality.

May this insult, to the creative spirit inherent in consciousness, soon be swept away.

9/11 deniers.

9/11 DENIERS!

BWAAAAAHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

slomo wrote:What frightens me is the creeping totalitarianism of thought that insists that we must believe in all propositions that are accepted as Truth by the mainstream, consensus reality, by "authoritative sources",

To be sure Morozov is suggesting we take a first few steps on that slippery slope.

and that we have no freedom to test, empirically by our own means, the value of these "truths" in our own lives.

He' definitely not suggesting that and I'm not sure how it could possibly be accomplished anyway.... except by making sure people are not equipped to do so. Think shitty public education system.

The idea that the state and its organs, and Authorities of all types have a right and a duty to force orthodoxy upon the unwashed masses is the fundamental atrocity that, for me, underlies much of what is discussed on this forum.

Except, to be fair, Morozov is not suggesting that either. What he is suggesting, among other things, is that search engines organize results and try to provide a balance, which includes both fringe theories and orthodoxy.

Obviously, his suggestions could easily be used to steer people away from information harmful to the state or powerful interests and institutions. But that happens already, doesn't it?


The best solution by far is to teach our children to think critically for themselves. Unsurprisingly the public education system is not doing that. Rather, the public education system teaches our children, by and large, to accept orthodoxy.

Personally, I like first using my own critical skills, then, once something has passed that preliminary stage, I give it a REAL working-over by posting it here.

brainpanhandler wrote:

slomo wrote:What frightens me is the creeping totalitarianism of thought that insists that we must believe in all propositions that are accepted as Truth by the mainstream, consensus reality, by "authoritative sources",

To be sure Morozov is suggesting we take a first few steps on that slippery slope.

and that we have no freedom to test, empirically by our own means, the value of these "truths" in our own lives.

He' definitely not suggesting that and I'm not sure how it could possibly be accomplished anyway.... except by making sure people are not equipped to do so. Think shitty public education system.

The idea that the state and its organs, and Authorities of all types have a right and a duty to force orthodoxy upon the unwashed masses is the fundamental atrocity that, for me, underlies much of what is discussed on this forum.

Except, to be fair, Morozov is not suggesting that either. What he is suggesting, among other things, is that search engines organize results and try to provide a balance, which includes both fringe theories and orthodoxy.

Obviously, his suggestions could easily be used to steer people away from information harmful to the state or powerful interests and institutions. But that happens already, doesn't it?


The best solution by far is to teach our children to think critically for themselves. Unsurprisingly the public education system is not doing that. Rather, the public education system teaches our children, by and large, to accept orthodoxy.

I agree that Morozov's modest proposal is indeed much better than the most egregious forms of censorship, which SOPA would certainly have facilitated (and it's interesting that this essay was published so soon after SOPA went down). But I am worried about the mindset. I see it creeping around on other forums, and even this one, that orthodoxy qua orthodoxy must be maintained, and that straying too far outside the accepted box somehow constitues a great moral offense. I'll admit that this is a subjective impression, because it relies on an opinion about which ideas are truly crazy/irrational and which ideas are worthy of consideration but simply out-of-the-mainstream. It is of course appropriate to call out stupid ideas when warranted. But the nature of the rhetoric is key to me. There is a difference between arguing that an idea has no merit because of X, Y, and Z inconsistencies and factual errors; it is quite another to argue that an idea is crazy on its face and besides its proponent is a horrible person who also believes this terrible and crazy idea and associates with people who believe in reptiles from outer space.