How can the quality of political information be improved?

9 points by iheartblocks 5 years ago | 11 comments

In my mind, the single greatest threat humanity faces is that truth has become relative, polarized, and ambiguous.

Most of the people storming the Capitol weren't lunatics, or anarchists, but regular folks who are terrified. They're terrified because they really believe that their favored candidate was illegally robbed of office.

It's easy to dismiss their concerns, but for those people this is their reality. What they see on Facebook, Youtube, TV, and radio reinforces and invigorates their fear and anger.

The people who run those platforms, or create that content, aren't necessarily evil, they just exist in an ecosystem where engagement is king and tepid, informative content is forgotten.

Unless this balkanization of the truth can be stopped, I don't see how our republic, or any republic, could possibly survive.

What can be done to fix this problem?

VoodooJuJu 5 years ago |

We can stop engaging with political discourse that doesn't take the form of long-form exposition. When you realize only a very small minority of people will adhere to this ideal, that people crave snippets and soundbites inside of bubbles, the next step is realizing that democracy is rule-by-mass-media, which disseminates a message carefully crafted by a small intellectual elite; that the opinions of voters are largely crafted for and distributed to them; their opinions are not their own.

Even this, what I've written, is just feelings and intuition. So that's basically my answer: long-form exposition and the skills for evaluating an exposition's soundness. But it's an ideal that doesn't play out.

eivarv 5 years ago |

Teach critical thinking (including logic, cognitive biases, epistemology, etc.) and source criticism in schools.

Misinformation, propaganda, conspiratorial thinking and other bad ideas is nothing new.

Give people the tools they need to differentiate between information with various degrees of truthiness.

zepto 5 years ago |

I generally agree with your overall thesis here.

There are of course psychopaths, and people with psychosis in all groups, but you simply don’t get mobs or organized groups of such people en masse for fairly obvious reasons.

But when you say this: “They're terrified because they really believe that their favored candidate was illegally robbed of office.”

You leave out that a significant part of the group of non lunatics think that the cause is a cabal of globalist canibalistic pedophiles.

When we talk about not dismissing concerns, it seems comparatively easy not to dismiss concerns about election integrity. It also seems comparatively easy not to dismiss concerns about how trade policy has invested in other nations to the neglect of many everyday Americans (to cite some examples).

What is not so easy not to dismiss is the concern about the conspiracy of cannibalistic pedophiles.

I say this not to say we should dismiss anyone’s concerns, but to elaborate on what the challenge seems to have become.

iheartblocks 5 years ago |

One possibility would be to have a government body fine media outlets and social media platforms that leave people misinformed, or more likely to become extremized.

The largest risk that I see with that plan is that it implies a level of government censorship, something that is an undeniably risky proposition. On one hand, a malevolent political party could wield that power to their own advantage, and on the other hand political gridlock could neuter any real progress being made.

To address this, I'm imagining a new branch of government run via sortition. In this system, qualifying citizens would be selected by lottery, and would serve on a committee to oversee it's proper execution.

This way, companies would have a vested interest in giving their users access to the truth, and an incentive to puncture the knowledge bubble that fosters extremism.

runjake 5 years ago |

Clearly delineate facts from opinions. Both are vital in politics, but each must maintain their own space. Restore critical thinking skills.

logicslave 5 years ago |

People like you keep thinking its wrong information thats causing people to act this way. Ever consider that theres fundamental problems in American society that extend beyond the media? That make rushing the capital rational?

zepto 5 years ago | |

A third possibility is that there it’s both fundamental problems in American society and wrong information, that make rushing the capital an irrational response to real problems.

logicslave 5 years ago | | |

Thats a fair assertion. But this whole idea that its all fake news causing people to act this way is itself fake news, most people dont have great lives and then one day just decide to riot because of a news article.