2022 Freedumb Convoy(s) Thread

[Doctorfever]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Danielle Smith stood up in a public debate, lied to everyone, and people who want debates to be “in the open” still voted for her. People will believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of how the information is shared.

I really don’t disagree with you and opendoor on this. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about information that was as outlandish as ‘government wants to make you eat bugs’. Is that really a thing?

Anyways, you feel trying to suppress the information is better? It might be when it comes to stuff this crazy.

Maybe instead of an actual ‘debate’ there are just a couple of people talking and explaining why the information is not correct. But it might be too boring to draw an audience.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Yoho

Says the guy who still defends Trudeau at every turn.

It would seem that way to someone who blames Trudeau for everything from the price of gas to the stains on their underwear.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

I really don’t disagree with you and opendoor on this. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about information that was as outlandish as ‘government wants to make you eat bugs’. Is that really a thing?

Anyways, you feel trying to suppress the information is better? It might be when it comes to stuff this crazy.

Maybe instead of an actual ‘debate’ there are just a couple of people talking and explaining why the information is not correct. But it might be too boring to draw an audience.

I don’t know, I see what you’re saying but people spreading misinformation can easily replicate that same format and act like trustworthy authorities. We saw that play out over COVID a lot.

I do think finding ways limit the platform this kind of crazy is given is worthwhile. Freedom of speech says you should be able to say all kinds of crazy without the government punishing you. It doesn’t say you should be given a platform on YouTube and an algorithm that spreads your message as far as possible to even vaguely interested victims.

[Wormius]

Trudeau shoe-horned into another conversation. How trite.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

I really don’t disagree with you and opendoor on this. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about information that was as outlandish as ‘government wants to make you eat bugs’. Is that really a thing?

Anyways, you feel trying to suppress the information is better? It might be when it comes to stuff this crazy.

Maybe instead of an actual ‘debate’ there are just a couple of people talking and explaining why the information is not correct. But it might be too boring to draw an audience.

I think the cat's out of the bag at this point. You can't really even begin to suppress this kind of information, nor is that really a road that a government should go down. I suppose you could lower the barrier for things like libel so people and platforms have to become more responsible for what they say, but that might not really be workable. And it would probably just lead to people with deep pockets suing everyone into silence to avoid cricitism.

It's just a bad mix of different incentives. Platforms don't really care what people say on them, as long it makes them money. Grifters will say whatever gets them views. And the most obsessed people are the ones who are going to be the most engaged and generate the most ad revenue. So the aim is to tell disaffected people exactly what they want to hear and who the blame for all their problems. But instead of that person having to seek out alternative print media or go see a radical speaker in-person like in the past, they just have to go on YouTube or Facebook and it'll be served right up to them.

To me, the only real long-term solutions are:

1) Try to improve peoples' media literacy and rationality. But that's an uphill battle and any adults who believe these kinds of things are probably lost causes already.

2) Improve the material conditions of the working class, so they're less likely to be swayed by the more extreme stuff. That would help to some degree, but there are also a lot of people who are outwardly in good shape (well off, good jobs, families, etc.) who fall into this junk.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

I really don’t disagree with you and opendoor on this. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about information that was as outlandish as ‘government wants to make you eat bugs’. Is that really a thing?

Anyways, you feel trying to suppress the information is better? It might be when it comes to stuff this crazy.

Maybe instead of an actual ‘debate’ there are just a couple of people talking and explaining why the information is not correct. But it might be too boring to draw an audience.

I was listening to Dr Brian Goldman on CBC and he was talking to Dr. Peter Hotez about misinformation. Rogan offered him 100K to debate RFK on his podcast. He turned it down because it serves to legitimize these people. He's debated RFK before, and the problem is they just keep moving the goal posts, and it isn't very productive.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/p...rise-1.6960484

At about 14 minutes. Not everything is in the text that is discussed in the podcast, so worth listening to all of it.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by opendoor

And that doesn't even get into the fact that debates are a terrible way to judge anything. If you put a charismatic charlatan who is a skilled debater spewing a bunch of nonsense up against an expert in a field providing facts and logic, the former is probably going to come out on top in the eyes of the average person. Particularly if they're saying things that people want to hear (like blaming others for their problems).

Damn right I'm gonna beat that nerd providing facts and logic.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

It would seem that way to someone who blames Trudeau for everything from the price of gas to the stains on their underwear.

Well someone **** in my pants, and if it wasn't Trudeau then who was it?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Yoho

Says the guy who still defends Trudeau at every turn.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

It would seem that way to someone who blames Trudeau for everything from the price of gas to the stains on their underwear.

“He eats babies and worships the devil!!!”

“Is there any actual proof of him doing either of those things?”

“STOP DEFENDING HIM!!!”

Sadly this is politics for a lot of people right now. I’m not a big fan of Polievre but I’m pretty sure he’s not the reason I stubbed my toe this morning. (Yes this is intentionally serving up a golden opportunity for someone to blame it on Trudeau even though I’m not a big fan of his either)

[Izzle]

Originally Posted by calculoso

Unfortunately, research, debate, and debunking all take time and effort. Misinformation spreads like wildfire and is usually met with “that sounds reasonable or believable” and “you know what I heard” responses. There is always a gap between who hears the misinformation and who hears the debunking, and a time lag in being debunked.

Misinformation is incredibly dangerous, and condoning that it should be front and center to me is irresponsible. Change that to “debunked misinformation should be front and center” and I would be more inclined to agree

This is basically Brandolini's law. Or the "cow dung" asymmetry principle where the effort of debunking falsehoods is an order of magnitude higher than spreading falsehoods.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by opendoor

1) Try to improve peoples' media literacy and rationality. But that's an uphill battle and any adults who believe these kinds of things are probably lost causes already.

Yes, “teach kids critical thinking and media literacy” sounds well and good. But what does it actually mean?

Does critical thinking mean questioning and challenging established authority? That’s what populists already think they’re doing.

Does it mean encouraging people to trust research and science? Research doesn’t always offer clear answers - especially fuzzier fields where studies have questionable replication, like sociology, psychology, economics, political science, and anthropology. And science offers few answers to cultural issues rooted in moral values.

Does it mean teaching children to be more rational? To a substantial degree, traits like that are innate or developed in very early childhood. And despite our grandparents being no more rational than we are, they lived in a more cohesive, high-trust society than we have today.

Does it mean teaching methods of discourse like the Socratic dialogue? We uphold all sorts of values and social norms where that sort of irreverent skepticism is very unwelcome. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens by encouraging them to regard nothing as sacred.

As for media literacy, what do we even mean by ‘media’ these days? It’s not as though 15 year olds are reading the National Post or watching the CTV News. If your primary source of news is third-hand retweets of factoids - which is the case for most digital natives across the political spectrum - curating your news sources means curating your entire social network.

Even as a former journalist, I’m at a loss for how to foster good habits around news and public affairs in my kids. We’ve done things like select CBC news stories from their streaming app to watch and talk about. I’ve pointed out the basics of media bias (ie think about the choice of photo a news organization uses for a person and what that can tell us about their posture towards her). Taught them to recognize pejorative language and slanted coverage. I’ve encouraged them to seek out multiple sources of information about a subject they’re interested in.

But this is all far more difficult to do on social media - where they’re going to get their news from - than the legacy media I grew up with. Even more than legacy media, social media has been captured by the incentives of outrage, tribalism, and fear-mongering. I’m coming to believe that people who don’t follow social and political issue are not only happier, but may genuinely make for better citizens. So toxic and divisive are our channels of discourse today.

The crux of the issue is that our institutions and leaders no longer have a monopoly on information, as they did for generations. Combine that with motivated reasoning, which is part of the psychological makeup of every person on the planet to a greater or lesser degree, and the genie is out of the bottle. We’re in the early stages of a social transformation that will be as far-reaching and disruptive as the development of the printing press and mass literacy.

[Fuzz]

Maybe start with something simple, like a functioning bull#### detector. At least that would have kept Smith out of office.

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Maybe start with something simple, like a functioning bull#### detector. At least that would have kept Smith out of office.

That’s why we have you.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Yes, “teach kids critical thinking and media literacy” sounds well and good. But what does it actually mean?

Does critical thinking mean questioning and challenging established authority? That’s what populists already think they’re doing.

Does it mean encouraging people to trust research and science? Research doesn’t always offer clear answers - especially fuzzier fields where studies have questionable replication, like sociology, psychology, economics, political science, and anthropology. And science offers few answers to cultural issues rooted in moral values.

Does it mean teaching children to be more rational? To a substantial degree, traits like that are innate or developed in very early childhood. And despite our grandparents being no more rational than we are, they lived in a more cohesive, high-trust society than we have today.

Does it mean teaching methods of discourse like the Socratic dialogue? We uphold all sorts of values and social norms where that sort of irreverent skepticism is very unwelcome. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens by encouraging them to regard nothing as sacred.

As for media literacy, what do we even mean by ‘media’ these days? It’s not as though 15 year olds are reading the National Post or watching the CTV News. If your primary source of news is third-hand retweets of factoids - which is the case for most digital natives across the political spectrum - curating your news sources means curating your entire social network.

Even as a former journalist, I’m at a loss for how to foster good habits around news and public affairs in my kids. We’ve done things like select CBC news stories from their streaming app to watch and talk about. I’ve pointed out the basics of media bias (ie think about the choice of photo a news organization uses for a person and what that can tell us about their posture towards her). Taught them to recognize pejorative language and slanted coverage. I’ve encouraged them to seek out multiple sources of information about a subject they’re interested in.

But this is all far more difficult to do on social media - where they’re going to get their news from - than the legacy media I grew up with. Even more than legacy media, social media has been captured by the incentives of outrage, tribalism, and fear-mongering. I’m coming to believe that people who don’t follow social and political issue are not only happier, but may genuinely make for better citizens. So toxic and divisive are our channels of discourse today.

The crux of the issue is that our institutions and leaders no longer have a monopoly on information, as they did for generations. Combine that with motivated reasoning, which is part of the psychological makeup of every person on the planet to a greater or lesser degree, and the genie is out of the bottle. We’re in the early stages of a social transformation that will be as far-reaching and disruptive as the development of the printing press and mass literacy.

Yeah, it includes thinking critically about mainstream media. But also asking "is this random guy on YouTube likely going to be a reliable source of information? Why or why not?". Even just understanding the motivations of who is presenting you with information can make all the difference in the world when it comes to sifting through things. But ultimately, I think it's pretty futile. Even with the best education, a good chunk of the population is never going to really think critically about these kinds of things. The real problem now is that some of the biggest dullards think they're the critical thinkers. Which is the problem with new media. The best way to keep readers/listeners is to make them think they're smart and the ones who are on the to real truth, even if you're totally lying to them.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Yeah, it includes thinking critically about mainstream media. But also asking "is this random guy on YouTube likely going to be a reliable source of information? Why or why not?". Even just understanding the motivations of who is presenting you with information can make all the difference in the world when it comes to sifting through things. But ultimately, I think it's pretty futile. Even with the best education, a good chunk of the population is never going to really think critically about these kinds of things. The real problem now is that some of the biggest dullards think they're the critical thinkers. Which is the problem with new media. The best way to keep readers/listeners is to make them think they're smart and the ones who are on the to real truth, even if you're totally lying to them.

That's a huge part of it. Musk is now someone who people hang off his every word, and just by existing, he is correct about everything. His followers don't even bother to consider if he might have his own interest in it, which he absolutely does in almost everything he comments on.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Maybe start with something simple, like a functioning bull#### detector. At least that would have kept Smith out of office.

For Smith that’s basically just a dog bark collar set to activate on “any sound”.

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

Well someone **** in my pants, and if it wasn't Trudeau then who was it?

Santorum?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

And despite our grandparents being no more rational than we are, they lived in a more cohesive, high-trust society than we have today.

This is nostalgic nonsense. The distrust of minorities was much more prevalent in previous generations.

I also don't know how you could argue society was more "cohesive" from any perspective, but especially from the perspective of non-whites.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by rubecube

This is nostalgic nonsense. The distrust of minorities was much more prevalent in previous generations.

I also don't know how you could argue society was more "cohesive" from any perspective, but especially from the perspective of non-whites.

Or non-straights. Or non-Christians. Or non-able-bodied. Or non-male. Etc.

[chedder]

Originally Posted by Makarov

Or non-straights. Or non-Christians. Or non-able-bodied. Or non-male. Etc.

Ah, the good old days (I can't do green text on Tapatalk but hope that's a given)

Unfortunately, a not small segment of society yearns for those days.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by chedder

Ah, the good old days (I can't do green text on Tapatalk but hope that's a given)

Unfortunately, a not small segment of society yearns for those days.

Something something shooting to where the puck has been. Sounds like a PP government we'll soon have to endure