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Comment by softwarebeware | Hacker News Reader

IMO the author displays confirmation bias in the post. He doesn't think about the effects of a higher availability information with a lower ability to seek out other contradicting points of view. If you're deluged with carefully chosen factual information, that's more convincing than outright lies. And this is often the situation we are in more often than not these days. Along with an inability to spot logical fallacies in lines of reasoning.

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> If you're deluged with carefully chosen factual information, that's more convincing than outright lies.

I think it's exactly the opposite. It's far easier to convince with outright lies than with carefully chosen facts, because those lies are crafted to match what you want to believe. That's what false conspiracy theories are born of.

Everyone is subject to that bias, even people that consider themselves highly logical.

It starts becoming a problem when it is manipulated to channel broadly held but not expressed resentments.

This is common in ethnically fractured developing societies, where a rumor about something someone in group x did to someone in group y could turn into a coup or war, but it seems that developed societies are no longer immune either.

> He doesn't think about the effects of a higher availability information with a lower ability to seek out other contradicting points of view.

This is a baffling claim. Why on earth would you believe that people now have a lower ability to seek out contradicting points of view?

most americans live insular suburban lives in their bubble and when they get doses of current events they are algorithmically fed confirmation bias and especially confirmation bid that arouses them to click/engage. I.e tabloidizing the cherry picked facts that then framed with the biases that poke the viewers buttons.

None of that changes the fact that it's easier than ever to seek out contradicting points of view. People just don't want to.

The algorithms feed people stuff that confirms their beliefs because that's what they like.

It's all about preferences and choices, not ability.

We shouldn’t try to fix obesity, smoking, enforce seatbelts, gangs, local pollution, etc because all those are personal choices to live near or partake in?

Try to help as you wish, but describe the problem accurately. And understand that the people you are trying to help may resist you because you are interfering in their choices.

Some people passionately want to keep drugs like fentanyl out of the country. Others think it's impractical and efforts have done more harm than good. Still others say "hand them a clean needle".

Messing with the choices people make that you think are bad for them isn't easy.

I think you meant: > Messing with the choices people make that scientists, sociologists, and 9 out of 10 dentists think are bad for them and society as a whole isn't easy.

I guess that my more appropriate and more relevant corrected version of the statement didnt sound like it supported the point so the original was phrased as if it’s my own non expert opinion that smoking causes cancer.

fentanyl? Are you saying that should be unregulated and freely purchasable at the local 7/11 or are you saying it should be regulated even although some people choose to do it?

Either way I’m not really sure how that supports the older points about people technically but not practically having the option to avoid misinformation means society should ignore misinformation as it’s “a personal choice”

You seem to think I'm making every possible point but the one I'm actually making.

I'm not saying it's good for people to have fentanyl or misinformation.

I'm not saying personal choices are above criticism or regulation.

I'm just saying it's hard. You're going to be intruding into how people run their lives. Many of them won't like it.

My personal take is that social media can be awfully like a drug, and we're probably going to need detox programs and support groups. Misinformation is just one small aspect of how today's social media degrades the human mind and spirit.

On the other hand, social media isn't heroin, it's human interaction. Regulating a material thing with no legitimate uses is a lot more straightforward.

And to be honest, I am very skeptical of central authorities arbitrating what is truth. Historically this is a cure worse than the disease.

Oops I didn’t realize you agreed with the overall point because I thought it would be, I can’t think of a more political term, being pedantic by trying to correct the higher comment to say that it’s actually not hard to find different viewpoints from a technical standpoint just immensely difficult and challenging considering psychology and human nature such that it’s unrealistic for the majority of people to do. I didn’t really see what the point of making that observation was unless it was to argue against the main point.

It's very important to distinguish things people can't do from things they don't want to do. I can't see how this is mere pedantry.

Thinking that mushes together a clear view of the situation and what we should do about it has a poor chance of success in my experience.

Currently, there is a middleman that's looking to present you with "engaging" information wherever you look. There is so much information available that you always need a sorting mechanism

Engaging being straw man arguments to dunk on, with people dunking on them

Which profit driven advertising based search engine or newsfeed is built around delivering contradicting points of view?

Replace "profit driven such-and-such" with "print newspaper" and the rhetorical question works equally well.

I think the worst you can say against social media is that it feeds you low-quality highly-partisan sources if you seem to like such sources. But your ability to seek out better or contradicting information is not diminished. If anything it is far greater than it has ever been. "Stuff that is against $my_favorite_belief" is a Google search away. Wikipedia alone will usually give you a fairly balanced treatment of a topic with extensive references to diverse perspectives and evidence.

Amusingly, I fail to see how such an engine would resolve the problem. Groups of people would just choose the point of view they liked, and label the other as misinformation and... we're back to the original topic.

Not all contradicting points of view are created equal. Just because someone can make up a contradicting position doesn't mean it's got any relevance or merit. Couching a meritless position in pseudoscience doesn't make it any better.

The problem we too often see is people, mass media especially, trying to appear "fair" by airing statistically unrepresentative positions just because they are contrary to some mainstream position. There's not two equal sides to all positions. Even when there are two (multiple) sides not all of them have statistically significant representation or are equally rigorous.

Just because I'm not seeking out arguments claiming COVID vaccines have 5G or the Earth is flat doesn't mean I have a lower ability to seek out contrary opinions. It just means I've got some basic scientific literacy and a bullshit filter.

we have higher ability to seek out contradicting views.

just most humans nerver do so

they at most look for badly done cintradicting arguments to confirm their few

We are talking about Matthew Yglesias. Confirmation bias is basically his entire brand.

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