Lessons from the past on how to beat disinformation

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/02/the-man-who-tricked-nazi-germany-lessons-from-the-past-on-how-to-beat-disinformation

by a_victorp • 2 years ago

17 23 2 years ago

theguardian.com

blowsand• 2 years ago

I’m not sure what biases the guardian has, but I find it difficult to get past the opening 2 sentence’s casting of 50+ million people as simply delusional. Assessments like this completely miss the mark by disregarding the often reasonable arguments and facts that guide beliefs.

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

Do you have specific examples of reasonable arguments or facts supporting a belief that the last US presidential elections were “rigged“?

rayiner7• 2 years ago

Thirty percent of Americans claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the last presidential elections were “rigged“

The election example is a bad one because it’s more about American’s being innumerate. They are incapable of understanding statistical data. E.g. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat... (“In fact, 41% of Democrats replied that at least 50% of unvaccinated people have been hospitalized due to COVID-19.”).

When understanding “who won the 2020 election” requires understanding why Trump could have been ahead with 80% of the vote counted, but Biden pulled ahead overnight due to mail in votes and urban precincts, Americans are basically unable to understand that result. “Who won the election” is more a question about “who do you trust to report the election results to you?”

The approach suggested in the article is unlikely to address the real problem of lack of trust.

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

Sefton Delmer had as many bad lessons for us as good.

I don't think the article is advocating for Delmer's exact approach ("black propaganda"* in the 1950s parlance), but I find it reasonable that increasing people's agency might could get them to "do the research" and understand (didn't civics classes do this? do they still exist in the States?) how their own election systems work.

(I might even hope for understanding of the population structure and MSA breakdown of their own country, but let's not get greedy...)

* would you like to know more? see "source attribution" via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38294297

rayiner7• 2 years ago

I might even hope for understanding of the population structure and MSA breakdown of their own country, but let's not get greedy

Americans have a wildly inaccurate understanding of who other Americans even are: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-m.... For example, “Black Americans estimate that, on average, Black people make up 52% of the U.S. adult population.” Can you imagine the impact of that perception—that black people are a slight majority of the population when in fact they are 12%—on people's political beliefs and trust in the system?

I bet if you surveyed people who thought the 2020 election was stolen, they would vastly overestimate the percentage of the population that is rural white people. If you start from that premise, you start to understand how they could be astounded about the results of an election conducted under unfamiliar and quite different rules due to the pandemic.

tptacek4• 2 years ago

Wait, what's so hard to understand about that scenario? If a Trump lead at 80% necessarily meant a Trump win, you could just call the election at 80%.

rayiner7• 2 years ago

You don't have to think that whoever is leading at 80% "necessarily" will win. People remember close elections, like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, where you couldn't tell until all the votes were counted who had won.

But Trump's election-day lead in key swing states was not close. In Georgia, at 10:55 pm, Trump was ahead by 12 points and over 350,000 votes as of 11 pm ET with 72% of precincts reporting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp_drtD7cMc. As of the next morning, Trump was ahead in Pennsylvania by more than 10 points with 70% of the precincts counted. Then, over the coming days, Biden somehow pulled ahead--not just in one state, but in several.

If you go back to the dawn of cable news election coverage, I think you would be hard pressed to find an example where a candidate was behind 10-12 points on election night in key swing states but went on to win those states. My dad and I have been watching CNN election night coverage since the mid-1990s, and we both went to bed thinking that Trump had not only one, but had done so decisively.

api2• 2 years ago

I see very little ink given to your last point, which is the most important. Trust has collapsed. Unaddressed that can’t help but lead to either totalitarianism or collapse.

If Trump doesn’t become dictator it’ll be the next demagogue. It could be a much smarter, younger, slicker, and even more ruthless one. Or maybe things will just fall apart gradually until the union fragments.

dctoedt5• 2 years ago

Trust has collapsed.

Agreed — and each side thinks it has good reason not to trust the other. (One side is right about that.)

Gunax• 2 years ago

It's nice to think that some education will solve conspiracies.

But conspiratorial thinking originates in the gut--not the brain.

It's not a lack of education (or an excess of stupidity). We become conspiatorial when we feel powerless.

Whether that's about elections, or 9/11, or AIDS. And yes, i am susceptible to conspiracy too, and do are you.

The cure to conspiracy isn't facts, but empathy.

Lessons from the past on how to beat disinformation

Related Stories