[jfengel]

Democracy has never really relied on people being well-informed. The "wisdom of crowds" incorporates a lot of ignorance. It just assumes that ignorance is random, while informed opinion will tend to have a bias in favor of reality. If 49% of the people make a random guess one way, and 49% of people make a random guess the other way, then 2% of people who actually know something will put the best-informed answer over the top.

So democracy is robust against ordinary ignorance. It's just not robust against deliberately-induced ignorance[1]. The nudge towards reality is easily overwhelmed by a thumb on the scale of the wrong answer.

Ignorance has never been really random, but the press of misinformation is more widespread than ever. As is the press of information, but when people don't know which to choose, misinformation is often more attractive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology

[snowwrestler]

Democracy is intended to be a sort of "eventually correct" system; the people vote to make decision (a), see what happens, then vote again to make decision (b), etc. If decision (a) produces bad outcomes, then knowledge of those bad outcomes will presumably affect the way everyone votes in decision (b). Over time the voting populace converges the government toward their desired state, in theory.

The challenge here is in knowing whether an outcome was bad or good. Different people can have different perspective on facts, of course. But if people don't have direct experience in the outcomes, then they have to hear about it 2nd hand. That's where the opportunity opens up for them to hear lies, which corrupt the process.

The challenge in the 21st Century is that our most pressing issues seem to be those that don't produce immediate direct experience for most voters, like climate change, systemic racism, non-point-source pollution, threats of diseases, authoritarianism, etc.

People are increasingly reliant on 3rd parties to inform them on these issues, and the information ecosystem we've built to do that optimizes on engagement instead of accuracy.

[ptero]

This is a very interesting point, thank you!

I wonder though if another issue is at play: in the past both well-informed and random folks would mostly have "swayable" opinions (mostly certain, but leave room for a doubt; thus open to arguments and possibly a change of opinion), currently most opinions seem to have a religious hardness to them. This makes science less influential -- people tend to put a lot of spin on key findings to avoid changing their views.

This is judging by newspapers and magazines of 50 years ago and talking to older generations; not sure how objective this is.

[LordFast]

Huh, never thought about the math like that. It makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing.

P.S. Before the age of social media, was there not the same level of risk of induced ignorance through traditional media campaigns and propaganda? If not, why not?

[jfengel]

Propaganda has always been a problem, and it's hard to quantify if it's actually worse now or merely different. Even if it's merely different, though, it feels like it's the kind of problem that should be solvable. In so many cases people aren't merely misinformed but actively hostile to science in a way that should bite them in the butt sooner rather than later. Surely, one thinks, that should make it possible to resolve it, at least a little.

[JadeNB]

> Propaganda has always been a problem, and it's hard to quantify if it's actually worse now or merely different.

I think that part of what makes it both different and worse now is the way that, thanks to automatic personalisation of content, what feels like honest intellectual inquiry will be met with automated replies that drive us deeper in the direction of our beliefs (inadvertently; they optimise for engagement, but it's more likely that a random browser will engage with something that supports their beliefs than that challenges them).

Of course, there was always propaganda before, but there was at least the chance of realising critically that it was being forced upon you, and so choosing to resist it; or, if you wanted to be swallowed up by the propaganda, at least you had to make some effort to find the material that would support that position. It's the way that our filter bubbles are now more than ever hidden from us and, even worse, presented as ever more rarefied intellectual inquiry that I think causes so much 'unswayability'.

[LordFast]

Is there any way to realistically and gradually reduce the prevalence and thickness of these filter bubbles, so that people can be encouraged to practice critical thinking in a sustainable way? Will this have to necessarily be a governmental effort, or can there be business value in such practices? Will there ever be sufficient incentives for any government to work on this?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just thinking out loud.

[JadeNB]

> Is there any way to realistically and gradually reduce the prevalence and thickness of these filter bubbles, so that people can be encouraged to practice critical thinking in a sustainable way? Will this have to necessarily be a governmental effort, or can there be business value in such practices? Will there ever be sufficient incentives for any government to work on this?

The problem that I see is that filter bubbles keep people happy, so the effort to fix it has to be an effort that's going to make people unhappy—and what business or democratic government is going to do that? To me, it's like being a teacher (my profession); there are ample studies that show that teaching effectiveness is in many ways inversely correlated with student satisfaction (because true learning is often uncomfortable), and yet the incentives for teachers are all in the direction of encouraging student satisfaction even when everyone knows it can be at the expense of learning.

[LordFast]

I see, that makes sense. Kind of a "eat your vegetables" type of situation.

I really hope we can learn and get to a better place from here, but I'm not holding my breath. The way I see it, there's a good chance that the world will only continue to become increasingly more authoritarian and dictatorial. Because in a world filled with more and more widespread filter bubbles and entrenched divides, authoritarianism and dictatorships logically become the optimal solution to get society to cooperate and function.

It saddens me to think about it.

[stallmanite]

I imagine people who are hostile to science would change their attitude after going without electricity and hot water for a couple weeks.

[DenisM]

In the old days the propaganda was expensive and it came from monied interests and any such interest would have a competitor pushing the other way providing balance and allowing room for the influence of the most informed citizens.

We're in the weird territory because some propaganda comes from really low-budget campaigns not easily steadied by the stabilizing influence of competing businesses. The disruption is akin to the printing press invention - suddenly low budgets provide loud voice. I expect this to go the same way - running good social media campaigns will demand huge budgets and require support from big businesses.

The other odd (and alarming) part is that the government bureaucracy itself became a source of the propaganda - we don't have a competing government bureaucracy so no tension is created to promote balance.

[unabst]

The 98% are never split equally. And some percentage of 100% is always swayed by propaganda. That's why it's propaganda that pushes the vote over the top. And in today's democracy, its done under the guise of "education". That's why the self-declared "engaged and well-informed" are often the most targeted, readily swayed, and eager to back the wrong movement.

The anti-vaccine movement is one example of the engaged being swayed to total conviction, and it's easy to question whether they truly care about their children, but love is their motivation. Similarly, many "wrong" movements are for the love of democracy of the country etc.

And looking at the bullet points at the end of the article, those are what even the "wrong" are doing, extremely proactively. And it all starts with the "educator" claiming to be the "reliable information source", which happens to be what Scientific American is also doing here.

[dredmorbius]

You're simply restating jfengel's 2nd 'graph.

Domocracy is resilient against simple ignorance. It is susceptible to overt manipulation.

Even manipulation often reflects a balance of interests, though shifting the margins can have profound effects.

[unabst]

I said more.

I posit it's susceptible to both, and that it is susceptible to any manipulation. Not just overt or malicious. Even in good faith. And even the article is a form of manipulation. And I am saying the "manipulated" and the "educated" are often one in the same especially in hindsight when wrong becomes clear.

[twojacobtwo]

That is a great way to put the issue. I have struggled to put this into such concrete terms and now I'll be using this going forward. Thank you!

[nostromo]

> The nudge towards reality is easily overwhelmed by a thumb on the scale of the wrong answer.

What’s the evidence supporting this?

I've noticed this trend of all sides of every political debate declaring that the other side has fallen for "fake news." In actuality, it's often that people with the "wrong answer" just have a different value system than the people with "right answer."

[jfengel]

I provided a link. You don't get to sea-lion me by just repeating "evidence" until you've demonstrated that you've at least read the sources I gave you already.

[nostromo]

The wikipedia article you linked doesn't make this claim.

The primary example, that cigarette companies tried to hide that smoking causes cancer, doesn't prove this point -- the vast majority of people know this and the propaganda effort was a failure.

[xdavidliu]

You are missing the point: there's an entire field of study about the claim and the various ways that it's true. The wikipedia article is about that field of study. Hence, the only way the claim would be false would be if that entire field of study were completely junk (e.g. homeopathy or neurolinguistic programming), which from the wikipedia article, it doesn't look so.

[JadeNB]

> the vast majority of people know this and the propaganda effort was a failure.

The vast majority of people know this now, but it was just as much a subject of motivated doubt in its time as climate change is now. It's only because of a massive counter-propaganda effort (in a good cause, but it's still propaganda) that it seems so obvious to us now, and so inevitable in retrospect that people of sense would see the truth.

[DenisM]

> You don't get to sea-lion me

Was this really necessary? You point would be just as strong without it, and the degree of hostility would go down.