Lots of people were upset about a report published last week from the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of world elites in Davos (Switzerland). It identified misinformation and disinformation as the world’s #1 problem over the next year. Those fearful the Illuminati were predictably upset, but because Davos, not because of any rational reason.
But a lot of rational people are upset at that report. I thought I’d write up comments. In particular, I’m critical of “misinfo research” in general more than the anodine comments in the WEF report.
The two definitions of misinformation
There are two kinds of misinformation.
The first is legitimate concerns about memes, deepfakes, bot armies, lynch mobs, and promotion of obvious false facts. Five travelers were lynched a few years ago in an India village because of wildfire rumors spread on WhatsApp (one of Facebook’s services). There is a fundamental digital literacy problem in the world that needs to be addressed.
The second definition of misinfo, as described in section 1.3 of the WEF report, comes is the spreading distrust in authority, those who question facts, those who disrespect institutions. It expressly criticizes free-speech and civil liberties for failing “to act to effectively curb falsified information and harmful content”.
This second definition is not only false on its face but alarming that so many of the educated elite buy into it.
We live in liberal democracies. The entire point is to distrust authority. That means challenging all authority, even that of public health officials and scientists. This WEF report is clearly illiberal.
Misinfo experts
What’s particularly scary is how quickly this topic has become circular. You must trust the experts on misinfo, who stress the importance of trusting experts. Any challenges against misinfo experts is itself misinfo.
A good example of a misinfo expert is this debate between Nate Silver (famous prognosticator) and Sander van der Linden (academic and author of books on the subject).
This concept of “weight of the evidence” is meaningless, scientifically. One of the links Van der Linden cites in support has the following quote:
The two major hypotheses are a natural zoonotic spillover, most likely occurring at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and a laboratory leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The important word is “hypotheses”. In scientific terms, it means we don’t know. If we knew, we’d have theories, and have papers that falsified the competing ideas.
There is no “weight of the evidence” here. Neither hypothesis is falsifiable. Both hypotheses are missing too much evidence for either to be credible. Yes, one is likely to be closer to the truth, but the same is true of lottery numbers. Just because we know one lottery number is the right answer doesn’t mean we have credible reason to believe in any particular number. We have no credible reason to believe any hypothesis on the origins of Covid19, though it’s likely one of them is close to the truth.
The second link van der Linden cites says the following:
What is the scientific consensus as it stands?
Many virologists, epidemiologists, and other infectious disease experts still say that all available evidence points to SARS-COV-2 spilling over to humans from an animal host, most likely at a wet market in Wuhan.
This is just a poll of the gut feel of experts who have already been tainted by politics. There is no citation of any scientific paper that unambiguously favors a theory, because there are none. There are no papers examining the full issue, but only individual pieces. Nothing that comes close to falsifying either theory.
That we don’t know the all the answers is the basis of science. It’s only in politics and religion where every question must have an answer.
The scientific consensus is that we don’t know where the Covid19 came from, and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong — “misinformation” levels of wrong.
And that’s Sander van der Linden. He can rightly point to the all the nonsense claims of a lab leak (e.g. like those proposed by Rand Paul), but he cannot claim that the scientific consensus is a zoonotic origin.
But he doubles-down on this, refusing to acknowledge his error. In tweet after tweet, Nate Silver is correctly reflecting the scientific consensus, and Sander van der Linden is rejecting science.
Review: “Foolproof”
Among Sander van der Linden’s credentials is that he authors books on misinfo, such as his recent book Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity.
Like you’d expect from an academic, he reviews the current state-of-the-art of misinfo research, citing studies.
There’s good reason to distrust these studies. There is a huge “replication crisis” in psychology. Van der Linden instead writes as if all those studies are absolute truth. I’m not saying that any should be doubted, only that he expresses far to much confidence in un-replicated results. He overstates the reliability of science when it agrees with him.
He competently describes real issues in misinfo, such as that lynch mob in India. But the bulk of his point is fighting those who would question authority.
His thesis is that we can somehow vaccinate our minds against misinfo.
This is a meaningless concept. He lists 11 “antigens” to inoculate your brain against misinformation. But when we try to apply them to his misconceptions about science and Covid19 origins, we find that they don’t really work. They really only work if you already believe something is misinfo — but that’s circular logic. You don’t need to learn to reject things you already know are false, you need to learn to identify false things you believe to be true.
But the reality is he’s not talking about “our” minds at all, but “their” minds. His 11 antigens argue that we need to manipulate the opinions of other people to match our own beliefs, going so far as censoring content on social-media.
For example, his Antigen #1 is “Make the truth more fluent”. He rightly identifies that technical details, like science, are too “nuanced and complex” to win arguments with the masses. But his response is that the masses must be manipulated with more facile arguments. He’s not wrong, of course, but the way to identify truth vs. misinfo is that truth is based upon nuanced and complex arguments. If you throw that out, you cease to be “info”.
The field could use a book that’s only for individuals, one that trains our mind, that doesn’t care what other people think. It would focus on digital literacy, how “memes” work, how “conspiracy-theories” work, how basics like “science” works. But this would be something misinfo researchers would reject, because it would disagree with their beliefs. There would be no way of educating van der Linden on science, for example, when he’s so invested in believing it works in some other fashion.
Conclusion
There are certainly “misinfo” problems in the world, though I think they are better described in terms of “critical thinking” and “digital literacy”. It would start with learning how to reject things you already believe in.
But that’s not what the WEF or “misinfo researchers” are interested in. Instead, they are interested in defending the orthodoxy on such issues as climate-change and vaccines, defending the elites, defending authority.
This doesn’t mean the WEF is some Illuminati. WEF is full of dumb people who are insecure in their powerful positions, who know they aren’t actually elite, who want to hobnob with truly elite people. The Davos meeting has no more influence on them than, say, the New York Times or Washington Post.
But it’s damn amusing that they act like Illuminati-wannabes, pushing the manipulation and censorship of the masses to control their thought.