Dan Williams

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Debunking Disinformation Myths, Part 2: The Politics of Big Disinfo
Does widespread alarm about “disinformation” reflect an objective and apolitical concern with dangerous lies or a thinly veiled political project…
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Dan Williams
The misinformation wars - a reading list
Important readings that challenge conventional wisdom about the nature, novelty, prevalence, and impact of misinformation.
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Dan Williams
9

April 2024

Rational Persuasion vs Cancel Culture
Some thoughts on why it is probably bad to bully people into accepting your beliefs.
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Dan Williams
34
Demonizing narratives
Witches, conspiracies, threats, burdens, rivals, enemies, and weirdos.
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Dan Williams
10
The media very rarely makes things up
Fake news, media bias, and the misinformation wars.
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Dan Williams
37
People are persuaded by rational arguments. Is that a good thing?
Power, persuasion, rationality, conservatism, knowledge, politics, Burke, Sowell, Henrich, Mercier, Sperber, Dewey, Hanson, evolution, the…
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Dan Williams
39

March 2024

The marketplace of good and bad ideas
On why the free exchange of ideas is a complex breeding ground for truth, appealing falsehoods, and self-serving rationalisations.
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Dan Williams
26
In politics, the truth is not self-evident. So why do we act as if it is?
People are "naive realists" about politics, treating their beliefs as objective, unbiased, and unmediated interpretations of self-evident facts. I…
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Dan Williams
65
Can democracy work?
In "Public Opinion" (1922), Walter Lippmann argued that the vastness, complexity, and invisibility of the modern world make democracy impossible. He got…
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Dan Williams
29
Debunking Disinformation Myths, Part 1: This is not the "disinformation age"
Are we living through an unprecedented informational crisis, disinformation age, or post-truth era? Drawing on a wide range of evidence and arguments, I…
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Dan Williams
20

February 2024

The Survival of the Friendliest?
Have we evolved to love our ingroup? Did our ancestors go through an evolutionary process of self-domestication? Is the occasional genocide just an…
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Dan Williams
29
My five favourite academic articles from 2023
Evolution, Ideology, Religion, Misinformation, Reputation, Humility
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Dan Williams
9
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