Conversations about misinformation
Game theory, rationality, and whether the science of misinformation is reliable.
I’m 32 today. I’m also ill. Hence, my plan to celebrate my birthday by publishing an implausibly long essay exploring what I call the “everyone is biased” bias—a bias that I’m increasingly worried I fall prey to in my own writings and intellectual outlook—has been thwarted. I’ll publish it next week instead.
In the meantime, here are two podcast conversations I recorded last year that were recently released:
The first, ‘The Truth About Misinformation: Myths, Reality, and Rational Beliefs’, was on the Game Changer podcast, which is primarily dedicated to game theory.
I’m not a formal game theorist myself. However, the core idea behind game theory—that humans are strategic, social agents who adjust their thoughts and behaviour in response to the strategies deployed by other rational agents—is central to my published research and writings, including my work on misinformation.
When combined with evolutionary theory, this perspective leads to a very different—and superior—understanding of human psychology and social behaviour than what you get from, say, modern social psychology. For example, broadly game-theoretic reflections explain why humans can't be gullible, why the most common and impactful forms of misinformation don’t take the form of “fake news”, and why much false and misleading communication is a response to “demand” for evidence and arguments audiences can deploy for persuasive purposes.
The second, ‘Is the Science of Misinformation Reliable?’, was on The Dissenter podcast, which I’ve done before. It provided a nice opportunity to talk about many of my criticisms of scientific research into misinformation that exploded after 2016 in response to Brexit and the first election of Donald Trump. We talk about:
The prominence of misinformation studies post-2016
Challenges in defining misinformation clearly and objectively
The distinction between demonstrably false information and subtly misleading content
Why fake news is relatively rare in media consumption
How misleading communication is achieved through selective reporting or framing
Why misinformation is often symptomatic of deeper societal issues like institutional distrust, polarisation, and anti-establishment attitudes
Why the narrative that we’re living through an unprecedented “misinformation crisis” or “post-truth era” is mistaken. (After witnessing what’s happened to X since Elon Musk took over the platform, I might be revising my opinions on this issue a bit - something we don’t touch on in the podcast)
Whether concerns about AI-based disinformation are well-founded
Why censorship and aggressive content moderation typically backfire
The importance of intellectual humility and building institutional trust by making institutions more trustworthy
The limited benefits of fact-checking
For those interested in reading more on this topic:
I hope you feel better soon!
Separately, and this may be like bringing coal to Newcastle, but are you familiar with the work of Cailin O'Connor and Jim Weatherall, including on curation?
They gave a presentation in January that was a helpful overview.
https://youtu.be/2EfS5pQY7Aw?si=btCUjZ9RICjZ8WHi
Happy birthday!! May you have a speedy recovery and enjoy it, even if belatedly. I very much look forward to your “implausibly long” essay, and rest assured you have left us with enough material here to keep us busy until your next birthday and beyond.
I was thinking of you today, particularly, as I wound up engaged in exchanges on a fascinating Paul Krugman post over what the Democrats (in my view) need to correct so that disaffected people would feel better represented by the party and consider voting for it again. Part of this was dropping unpopular ideas, such as men in women’s sports.
A lively and somewhat contentious conversation ensued and, while it took having all of what little I have left of wits about me to think how to respond, it was also illuminating to see where the trouble spots are. One among them was an implication that people who don’t think, eg, that men should be playing on women’s sports are simply being sucked in by the R “culture wars” attack machine. While you are in no way responsible for how I tried to engage productively, I will say that stretching my mind (particularly at the advanced age of 76, now) through yours and Michael Hannon’s essays was a great help to keep calm, carry on, and see whether I could start to build a bridge of some sort.