Author: Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online (University of Chicago Press).
Researcher, infolit/misinfo/rhetoric/civic reasoning. Currently researching AI as tool for critical thinking.
Mike Caulfield
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this is the ideal newspaper columnist. you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like
In general, I feel like the worst element of social media is that it really aggravates that impulse to be the first to say something or share something, and the truth is that focus on the novel is good for movements that are without merit and bad for positions that are well grounded.
After all, the truth of the matter is usually pretty constant, big picture, and boring as shit. Collins is, in fact, a ghoul. And there just aren't a lot of pressures to spend that online. /fin
Good sourced information, on the other hand, maintains a constant value. Unlike a rumor a well sourced fact is as valuable tomorrow as today, and because it is sourced the teller does not benefit from the appearance of having special knowledge. After all, it's sourced! People know this already!
There was a famous scholarly book on rumor in the early 90s that asked why rumors outran the truth and the simple explanation was that the value of a rumor deteriorates quickly. If you're the first to say it you get much acclaim, if you are the last to say it you are in for ridicule.
So when you see people racing to say "I am not sure there is a difference between the two" and others rt-ing it that's the hyperinflationary spend of ideas so vapid and groundless that the only way to get any clout with them is to jump on them immediately while they seem novel or edgy.
These dynamics drive social media, which mimics the dynamics of verbal culture over written. The simple case that the pain of millions can be laid at the feet of Collins is buried under people quickly spending their next unique take or rumor before the bottom of the market on it falls out.
So the simple math of it was a person in possession of a rumor was like a person holding cash in a hyperinflation spiral, you needed to spend it immediately, so rumours move quite fast.
You think this column is going to be about soap dispensers failing after a bit of use but actually he's never able to pull off the push down and turn motion to set it up. It is divine.
One of the reasons the rise of social media has coincided with declines in Democratic power is that stating the obvious about Republicans is seen as boring and non-differentiating.
