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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] The Things People Say: On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done
  • Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:13:14 -0500

In the light of recent, and previous, controversy about who should or should not be on this listserv, I offer the following excerpts from the Nov 2 issue of the New Yorker (which are passed along to us by a friend who subscribes).

The Things People Say by Elizabeth Kolbert (in which she quotes from several books by Cass R. Sunstein, author of /Republic.com, Infotopia, Republic.com 2.0/, and /On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done/.)

The latter [book] begins with the relatively uncontroversial premise that a vigorous exchange of information is critical to the democratic process....the Web makes virtually unlimited amounts of information available;...at the same time that it makes more news available, it also makes more news *avoidable*. "The most striking power provided by emerging technologies," Sunstein writes, "is the growing power of consumers to 'filter' what they see." Left-leaning readers know...they will find the stories that support their view of the world. Right-leaning readers...find stories that fit their preconceptions. What holds true for the news sites is even more so for the blogosphere, where it's possible to spend hours surfing without ever entering new water. Sunstein says, "...any system that allows for freedom of choice will create some balkanization of opinion".

Two psychologists...performed the following experiment. After administering a questionnaire on racial attitudes to seniors at some nearby high schools, they divided the students into groups. Those students who... exhibited 'high prejudice' were placed with others equally biased. Those who expressed 'low prejudice' were grouped with those who were similarly tolerant. The students were then instructed to discuss issues like school busing and fair housing. Finally they were asked to fill out another questionnaire. The surveys revealed a striking pattern: simply by talking to one another, the bigoted students had become MORE bigoted and the tolerant MORE tolerant. [The tendency to become more extreme after speaking with like-minded others has become know as 'group polarization'.]

Says Sunstein, "There is virtually no opinion an individual can hold that is so outlandish that he will not find other believers on the Web. Views that would ordinarily dissolve, simply because of an absence of social support, can be found in large numbers on the Internet, even if they are understood to be exotic, indefensible, or bizarre in most communities". Racists used to have to leave home to meet up with other racists (ditto Dems with Dems, Repubs with Repubs); now they need not even get dressed in order to 'chat' with their ideological soul mates.

"It seems plain that the Internet is serving, for many, as a breeding group for extremism, precisely because like-minded people are deliberating with greater ease and frequency...", says Sunstein, a process he refers to as "cyberpolarization", which creates the perfect conditions for spreading misinformation (e.g. "the birther movement"). By his account, the problem is basically structural: certain tendencies of the human mind interact badly with certain features of modern tech, much as certain prescription drugs interact badly with alcohol. Young or old, bigoted or tolerant, liberal or conservative - everyone is equally implicated here, since everyone is predisposed to the same, or at least analogous, mental habits and has access to the same tech.

The acquisition of knowledge is a social process: it is shaped by language, by custom, and by certain widely accepted standards of evidence and rationality. For a great many Americans, global warming is a hoax and "death panels" a reality. ...A historian, Richard Hofstadter, described the far right of Barry Goldwater's era [the 50's & 60's, for the youngsters on the list] thusly: "I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." This could apply equally today.

The Web is certainly a transformative technology, just as TV and radio and newspapers once were. There's a temptation, as a result, to confuse the medium with the message, to assume that, because the Internet is being used to produce a certain political effect, it was somehow destined to do so....To borrow that old favorite of the right: computers don't spread rumors; people do.

--

Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
Permaculture Activist Magazine
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