Fact checking is a worse-than-useless approach to counter programming bullshit. Brandolini bullshit assymmetry principle —“It takes 10x more effort to refute bullshit than to produce it” — applies doubly to fact-checking, so like 100x. You need better refutation models.
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The ingredients of a good bullshit pie. The biggest slice is giving yourself all the benefit of doubt. The second biggest slice is the missing slice of topics avoided/evaded. Fact checking doesn’t work because it on,y applies to the smallest slice.pic.twitter.com/4jGHzr21PP
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Both Goebbels and Frankfurt are wrong about the nature of modern social media bullshit Goebbels: the bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell (he attributed this to the British). No longer true. You want a bullshit palace based primarily on aggressively claiming benefit of doubt
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Frankfurt: bullshit is indifference to truth/falsity. True only of casual confabulation, not politically motivated bullshitting. It’s still not scripted but the learned improvisational style of someone like Trump is far from indifferent. He is careful not to push clear big lies.
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The primary mode of modern political bullshit is neither Big Lie based, nor pure indifference-confabulation. It is “colored noise.” The 2 biggest things to counterprogram are a) allocation of benefit of doubt b) things being actively hidden or evaded/avoided (eg trump taxes)
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You counter a) not with “fact checking” since the facts are not dispositive, but by balling out a *pattern* of self-serving benefit of doubt allocation. The easiest way to do that is to mock the person’s stereotypical rhetorical moves rather than examine each case.
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Replying to @vgr
I’ve wanted to do this to specific, highly followed fortune-cookie posters on here - but they are also very touchy about blocking. I guess you just have to make the one shot count?
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People well below trump levels of power can probably be safely ignored
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