Thread by @danwilliamsphil

New essay: I argue that misinformation is often better viewed as a symptom of deep societal problems rather than their cause. When that’s true, interventions like debunking and censorship are unlikely to help – and might make things worse. (1/15)
iai.tv/articles/misin…

The central intuition driving the modern misinformation panic is that people – specifically *other* people 👇 – are gullible and hence easily brainwashed into holding false beliefs. This idea is wrong. (2/15) journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

People are discriminating and suspicious learners, if anything placing too much weight on their own views relative to those of others. Persuasion is therefore extremely difficult and even intense propaganda campaigns and advertising efforts routinely have minimal effects 👇(3/15)

To many commentators and social scientists, this fact is difficult to accept. If people are not gullible and persuasion is difficult, what explains extraordinary popular delusions and bizarre conspiracy theories? (4/15)

This question rests on a confused but widespread assumption: that the truth is always self-evident and desirable, such that false beliefs can only arise from the credulous acceptance of misinformation. (5/15)

But first, the truth about complex issues is not self-evident, and people interpret the world through intuitions and interpretive dispositions that are often pre-scientific. To overcome these inclinations, they must encounter and trust reliable information. (6/15)

However, a minority actively distrust mainstream epistemic institutions (e.g., science, public health, mainstream media), which causes them to reject reliable info and expert consensus and seek out content - often wrong - from counter-establishment sources. (7/15)

And second, humans are not disinterested truth seekers. Much misinformation arises from factors such as affective polarisation and anti-establishment worldviews, which create widespread demand for content that demonises outgroups and elites. (8/15)

Factors such as institutional distrust, polarisation, and rationalisation markets imply a picture in which – as Dan Kahan once put it – “misinformation is not something that happens to the mass public but rather something its members are complicit in producing.” (9/15)

When that is true, standard technocratic tactics for dealing with misinformation – such as prebunking, debunking, fact-checking, and censorship – are unlikely to be effective, and censorship specifically is likely to exacerbate the problems it aims to address. (10/15)

If so, what might help? First, rather than investing so much into preventing the gullible masses from being brainwashed into holding bad ideas, it is far more important to win trust in institutions, including by *making them more trustworthy*. (11/15)osf.io/preprints/psya…

As @Musa_alGharbi points out 👇, institutional distrust is often understandable and sometimes justified. (12/15)
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

More broadly, policies should aim at addressing the social conditions that make people avid consumers of misinformation. Intense polarisation and steep social inequalities create an inevitable demand for hyperbolic narratives that demonise outgroups and elites. (13/15)

Of course, that's easier said than done, but I hope this short essay helps to highlight some limitations, problems, and opportunity costs associated with the way in which the topic of misinformation is often understood in science and society. (14/15)

The essay draws from and links to the work of many, including @hugoreasoning , @Sacha_Altay (from whom I first heard the framing that misinfo is a symptom), @acerbialberto, @JoeUscinski, and @Musa_alGharbi (15/15)