Saturday, November 14, 2020

Journalism tracking the accuracy of beliefs jumping-to-conclusions about occurrences

People, like on platforms like Twitter, jump to conclusions based on flimsy evidence. E.g. they'll make strong judgements about people's intentions based on short, context-free video clips of some occurrence. Because the evidence is flimsy (relative to the conclusions being made), the conclusions are less likely to be true. It's not uncommon for such beliefs to be later shown to be false. The 'Covington kids' is a good example of one.

These beliefs with little or no evidence can take hold (either for everyone, or within certain subgroups). Virality can make them widely spread, and the sheer fact of how widely they're held further contributes to their "truth".

When the actual truth is revealed that can make little difference, as by that point the "truth" of the false beliefs have already been established, and the actual truth is unlikely to have virality.

One thing that might help a bit would be a form of journalism that tracks popular beliefs that spring up, and whether evidence is eventually found for or against them. Importantly, it would systematically track such cases, and see how often the beliefs end up aligning with the truth.

If you could document, over a span of years, just how many of these beliefs about happenings end up being falsified, that would be an important source of evidence that could be presented to people.

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I believe we need "news" sources that focus more on patterns and trends, rather than specific events. This is an example of doing that.

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