How to detect fake news?

How to detect fake news?

I think the brouhaha about “detecting fake news” (and the underlying notion of “fake news” itself) is utterly wrong because it teaches people to think in simplistic boxes, in almost black-and-white terms.

Hey people, I’ve got news for you (and it isn’t fake):

Much of the real world doesn’t come in simplistic boxes and 16-color poster paints anymore. (It never did, but primates and other primitive folk found the notion convenient and reassuring.) If you go outside into the real world of scientific inquiry or policy debates, and especially into the wild jungle of info-warfare, you can no longer rely on those expedient tools used by our hominid ancestors.

In the modern info jungle, once you start pontificating about what’s fake or not—in black-and-white terms and based on your 4-bit checklist—then you’re bound to overlook the actual lay of the land, the real patterns of terrain and foliage. You get hopelessly lost. Or you soon drown in the quicksand of your own mind’s making.

Worse, you risk being taken down by a sniper hiding in plain sight. Or worst, you’re bitten by a true snake lurking beside you as a truly fake leaf. Just because you couldn’t go beyond 16 colors.

I have my own topology and typology of public information—including those forms that conventionally pass as “news”. But they’re too long (and the morning too early) to explain here.

Oh, by the way: I read Part 1 of Deception, word for word. I think people need to read it, as well as the succeeding parts. Lower primates don’t need to, because they already made their 4-bit judgment. #

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