Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaight
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A million one-off mistakes and social media shares = FAKE NEWS. This is a perfect example of that phenomenon when it is legitimate. You read a fictional piece, took it as fact, did not bother to research, shared it to a group of people, some of which probably also read it as fact (*cough* Mick,) and thus starting the domino effect. Maybe you do your fact-checking 99% of the time, but the 1% matters too with bullshit like this.
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What a load of pretentious garbage! In reality any information retrieval system has both false positives and false negatives; the only way to completely avoid false positives is to not return any results. There is a reason confirmation bias exists: no one has time to process every piece of information in exquisite detail. The key is to update your perspective when incorrect. Moreover, not every piece of information is equally important. There is an entire literature on generating persuasive statements, and computers are almost certainly being used to do so. Being wrong in this particular case barely changes my overall world view.
TLDR: I'm quite satisfied with being right 99% of the time and being wrong about unimportant things 1% of the time. I am not going to diligently fact check every post I make to off topic. You are welcome to follow me around pointing out any mistakes.
P.S. You are completely wrong about fake news: the problem is not social media sharing dubious information, but the systematic bias of our major networks. In other words, it's not actually incorrect information per se, but the ratio of that information. For example, Australia had record cold temperatures last summer, but you didn't read about that in the NYT because they only share evidence that favors the global warming narrative.