Everything Misinfo Podcast #3 with Gleb Tsipursky
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Before you know it, episode 3 is out! I will be going away for the next week, so this episode is out early and the next episode will be a little late. (Not that I have a real schedule or anything…)
This is a great episode and I really have come around to now being an ardent supporter of The Pro-Truth Pledge. I have known about it for over a year now, and even taken it myself, but never really gave it much credence. It seemed too simplistic, too… hokey? Too easily ignored by people who have taken it? I don’t know exactly what it was, but I didn’t take it seriously and didn’t think it could achieve much. But my mind has been changed.
The misinformation problem is a big problem. Huge in scope. Huge in complexity. And in my opinion, huge in potential ramifications for the human race. Misinformation could actually lead to the destruction of society as we know it. And against that backdrop of severity and complexity, there seem to be few if any viable solutions to the problem. Many are proposed, but for every suggestion, there is a long list of flaws, objections, complications and uncertainties which make those suggestions problematic.
The Pro-Truth Pledge offers no certainty that it will fix the problem, but it does offer a very good chance that it will make some positive difference, AND, most importantly imo, it doesn’t seem to have any particular risk accompanying its implementation.
Potential upside, virtually zero risk. You don’t get many opportunities with odds like that.
And in this space, I don’t think there is a single other option available to us with that sort of risk-reward ratio. Even the Socratic Web, my own project, has a very real and tangible list of risks which accompanies it.
For that reason, I think we all should embrace the Pro-Truth Pledge as part of our own work, and our lives, and we should become activists for it. It won’t cost us anything. It takes no significant amount of time. And it might be the most important thing we do to help deal with this massive, important, and complex problem which we have all dedicated ourselves to fixing.
And with that said, here is the episode:
PS: With uploading this episode to SoundCloud I just got an email saying that the older tracks are hidden. I only have 3 files hosted on SoundCloud! So yeah, this is not a viable solution to audio podcast hosting. I will have to create a squarespace website and host the files there I think. Sorry to everyone waiting for the audio podcast setup, I will make it a priority as soon as I get back to sort it out.
Shane
SHOW NOTES:
Upcoming Events:
Community Spreadsheet of all events
- Tech Demo Series Workshop — July 24, New York City
- MisinfoCon DC — August 6–7, Washi
Grants / Awards / Competitions etc:
Upcoming Events:
Community Spreadsheet of all events
- MisinfoCon DC — August 6–7, Washington DC
- Tech Demo Series Workshop — July 24, New York City
- Misinformation Solutions Forum — October 4, Washington DC
- Digital Technology and Democratic Theory — December 13–15, Stanford, California
Call for papers
- FAT*2019 ( fairness, accountability, and transparency of algorithmic systems.) — PreREgistration by August 16, Final Submission August 23, for conference late January or early February in Atlanta, Georgia.
- Call for Proposals: Media, Technology and Democracy in Historical Context — Application due August 10, 2018 for workshop to be held in New York City on December 13–14, 2018
Call Timings:
- 0:00 — Intro, news and announcements
- 1:40 — What is the Pro-Truth Pledge?
- 4:30 — Pro-Truth Pledge research paper: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/9127/7551
- 7:52 — https://www.protruthpledge.org/
- 13:40 — Civil discourse as a tactic
- 21:40 — The Pro-Truth Pledge is a safe and viable solution to the misinformation problem. We should support it.
- 30:40 — The risk of succeeding with ‘supply side’ solutions to misinformation. Creating a false sense of security in the population.
- 35:20 — Traditional media had control over the flow of information for decades, and so we didn’t learn media literacy because we didn’t need it.
- 40:20 — Cambridge Analytica and hostile actors in the information space. The susceptibility of humans to manipulation.
- 46:00 — How the Pro-Truth Pledge promotes and instills critical thinking skills in the population
- 55:00 — Our responsibility as individuals to act and work on fixing the problem of misinformation.
- 58:15 — gleb@intentionalinsights.org, https://twitter.com/Gleb_Tsipursky, https://twitter.com/protruthpledge, https://www.protruthpledge.org/
