Tracking the Reliability of Information

Originally posted on Datagotchi.net: https://datagotchi.net/2020/11/16/tracking-the-reliability-of-information/

As the world becomes more connected and more complex, it is increasingly difficult to know what to believe. Ideally, we would simply believe what happens to be true, but events happen far away from us, to other people, and we usually hear about them after the fact. Therefore, we need to trust that other people are telling us the truth. As a society grows, this sort of trust in others results in institutions like religions, cultures, and organizations, which members then look to for beliefs, norms, and values.

However, creation of new institutions and changes to existing institutions are done by those in power. As a result, much of our society is based on assumptions created by the powerful, such as “it’s important to work and be productive” (capitalism), “it’s more important to take care of yourself and your family first” (individualism), and even things like “smoking is cool (even though it kills you)” or “being skinny is the only way for others to like or respect you” so tobacco and beauty product companies can sell more. Lately there’s been an even larger increase in their use to serve the powerful and reduce institutions’ ability to function in their original framing, including businesses and states reopening to make money during COVID-19 rather than protecting their customers’ health; focusing federal agencies like the EPA on reducing regulations instead of protecting the environment; and the Catholic church being more about protecting child molesters than providing religious community.

Since we can no longer rely on many institutions, we will need to make sense of the world ourselves. That way, we can know the risks and the medical and other effects of reopening businesses; the effects of pollution and their severity; and when we can trust religious leaders. Nowadays, there are so many different sources of information — from news paper websites to social media posts — that it overloads us. Some information sources are more reliable than others, and it’s difficult to know which ones are. Furthermore, information sources contradict each other, either because they have different agendas or are based on different belief systems.

In spite of these issues with sources, we will still need to refer to external sources for most of our information given the complexity of the world and the information in it.

• Therefore, we need to determine what sources we should trust, and which ones we should not. Once we know what sources to trust, we can also trace information back when it’s shared by others to its original source and determine whether or not to trust it.
• We can then also start to be confident that what we learn from them is the truth, but we may also want other ways to verify the truth of claims.
• Once we are confident that what we read is true, then we can share it with others. However, for it to be valuable to them, we would still need to share true information with others in a way that they can use it both immediately and in the future.

To determine what sources we should trust, people should not just continue using their currently-trusted sources because they are often trusted for reasons we are not aware of. We could also simply ask our friends and family for their trusted sources, but they may fail to tell us the full truth (intentionally or not), and they probably don’t have a good reason for trusting certain sources, either. Therefore, a more reliable way to determine trusted sources is needed, preferably supplemented by insights from our connections. If we scope the problem to news on the internet, then a solution is needed to reliably create and share source trust data.

To verify the truth of claims, people cannot trust their or their connections’ gut feelings because they are often as opaque to us as our gut feelings on what sources to trust. Furthermore, our gut feelings change over time, even though the truth of a claim does not change. Therefore, a solution is needed to consistently evaluate the truth of claims.

Finally, to share true information with others in a way that they can use it both immediately and in the future, it is not sufficient to send it to them. They might read it and learn a piece of information, but a week or month from now they may forget it, or at least the medium in which they received it from you. To be able to use this information in the future, it needs to be saved in a way that helps them interpret information they see in the future. Therefore, a solution is needed to use true claims to improve source trust data that will help them evaluate claims against the trustworthiness of the source.