The Red Light Camera for Lies: Community Flagging of Untrue Claims
The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool. — Stephen King
Because knowledge is humanity’s primary means of survival and flourishing, propaganda and misinformation pose a monumental threat to our freedom, security, survival, and well-being.
Yet, not a day passes without some politician, media outlet, advertiser or Big Tech company using deliberate deception to create artificial divides in the populace as part of some craven pursuit of both money and power.
These merchants of lies need to lie faster than they can be refuted. And for every lie you refute, another fifty lies appear in its place. And so it is that the world ends, not with a bang, but under a mountain of falsehoods that blind you to the truth.
This problem we face is akin to a small town Sheriff trying to stop a horde of lawbreakers from running a red light. Large amounts of speeders can overwhelm the capacity of a single Sheriff. After all, one officer can only catch so many violators.
What this Sheriff needs is technology, a red light camera where (after the initial cost of installation) it effortlessly catches any and all cars daring to run a red light. In addition, the town needs a record of the worst repeat offenders, so that they can be held accountable.
Like that small town Sheriff, we have too many lies for one person to handle alone. We too need a technology which (after the initial cost of installation) effortlessly catches any and all liars daring to run our metaphorical red lights. We also need a record of repeat offenders, so we too can hold them accountable.
In order to catch those who try to run our metaphorical red lights, we must cover every way they might try to deceive. And just like our trustworthy Sheriff, we must profile serial offenders for their modus operandi, their M.O.
How do lie merchants deceive and is there an M.O. that we can identify?
Example from modern times: Ivermectin
Note on Examples: Knowledgecoin is a nonpartisan endeavor. Examples will be used from all political perspectives. We are the Knowledge Tribe, we care only about the true facts of reality. Discover the Power of KnowTribe!
The cable news channel CNN stated on multiple occasions that the most successful and famous podcaster, Joe Rogan, took the “horse deworming medication” known as, “ivermectin.”
- Jim Acosta CNN: “He says he’s been taking the livestock dewormer ivermectin”
- Anderson Cooper CNN: Rogan “acknowledged taking a controversial treatment designed for animals.”
- Brian Stelter CNN called what Rogan took “a horse deworming medication that’s discouraged by the government.”
- Don Lemon CNN said Joe Rogan “took the deworming drug ivermectin.”
- CNN chyrons: claimed Rogan was referring to or using “horse dewormer.”
Is this truth claim valid? This seems to be a straightforward empirical question. Either Joe Rogan did or did not ingest a horse dewormer and we should be able to validate it either way.
Joe Rogan himself seemed to put the issue to rest: “Do I have to sue CNN? They’re making shit up,” Rogan said on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. “They keep saying I’m taking horse dewormer. I literally got it from a doctor. It’s an American company. They won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for use in human beings, and CNN is saying I’m taking horse dewormer. They must know that’s a lie.”
Spoiler Alert: It is now widely acknowledged (outside of CNN) that their statements were false.
In this case, CNN was caught red-handed deliberately and systematically lying to their audience. They deliberately manipulated their language by dropping context, using faulty logic, and flawed reasoning.
How could Knowledgecoin have flagged this falsehood from the beginning?
Knowledgecoin Solution Overview
Is there a way out of the misinformation epidemic, a cure? Knowledgecoin identifies for users:
- Are the truth claims hiding the data or presenting it clearly and unequivocally?
- Are the truth claims providing or dropping the relevant context?
- Are the truth claims conveying an ideologically slanted perspective?
- Are the truth claims mischaracterizing the issue they are criticizing?
- Are the truth claims poisoning the well with slanted, loaded language?
The Knowledgecoin ‘Red Light Camera App’ identifies:
- Context Dropping: Earlier examples about Rogan’s using horse dewormer drop the context of the distinction between horse and human ivermectin formulations.
- Conceptual Errors: The distinct concepts of “horse ivermectin” and “human ivermectin” are wrongly conflated
- Faulty Logic: There are medications encouraged by the government, Joe Rogan took other medication, therefore that medication is discouraged by the government.
- Faulty Reasoning: Ivermectin is a horse dewormer. Medications used for animals cannot be used for humans.
The Knowledgecoin Intellectual Integrity Rating System
Knowledgecoin stores, analyzes, and rates all knowledge contributors in the system similar to how Uber, Amazon, and eBay users are rated. Truth claims can thus be evaluated by the reliability, trustworthiness, and past expertise of those making truth claims.
- Jim Acosta CNN (1 strike for falsehood on this topic)
- Anderson Cooper CNN (1 strike for falsehood on this topic)
- Brian Stelter CNN (1 strike for falsehood on this topic)
- Don Lemon CNN (1 strike for falsehood on this topic)
- CNN Chyrons (1 strike for falsehood on this topic)
The Knowledgecoin Answer
Knowledgecoin promises a remedy, by addressing six central features of the current misinformation epidemic, as follows.
- Accountability — Who has a reliable record of credibility for making valid truth claims and who has a history of false or invalid claims?
- Gatekeepers of Information — Is the raw data of the world wide web properly tagged and indexed by Big Tech so that I can find the data that I require without undue confusion, bias or censorship?
- Changing Definitions — Do we have a common, clear definition of any given concept, and, if not, how do I translate between the confusion of those who use the same words differently?
- Valid Logic — Are the concepts used in a given truth claim or set of claims logically coherent or are they contradictory?
- Valid Reasoning — Even if a truth claim is not itself contradictory, does it contradict any of our currently accepted knowledge, have the proper context, and engage properly with the evidence?
- Immutable Repository — Does the knowledge repository have an indelible record of changes, so that no stealth edits can possibly occur in its edit history?
Knowledgecoin is a library of validated knowledge that combats censorship, misinformation and lies by allowing people to verify the Truth for themselves.
Knowledgecoin.io
We help you find the Truth
About the Authors:
Rick Repetti: Professor of Philosophy at CUNY, Vice President at the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA), and Chief Philosophy Officer at Knowledgecoin.io.
Mark Gleason: Mark Gleason is a Chief Enterprise Architect, Venture Capitalist, and Board Member at Knowledgecoin.io.
References
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/joe-rogan-cnn-horse-dewormer-covid
