October 30, 2023

Scary bias

We went to a lovely birthday party yesterday, sat by a big fire, listened to some fine music, felt like old times. Felt like it had been ages since I’d done that. Then I realized, it had been ages. The pandemic has given us all a strange time warp.

It has also given us different things to worry about. Tomorrow is Halloween, traditionally when we face our fears and spooky things. Disinformation is at the top of my scary list.

So I give you my periodic reminder that we are living in the disinformation age. Unlike COVID, it is not waning. Indeed, it seems to be picking up speed, especially with more use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) We can learn to recognize and protect ourselves from it, especially the AI images on social media.

With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had the beginning of an influx of new research, a veritable Infodemic that made it hard for people to keep up with it all. This made us all more vulnerable to the other pandemic. No, not COVID-19, but the Disinformation pandemic. This became a syndemic. Per Wikipedia, a syndemic or synergistic epidemic, is when two or more epidemics or disease clusters occur at the same time or in sequence which can exacerbate the prognosis and burden of disease. That is what happened with COVID, tragically leaving us with excess deaths.

We all have cognitive biases that leave us susceptible. In particular, Confirmation Bias is insidious. It is when we believe the “outcome” confirms what we believe. Since it makes sense to us, we don’t question it.

How to protect ourselves? Newsguard has research on disinformation in general. It has identified websites with COVID disinformation: Italy with 75, UK with 22, France and Germany with 59 each, and 21 websites in other countries, but the US has the most by far: 409. No wonder we are so confused and divided.

Another resource is UW’s Center for an Informed Public that focuses on resisting strategic misinformation and promoting an informed society and strengthening democratic discourse. Snopes.com is a good website to look for the truth, as is disinformationindex.org. CallingBullshit.org is another helpful site.

I can’t help but wonder if all the disinformation floating around is why so few people have gotten their booster shots. Only 7% of adults and 2% of children. I know some of it is easy access to the shots. Scheduling the vaccine can be challenging. Booster fatigue has set in.

Keep informed. It can help calm your fears, doom scrolling isn’t helpful. Remember to have some awe time.

And finally, my caveat is that this is my experience and my opinions, which are subject to change as more information is available. Thanks for reading.

Share this post if you know of others who may be interested. All links are listed at the bottom of this post.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/05/22/misinformation-ai-twitter-facebook-guide/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biases-make-people-vulnerable-to-misinformation-spread-by-social-media/

https://infodemic.blog

https://www.newsguardtech.com

https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/coronavirus-misinformation-tracking-center/

https://www.cip.uw.edu/research/#resources

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200911110806.htm

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/24-cognitive-biases-warping-reality/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biases-make-people-vulnerable-to-misinformation-spread-by-social-media/

https://www.snopes.com

https://www.disinformationindex.org

https://www.callingbullshit.org

https://www.callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/health/covid-vaccination-rates.html

https://www.vaccines.gov