I think that is the main source of media bias. I do believe that it's something called poldering, where a journalist will be able to essentially deceive you without technically telling a lie. And they use this to go beyond so that they can essentially feed you a narrative without falling foul of fact checkers or any kind of regulator. It's very clever what they do. But essentially, it's through word choice. That's how they manipulate people rather than telling outright lies.
Gurwinder Bhogal is a writer and programmer who writes about the myriad ways in which technology and psychology conspire to fool us and how we can withstand the covert assault on our senses. Gurwinder is known for his epic Twitter ‘Megathreads’ which set out a series of powerful concepts for understanding the world. He joins the show to discuss our tendency to narrativize information, how to overcome the bandwidth tax, why Wikipedia is the world’s largest source of misinformation, and MUCH more! Important Links:
Show Notes:
- Megathreads & the Woozle effect
- AI, the Encyclopedia Disinformatica, and cultivating a garden of Mithridates
- Capturing the nuance between dishonesty and lying
- The Toxoplasma of Rage
- Overcoming the bandwidth tax
- Brandishing the golden hammer; why we can’t comprehend large numbers
- Tribalism & intersubjectivity
- The purity spiral
- Are we facing a lost generation?
- We are programmed to like complex explanations
- Narrativizing information
- “Certainty is the death of thought”
- Climbing the thinking ladder
- MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:
- The Fifth Science; by Exurb1a
- Talking to Strangers; by Malcolm Gladwell
- Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu
- What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies; by Tim Urban