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Truth or Lies, Facts or Fiction - Fighting Misinformation | FutureIQ

5,738 views Wait, is this logic right? • Oct 18, 2024
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Slog Reference: Fighting Misinformation

Description

Misinformation & fake news are wild spread in today’s day & age thanks to the ease of access to information that we have. Whether it is social media, or newspaper articles, misleading information & lies are rampant and they shape the narratives that we believe, and warp our perspective of the world. Is it possible to escape misinformation? How can we spot fake news and trust what is real?

In this episode, we talk about the dangers of misinformation with the help of several real-life examples. It is the era of information that we live in - be it real or misleading, so is it really possible to avoid or ignore misinformation? We cover different ways to spot fake news, different tools we can use to question the news that we consume and hope that you find these tips helpful as well. By the end of the episode you will have a tool kit on how to protect yourself from the dangers of misinformation.

Related Videos:
Science of Why We Make Bad Decision? https://youtu.be/CBIm7TqXQ4w
You're Wrong About How Others Think: https://youtu.be/Pwh90BkWRt8
System 1 vs System 2 Brain: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4
The Power of Storytelling: https://youtu.be/ErIcgAEW0t0
Is Wikipedia Trustworthy?: https://youtu.be/HBXKHIPIUH8
Is Healthy Food Actually Healthy?: https://youtu.be/cIQcK1r6bLY

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:33 Examples of Misinformation
02:18 Types of Misinformation
02:24 Misled by Coincidences
03:04 Misled Without Lying
04:11 Actual Liars
04:30 How to Spot Misinformation?
06:30 How to Question the Information?
09:25 Good Sources to Trust
11:05 How to Find a Way Out of Misinformation

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Sources cited in the video:
Microplastics, should we be worried? By Krish Ashok - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR5JIKrEaHY
Is jaggery healthier than sugar? By Krish Ashok - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZNFv6QMIk8
Britannia Milk Bikis: https://bit.ly/BritanniaMilkBikis
Homoeopathy: https://bit.ly/3A2UOXf

#futureiq #fakenews #misinformation_buster

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Fighting Misinformation

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Transcript

misinformation is a big problem every day we get WhatsApp forwards with all kinds of lies or misleading information and that is seriously warping our view of the world and our brains right it is important to understand how to fight this especially with elections around the corner right both here and in the US as well yeah take some simple examples of misinformation okay there was a recent forward going around about how microplastics are horrible for you and that whenever you microwave a plastic container you're ingesting microplastics yeah right complete misinformation right check out our links for a great video by Krish a shoke debunking this right yeah similarly people think that jaggery is much healthier than sugar right the same
amount of jaggery is going to give you the same amount of problems yeah as sugar right Absolut they have done an entire episode on misinformation related to food and also Krish as has some great videos check those out yes the entire advertising industry thrives on misinformation okay so for example britania milk bakies do not have DTI Shi okay they say that four biscuits have the same energy as one glass of milk technically true because of the sugar they don't have the protein they don't have the calcium okay yeah Dr batra's homeopathic treatment claimed that scientifically successful treatment on 1 million patients of baldness and Vitiligo not true right yeah imami ayurvedic oil gives freedom from hair
loss not true right britania 100% whole wheat bread would you like to guess how much whole weat it has not 100% I'm guessing 50 to 65% I am laughing at all of these but the truth is that there have been very clear debunking of these there has been very clear judgment from the advertising standards Council of India we'll put links to all of those in the description all of what he's saying is backed up by facts but you know what a lot of this is modern claims sort of there is also age-old wisdom that is still being accepted and that can't surely be misinformation some of them are misconceptions maybe but well see I mean
don't assume that all of misinformation is just lies okay there are different categories right so the simplest category is people truly believe it but they have been misled by coincidences right okay all of the belief in Homeopathy comes from that right they have some disease like a cough or something which was anyway going to get better yeah then they take homeopathic medicine and it gets better and they believe that Homeopathy C them yeah I I don't know who said it or where I heard it but basically something along the lines of if uh some if you get cured after having something there is no power in the world that will convince you that the last thing you had was not the thing
that cured you yeah tolto said this there you go see that's why he's the boss the next level higher is a person who's misleading you without lying okay how can this happen if you just go and ask a BJP supporter okay how has BJP helped the country they will give you a whole bunch of facts and figures about how the economy has improved okay if you go and ask an anti-bjp person they will give you a whole bunch of facts and figures about how the economy has gone down in the dumps since BJP took over yeah both sets of facts and figures will be true yeah right what is happening is just selective presentation of truth
right by just showing you one set of facts this side can prove they right and by showing a different set of facts the other side can show they're true right and so this is I mean intentional misleading it is not coincidence but they're still not lying right this is kind of like disinformation but from uh from a personal standpoint each one of them believes that they are doing the right thing correct yeah the third category are the actual Liars right like Baba ramdev and everything he says about the miracle cures is usually a lie okay Channel B but it is important to fight BS and misinformation so how do you spot misinformation is the basic question now
because you've you've given me three categories but how do I spot which is which so there has been some research right most of us believe that oh misinformation is difficult to spot that's why everybody's getting ConEd but in reality that's not true if you just tell people that I want you to look in this and tell me what is misinformation most people are able to spot the misinformation correctly right oh I have taught classes on misinformation to 12 to 14 year old students and with the Little Help from the internet all of them have been able to spot misinformation without any problems right so what do you teach them in these classes usually first of all ask
yourself is this too good to be true okay right very likely that it is misinformation if it is too good to be true it is not true similarly is it too bad to be true right third is that would someone love for this to be true right okay right and it can be you you look at you look at something and you say oh my God this is you know you want it to be true you want to forward it to your friends I wish this were true right usually real life is doesn't give you such an easy juicy thing right yeah similarly it could be you know you can imagine a toxic person somewhere huh and
if that person wants it to be true then there's a good chance it's misinformation right so someone's standing to gain from it in some way right right that's okay so just you know whenever you see some piece of information and you instinctively feel like forwarding it or you instinctively hate it right ask yourself a bunch of these questions is it too good to be true is it too bad to be true is there someone who wants it to be true do you want it to be true and does someone gain from it in some way five questions if the answer to any of these five questions is yes then what do I do is it
misinformation not necessarily right you have to dig deeper so far you have just decided that it is suspicious potential misinformation okay the first thing to do is decide if it is important okay okay you will come across so many pieces of information every day you can't go down rabbit holes for each and everything right correct most of the things are not important ignore them and move on correct only for the important ones you go down to the next level right which is question the motives of who the source right okay who originated that or who forwarded that right correct either ask yourself are they misguided or are they trying to persuade someone are they trying to impress someone or are they
trying to evade something right oh okay okay so are they misguided or are they misled or are they trying to mislead mislead is they're trying to persuade they're trying to impress they're trying to evade so that's almost disinformation category correct all right also question your motives for wanting to believe something to be true right right do you want it to be true is this like an easy way out for you out of a difficult situation is it because you know that the sender can't be a liar trust in the sender is important yes but even if the sender is not a liar are they the type who might be Miss Aken ah right do you
want to believe it because your tribe the people you admire believe it group conformism right so all ask all of these questions then stop and think you have to involve your system to brain okay oh yes check out our episode on System One versus system 2 okay system one is very easy to get misled by misinformation most misinformation does Target your system one yeah when you engage system two usually it reaches the right conclusion right correct and it's very easy to check using the internet right correct you can check for sources like snopes.com which gives detailed analysis of what is true what isn't there's a whole bunch of other uh factchecking websites check what the Wikipedia has to
say about this topic uh even though most people believe that Wikipedia can be wrong there's an entire episode we have done on how Wikipedia is pretty reliable in practice right uh or even ask on a group where there are people who would know which parts are misinformation and which are not check with authority check with experts check with people who actually know the subject of whatever it is that you are being suspicious about correct most importantly when in doubt don't forward until you have figured it out right yeah correct that is the most important part so you did give us examples of good factchecking websites but are there any examples of good sources that you can
immediately trust in general if you see an article about something right how do you know it is true or not look for whether there are good arguments or bad arguments in there right good is arguments that are based on science maths data right and usually these arguments are going to be boring yeah they're going to sound like a textbook that you are trying to run away from right there will be complex most of the time good arguments will not be Rising okay and finally good arguments will have lots of Mayes yeah not entirely sure right and the opposite is bad right bad arguments are based on emotion most important Faith right they're trying to make you angry or
they're trying to make you afraid yeah right a lot of politics a lot of the arguments will be us versus them you know those people they always exis right yeah so bad arguments will attack the person instead of attacking the argument okay they would be like an evocative story right we did an episode on the power of Storytelling check that out I mean this is part of the evil power of Storytelling uh these will be very simple arguments and it'll hit you with a surprise right yeah with a very clear message I can now see why so many of the people I have stopped being in touch with uh how they fell into the deep
Chasm of misinformation deep hole of misinformation can I do anything about them can I sort of bring them out of that pit of misinformation that they have fallen into yeah so I think I mean it's not uh easy to do but one of the most important things to keep in mind there right is that you have to be kind okay yeah trying to attack somebody like this directly research shows that it has the exact opposite effect okay it's called the backfire effect actually showing somebody data proving Beyond doubt that it is wrong wrong does not result in them changing their mind it results in them digging in their heels and becoming even more strongly in favor
of their mistaken belief okay don't I know it instead try to focus on getting them to step back and involve their system to brain instead of trying to focus on why is this wrong try to focus on why do you want to believe it right sort of I mean but it has to be a long and non-threatening discussion yeah it can't be adversarial that never works yeah and unfortunately a lot of the internet right now is extremely adversarial where you tend to make an opinion on something sometimes purely by Instinct sometimes purely on Half Baked information and then that becomes the hill you want to die on yeah and I mean the thing is that Twitter Facebook all
of these right and WhatsApp of course there's a lot of system one thinking going on right thoughtlessly you just forward very quickly the first thing that comes to your mind and there are lots of evil people in the world advertisers politicians and others who are sitting there weaponizing your system one instincts and misusing them listen don't put advertisers in that category because a I am part of that industry directly or indirectly I'm not saying all of them right I'm just saying within them there are a whole bunch of evil people no you can actually say all of them because I know how that industry works a lot of it is also that way because I think the burden of proof has
shifted to the person who we are forwarding to rather than us ourselves because we assume that they will filter it out at their end oh this is the forwarded has received argument right no so I think we need to take on responsibility yes of not forwarding things which could be misinformation when in doubt don't forward and when not in doubt doubt right first please doubt always doubt or as the common meme on Twitter today is hesitate please so the overall message of this episode seems to be doubt hesitate don't forward as received that's important so I think the important thing to know is that even kids can separate misinformation from information if they just put a few
minutes into it right and research has shown that everybody can uh do it so it is just important to realize this fact that slow down and check things out yeah and second is that it is not necessary to forward everything right just forward things that are important and known to be true so forward this episode to everyone you know and help fight misinformation if you like this episode check out our other episode on the Barnum effect or how astrologers fool you and how you fool yourself yeah please do Shri Kant naen future iqq fighting misinformation