Happy New Year!

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse

Tags

advertising, civility, cooperation, greed, innovation, life, media, religion, social media

It’s not really the champagne or the fireworks that make New Year’s special.

Many people around the world, in their own time zones, celebrate New Year’s. Precisely when depends on where you live and to a large extent, the major religion in your area. Some people tend to celebrate in the Spring; others in the Autumn; many around the winter solstice; and a few traditional cultures celebrate the new year in the summer. Some of the traditional calendars are based on 12 lunar cycles which does not make a full year so their “New Year’s Day” shifts over time relative to the Gregorian calendar.

It’s easy to get lost in the details of the differences among traditions, cultures, and religions. But what I find remarkable about New Year’s is not the fact that there are differences across the world. What I find both remarkable and heartening is that many different cultures in many different countries have some kind of “New Year” celebration; that people across the globe recognize that time has a cyclical as well as a linear aspect; that people everywhere recognize the importance of new beginning and that special events are “marked” in some way and that these celebrations are shared by scores, thousands or millions of people across the planet.

What I find even more wonderful is that people across the globe are able to learn something about other people and cultures. Right now, at the beginning of 2018, there are some few extremely greedy people who want to play on your hate and fear of anyone and anything that is different. They want to enhance your ignorance and play on your negative emotions for one and only one reason — to cheat you out of your freedom and therefore your life. Make no mistake about it. There really are dangers in the world and for best results, you really do want protection from those dangers — protection for you and for your family. Some of those people who threaten you do speak different languages or do practice or profess different religions. But some don’t. Some people who are threats may dress differently or eat different kinds of foods. But some don’t. Basically, all those people across the globe are very much like you. And, just like you, they too need to understand that some of their leaders are also trying to steal things away from them and in order to do that, they want to make their followers believe that you and your kind are the threats and dangers.

Chances are much greater than 50-50 that if you were suddenly set down in the middle of a completely different culture, you would eventually be accepted and even welcomed. Why? Because people are fundamentally similar. However, people “getting along” is not in everyone’s interest; it’s only in the interest of the vast majority of human beings on the planet. Those who have positions of power and no real leadership skills to help “grow the common pie” will instead try to arouse your feelings that other people are trying to steal your piece of pie. If you cede your freedom to such power brokers, they promise they will protect you from these “others” who are trying to steal your pie. Instead, it is these very people in power who are out to steal your pie and add it to their considerable stack of pies — more than they could ever possibly eat.

Here’s a secret though. The people who are inventing new pies; the people who are sowing wheat to make new flour for pies; the people growing the berries; the people actually baking pies — we are all very similar regardless of dress, language, religion, or customs. People in power are absolutely terrified that the rest of us will all discover the extent of the emperor’s nakedness and call it out for all to see. Those in power would hate to see a true meritocracy because they have very little skill when it comes to any aspect of actually making pies. By and large, their only skill is to make you fear that others are out to steal your pie. If everyone else becomes friends and colleagues across the globe, there is no more reason for the power-hungry to rule you.

Meanwhile, people across the planet collectively have a huge amount of power. In some places, there are still free elections and those can be one way to change the world and exercise your own power. But it is not the only way. Whatever wealth you have, you will have some choice about where to spend it. What if everyone rewarded companies that are ethical and punished companies that do unethical things by refusing to spend money on their product and services? What if people refuse to give up the hours of their lives for working for companies that act unethically? Would you be willing to take a 5% pay cut to pay for a company that believes “ethics” is not just a training exercise for underlings but also applies to the top executives of the company as well? How about 25%? Would you be willing to blow a whistle on corporate crime? Would you be willing to buy local product and support local services unless and until large multi-nationals behaved like good citizens? Are you willing to refuse further increases in productivity until there is a plan in place to share the gains in productivity between workers and those who own the companies? A world-wide or national strike would cause people to take notice and eventually change business practices.

Last year, I wrote a long series of blogs about some of the root causes of divisiveness in America — though much of it applies equally to other countries in the world. There can be changes to social media, for instance, that could make it more of a force for unity and good and less a force for maximizing advertising dollars. Yet, none of the three social media companies I use most: LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter have asked me (or, so far as I know, any other user or citizens in general) what I would like to see different about their policies, procedures, and principles. We don’t have to wait for them to ask though. We are their users and their customers. Right now, they mainly care about their advertisers because advertisers are very vocal about policies if it affects their pocketbooks. But you and I can be just as vocal about policies that impact our society as are the advertisers. Ultimately, the advertising dollars depend on you and I using these social media.

For instance, check out the “Terms of Service” for these social media. It’s not always clear what constitutes a violation, but it does seem very clear that these social media are free to use the content you created for their own profit and that includes any clever things you say, photos, videos and music tracks. On the other hand, if you post something that you don’t have legal rights to, you and you alone are responsible. The terms of service are not “negotiated” with you; they are a “take it or leave it” affair and they are aimed at protecting the company, not at protected our democracy or humanity in general.

https://twitter.com/en/tos

https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms?_rdr=

https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement

But we can change that. We can collectively pressure social media to make changes that we feel are in the best interests of humanity. And this does not just apply to social media companies. It also applies to Walmart and Apple and Amazon and every other large multinational. We don’t have to be purely passive recipients of what others deem is the most profitable way for them to do business. We can change the commercial world so that products and services work better, are safer, and that the profits of productivity do not just accrue to owners but to workers as well. Yes, we can.

And that would indeed be a Happy New Year.

Author Page on Amazon

Standard Issue

13 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advertising, civics, life, marketing, politics, social media

Most of the suburban neighborhoods of my home town were quite similar. They typically had a long row of very similar houses and each house had a yard. That yard was filled with neatly mowed grass. Around the house were bushes. The size of the house varied from neighborhood to neighborhood but lets go back to the part where all the houses “decided” to landscape their yard in a very similar way. No-one, so far as I know, ever threatened a person whose lawn was not well-mowed. For the most part, people voluntarily kept their yards looking “nice” although within very narrow bands of taste. Having the neighborhood embody variations on a theme actually made the neighborhood as a whole look nice. Neighborhoods would have had a quite different look and feel if everyone competed on how high they could grow the bushes and trees throughout their entire property!

Sensationalism

And, at a larger level, that’s how I feel about the rampant sensationalism in advertising. I visited a small college town once for a job interview and the only signs were moderately sized wooden signs that said, “Post Office” or “USABank” or “Barber Shop” — and it all worked for everyone in that small locale. But when there’s enough money to “go national” businesses get into an arms race to grab your attention with all bold type and much worse tricks. But it all just becomes harder to read. It makes buying and selling actually more random as people need to filter out all that crap that they are exposed to nearly every waking moment.So, I actually think these huge ad budgets are exactly a kind of tragedy of the commons. All the companies would be better off with more low key and quieter ads and so would we. And, consumers could make more intelligent choices because they would be exposed to little enough information to make some sense of it.

Is there a way for advertisers, regulators, the public, to unwind toward less sensationalistic advertising? I don’t know whether it’s possible or even desirable. But it’s worth considering.

It’s also worth considering experimenting with a different set of algorithms for social media. In their current instantiation, social media are a bad alternative to face to face meetings. In real physical space when people meet face to face, for a number of reasons, they generally act civilly. This doesn’t always happen obviously, but it generally does even if people do not agree. Actual fights at school board meetings, Congress, state legislatures, town hall meetings, high school debates, bowling leagues, assemblies, work meetings occur rarely.

Filtering and Bandwagon Effects

The social media that I know of have algorithms to filter what is shown to you. These algorithms work behind the scenes showing you and me just those things that are meant to maximize profits for the social media company. Yes, true enough, there is an intermediate goal of pleasing the user. But rest assured, if there were a way to displease the user and make more money, that’s what would be done. It’s important to keep in mind the intermediate as opposed to the ultimate goal. Of course, you realize that the social media company is out to make money. And, you also know from your own experience, that the social media company suggests things to you and shows you ads. In some cases, you also directly pay the social media company, perhaps for enhanced capabilities.

Despite not knowing the details of these unknown algorithms, I can make some educated guesses. For instance, on Facebook, we are presented with a scroll of posts. Generally, these originate from people you are “friends” with on Facebook. Ads and sponsored pages (=Ads that don’t look like ads) weasel there way in there as well. But I have hundreds of friends on Facebook. Which ones actually appear in the feed? Likely inputs to that decision are: how many times I hesitated and for how long on previous posts for that person. Most likely, that weighting function is moderated by a recency & frequency metric. In addition, choosing an emoticon, would give that person a bigger bump and a still larger bump would come from commenting on a post. The biggest bump of all would come from a “Share.” It’s possible, but seems to me unlikely, that Facebook might actually do some natural language processing on the comment contents to see whether the reaction text is positive or negative about the post. I think it likely that Facebook may also assign some indirect positive weight. If many of my friends, especially those highly “valued” according to FB algorithm, like a post, then I am more likely to see it as well.

Let’s assume for the purposes of argument that the above speculations are more or less accurate. Clearly, there are unintended consequences if these are the only measures that the algorithm considers. For example, say I am friends with people Claude and Carol. I play tennis frequently with Claude and met him about a year ago. Carol, on the other hand, I’ve known for fifty years and I find everything she reads, thinks, etc. fascinating. As it turns out, Claude posts about 30 times a day and a lot of the stuff is rather cute. So if I see it, I may click a “Like.” Carol, on the other hand, posts maybe once every week or two. Whatever it is, it is interesting and I often comment or share it. Because Carol posts so infrequently, I don’t even notice that I haven’t seen her on FB for the last three weeks. Meanwhile, at long last Carol posts: “Hey guys. Recovering from accident. More later.” But do I see it? I haven’t paused on, liked, commented on or shared any of Carol’s posts because she hasn’t had any. It’s quite possible that Carol’s post will never get to the top of my queue. If I then fail to see this post, Carol’s “rank” will go down even further. Having a post get high in your queue probably depends to some extent on the content as well as the accompanying media. I like videos in general, and perhaps I like posts about “Human Computer Interaction.” This so happens to be what Carol typically posts on. Her most recent post, however, has nothing topic-wise to recommend it to me. The keywords that may be looked at “guys” “accident” “recovering” are not generally topics that interest me. So, because of the unusual and “uninteresting” post, I’m even less likely to see the post about my good friend, Carol.

In any case, I can pretty much guarantee that whether these algorithms are good or bad for society as a whole has not been a top priority in design meetings. Perhaps there is a way for the user to be able to push and pull the priorities in various ways to achieve a panoply of different results. In fact, one can imagine an open system environment in which dispersed and diverse groups offer up various add-on capabilities. This is an alternative to having one giant company control how we see and react to each other.

Bandwagon Alternatives.

The “Bandwagon Effect” refers to social media algorithms putting high priority to show those items that already have more pauses, likes, comments and shares in the case of FaceBook. In Twitter terms, it would be likes and retweets. Thought of in terms of viewing humanity as a giant neural net, the bandwagon effect is a sharpening to the first stimulus that pops up. This is less than the intelligence of an earthworm! We should be able to arrange a multi-layer, highly interconnected network of people to have a more intelligent and nuanced reaction than “WOW!” And, yet, every time one of these idiotic tsunamis of insanity gone viral, it interferes in a very real sense with your ability to keep up with the people whom you actually know.

Anonymity Alternatives.

Companies need to carefully consider ways to insure people’s identities are broadly consistent with reality. I do not think it would be okay for me to have an account on twitter, for instance, that has a name like “Donald_Trump” or “Barack_Obama” if I have no official relationship to the real people who are most likely referenced by these labels. This is even more serious if I am really using a moniker to get people to see my posts when my real goal is to trash these political figures.

My FB profile says I worked at IBM Research and Verizon and studied at the University of Michigan. Does FB do any work to verify these claims? After all, if I make a comment about IBM, people may reasonably put a little more credence on that comment if they know I worked at IBM Research than if I just made that up out of whole cloth. As we have recently discovered, some “fake” accounts that claimed to be US citizens concerned about our country were actually the accounts of Russians who were intentionally trying to foment discontent in America. Things of a similar nature are being used to disrupt and divide other Western democracies.

Similarly, my LinkedIn profile is even more detailed with degrees, work experiences, and other details. But suppose I present myself (falsely) as a highly experienced diplomat with widespread middle east experience. Won’t people who read my various posts and comments about the middle east put more weight on my opinion if I claim to know something about it? The question is, however, does LinkedIn do anything to verify the claims a person makes about their experience and background?

I am not picking on these specific social media platforms. They are among the most popular and are three I happen to be active on. That’s the only reason I chose them. But do any of them make attempts to verify the information? Sure, you could argue it’s up to the individual to do this kind of checking but that’s insane. My name, for example, John Thomas, is an extremely common name. It’s not that trivial, even with google, to distinguish my actual publications, background, etc. from others with the same name, even for me. Wouldn’t it be a lot more efficient for, say, LinkedIn to at least lightly verify that I worked at IBM than for every one of my 3000 connections on LinkedIn to do it themselves? Part of the value of the social media platforms is in the profiles that people create. Is it to much to ask for the social media people to do any checking? Don’t we expect the FDA to at least spot check that things labelled as “beef” actually contain healthy cow meat and not rotted horse meat? We don’t allow people to get away with fake credit cards or driver’s licenses and with good reason. Who makes sure these social media profiles contain reasonably accurate information? Who should? It would be one thing if these media were simply used as occasional sources of entertainment. But that’s not the case! People rely on FB, for instance, for their news!

In the absence of any checking, most people, me included, are putting up “real” information about ourselves, but others are completely lying perhaps as part of a small personal scam, but more crucially as part of an international attempt to divide America and other western democracies. True enough, FB terms of service ask for the help of users to put up real information about themselves. But we have learned that some accounts were not even telling the truth about their country of origin. This is not okay, folks. This is not okay.

Enforced Civility.

Could or should social media do more to enforce some kind of civility in the content? This may admittedly be difficult to implement. Currently, social media do have various “Terms of Service” meant to move people toward civility but real civility is much more than simply avoiding swear words. It is easy to avoid being blocked and still “say” the swear word in a number of ways such as embedding or substituting other characters. You know I mean a**hole and I know I mean it. No one thinks it is short for a parameter “a” raised to the power “hole.” But even if smarter algorithms detected and deleted disguised swear words, it would only address a small part of the problem.

As I have blogged on many occasions, another part of the problem is likely due to society’s rush and that, in turn, is reflected by limits such as (until recently) Twitter’s limit of 140 characters. I personally like the restriction since it provides a creative opportunity. However, even in my most creative mood, I find it very difficult, in 140 (or even 280) characters to acknowledge your point, restate it, and then move forward some kind of reasoned dialogue about an issue we disagree on.

Research and suggestions about how to make on-line environments more constructive have been published for awhile. For example, lac, of anonymity and human moderation appear to be critical. One can also create better communities, perhaps by using levels of intimacy and trust. In the physical architecture of a home, for example, Christopher Alexander points out that most homes have a gradient from public to private space. The front porch, for instance, is somewhat public. Your vestibule or entry is somewhat private but you may let in the pizza delivery man. People would have to be further vetted to be allowed into your living room. Traditionally, the bedroom and inner garden would be still more private and reserved for fewer people.

In some cases, people may type something that is unintentionally uncivil. When you speak face to face, you can see the reactions of the other person immediately. This allows you to get feedback in real time and discover immediately that you may be causing an emotional reaction in the other person. You may choose to moderate your speech accordingly. In addition, when you speak, you say things in a particular tone of voice with a particular prosody. I might say, “Wow. That is a really interesting dress.” I could say this and sincerely mean precisely that. If I type those words, however, you do not actually hear my voice. Instead, you “hear” these words mentally with the intonation you put on them. You may hear me say it sarcastically even though it was not intended that way. Alternatively, you could “hear” me say those words suggestively, as a come on, even though I intended nothing of the sort.

In couples therapy, people are often encouraged to use “I talk” instead of “You talk.” What this means is that it works more productively for me to talk about how I feel about you and what you do than about what you do and how you should change. It also works better to be specific and to seek a solution rather than to be general. For example, let’s suppose I find my socks scattered all about the house. It works better to say, “This evening, after a hard day at work, I felt a sense of eager anticipation as I opened the front door. Then, when I saw socks strewn about the living room, my heart sank. I would be really happy if I saw no scattered sox.” than to say, “You are such a slob! You don’t care about my sox. You always strew them everywhere!” Your spouse is much more likely to react favorably to the first statement than the second. Of course, in our case, the real culprits are the cats. And no amount of coaxing or coaching, however lovingly I couch it, will convince the cats from strewing my sox about. If I want them to quit, I will have to put the sox out of reach. Similarly, people being what they are, one cannot simply ask them to behave well. The situation must include guidance and enforced penalties for misbehavior as well as perceived benefits for good behavior. Should companies provide (optional?) guidelines on rules of discourse such as being specific and using I-Talk?

While the formal properties and terms of service of the social media may be a strong force in influencing behavior, they are not determinative. For example, in the early days of AOL, there were “chat rooms” which allowed up to 21 or 22 people to enter. People could only input a couple lines at a time. Most chat rooms that I explored were largely filled with “age sex location checks” and trivial talk. I tried on several occasions to engage people in more serious debate and discussion on issues of importance to the future of civilization. My wife made similar attempts. Generally these attempts failed. But on some occasions, we both entered the same chat room and began more serious discussion. On these occasions, people were much more likely to move to that type of interaction than if just one of us tried it alone.

At this time, there were several “Native American” chat rooms. These chat rooms were completely different from the “typical ones.” I could “tell a story” — a long story — two lines at a time and no-one would interrupt. When I finished a story, people would comment. After that, someone else would “tell” a long story — again without interruption for perhaps a half hour or more. At the end of that, people would comment on the story. So, the formal characteristics of the medium could prove adequate for several quite different modes of communication depending on how people acted.

If you read the “Terms of Service” of various social media, you may quickly come to the conclusion that their main motivation is to make money. After all, they are for-profit corporations. However, it seems clear that some thought has been given to safety and privacy concerns. It’s less clear that much consideration has been given to how these social media may be shaping (or misshaping?) society as a whole.

We drive our private cars on public roads. We have considerable freedom in how we drive and when we drive and how we drive. But we are not allowed to drive north on a one-way, southbound street. We are not allowed to weave in and out of traffic or speed recklessly nor block traffic by sitting still in the middle of the road. The car manufacturers do not control these laws. They are enacted for the benefit of society as a whole. Safety is a large consideration, but not the only one. (If it were, we might have a world-wide speed limit of 35 or 40 mph). The rules recognize that safety is important but so is “reasonable” speed. We tolerate a fair number of deaths every year in order to accommodate speed. But if we were killing half the population, we would insist on changing the rules. Perhaps it is time to start considering changing the rules about how we use social media. Perhaps the Terms of Service should not be the sole province of the company’s who provide the platform any more than the construction companies that build our roads are the sole determiner of traffic laws, fines, and penalties.

There are many other thoughts on media, its impact on society, and how to make it a better force for good. Here is just a small sample.

https://www.amazon.com/Community-Building-Web-Strategies-Communities/dp/0201874849

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/papers.html

https://medium.com/hci-design-at-uw/information-wars-a-window-into-the-alternative-media-ecosystem-a1347f32fd8f

http://epic.cs.colorado.edu

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https://www.amazon.com/author/truthtable

Gold Standard

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#fakenews, communication, credibiity, media, politics, Russia, social media

At David Hill Elementary, our third and four grade teacher, Miss Wilkins, had a small library in the classroom which we were allowed to freely peruse on Thursdays during spelling tests, provided we had gotten 100% on Wednesday’s preliminary test. I generally did manage to get a perfect score on Wednesday and of all the books, I most liked one that had a very detailed picture of not one, but two Medieval castles. Movies about King Arthur, Ivanhoe, and Prince Valiant further stoked my love of these fine days of knights and castles and kings and queens. Playing out fantasies with toy swords and shields seemed so much more satisfying than playing “cops and robbers” or even “army” which often devolved into shouting matches about who shot whom first. When someone got hit with a toy sword, they damned well knew it! That wasn’t the only reason for the attraction though. It seemed more honest and more “real” to battle someone with sword and spear than with guns. Even as a nine year old, it seemed clear that a much weaker person could kill a stronger one with a gun. All that was required was a fast draw or to shoot someone in an ambush.

For years, I made castles from cardboard boxes with the cardboard axles from paper towels as turrets. These allowed toy knights to be deployed in larger battles. One Christmas, I even received a “real” castle made of metal! This was one of the coolest presents ever. Now, decades later, it seems I, along with millions of other people may get to live out this childhood fantasy in a second “real” Dark Ages.

The thing is this; in the intervening years, I’ve been to real castles in Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and France. They are cool. In fact, they are cold. And damp. They lack the basic comforts of today’s cheapest Motels. Falling from our intricate, inter-connected, inter-dependent computerized modernity into a new Dark Ages will not be as fun as you might think in case you are still harboring those childhood fantasies about Medieval Europe.

I hope people also realize that a descent into the brutality of the Dark Ages is not something that be easily undone either. Just as most of us have lost the skills to snare rabbits or find edible wild plants, the second generation of a new Dark Ages would not be able to program, let alone build, a computer. The third generation will be lucky to have a third grade “education” in terms of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Yes, there will hopefully be fragments of useful information scattered about, but without the social structures of public schools, universities, research institutions, private companies, markets, investment capital, etc., nothing will have enough context to succeed. Are people going to fund you to build a computer from scratch when they don’t even know what it is and they feel hungry right now? No. They will ask you to join the hunt or go hungry yourself when the goods are returned to the campfire, village, or tent.

By the way, this may be an extremely dangerous case of the “grass seeming greener on the other side of the pasture.” We are all quite familiar with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” from our own modern world. But we woefully underestimate just how much less interesting, less healthy, less fun, less fulfilling, and less fair life would be in the dark ages. Most likely, you would die in childbirth. If you did live, you’d most likely be little more than a slave (yes, even if you’re “white”). You’d probably die around 30 or 40. If you’re lucky. You wouldn’t be playing video games or watching TV or listening to an iPod or texting on your iPhone. You probably wouldn’t even be reading a magazine or newspaper or book. If you get sick, you are very likely to die, unless of course you are staring in a movie about the Dark Ages and then you will be miraculously cured by your true love, or the magic ointment of a witch, or a vision of the Holy Grail. But in the real, Dark Ages, you’d die.

Even the kings and queens and bishops and knights of the “real” Dark Ages did not generally have life half so good as we have it. But your chances of being one of those pieces is pretty much nil. A chessboard may have 8 pawns a side and 8 “upper class” pieces, but in the real Dark Ages, it would be more like 10,000 pawns to one king or queen. You and I would be one of the pawns. Our basic job is to work from dawn to dusk until we die of illness or battle and give almost all of it to the noble who owned us. If we didn’t particularly enjoy farming or blacksmithing, too bad. We were stuck. If you worked extra hard and extra smart as a serf, your reward would be that you died younger. You would not “work your way up” to be King. No. You and your children would be serfs and so would all your grand-children. One thing to keep clearly in mind is that dictatorships, whether the dictator is called “Premier” or “Chairman” or “King” or “Tsar” are mainly for the people at the top.

I hope people do realize that even a modern country seldom gets the chance to “vote out” a dictatorship and say, “No, we liked it better as a democracy. We’ll take that again, please.” It doesn’t work like that. The view of someone who’s a dictator is that life is all about power and position — period. They are not going to give any of that, or the associated wealth, to other people. We may think the French Revolution might have considered “reasoning with” the aristocracy rather than beheading them. But after centuries of being tricked this way and that by the aristocracy, the aristocracy had no remaining credibility.

I bring this up, because if we collectively allow the continuing downward spiral of ill-informed shouting matches to continue, trust will continue to erode and society will unravel. We will find ourselves in another Dark Ages and it will be far less fun than my (and perhaps your) childhood fantasies of the Dark Ages might be.

This plague of divisiveness that is sweeping America as well as other democracies, is a truly vicious circle. It now seems crystal clear that this is precisely the effect that was intended by a foreign power (some Russians with ties to oligarchs and former KGB personnel). I call this a “vicious circle” not simply because it is mean-spirited in intent and execution (though it is) but because it constitutes a positive feedback loop. For example, the more we feel our own political party, value system, religion, or favorite candidates are under attack, the more anxious and angry we become. This makes us less discerning; when we do encounter “fake news,” we are so eager to validate our own positions and predilections that we fail to execute good judgement about whether the “news” is really fake or not.

The “good thing” about a vicious circle, aka “positive feedback loop” is that it can be run backwards to de-escalate bad feelings and reduce the effectiveness of fake news. In the earlier “cold war” between the USSR and the USA, you may recall or at least have read about an “arms race” to make more and more nuclear weapons aimed at each other. Every time the Russians increased their arms, it made the US leaders feel less secure so they increased their arms. But every time America added more nuclear missiles, it made the Russians feel less secure so they added more nuclear missiles. It seems like a runaway process. If either side can calm themselves enough to understand the system that they are a part of — and if they are brave enough, they can (and in fact did!) run the circle the other way. When the USA reduced the number of missiles aimed at the USSR, the USSR felt slightly more secure and felt okay to aim fewer missiles at America. That made American leaders feel more secure and they could further reduce atomic weapons.

Similarly, in the USA and other democracies today, if we can step back and understand that the increased divisiveness is not good for anyone, we can begin to “rewind” or “unwind” this ever escalating hate speech. Each “side” will feel a little more secure and a little more willing to take the time to exercise good judgement about what is best for America, for example, rather than simply “sharing” or “retweeting” the best zingers. It will take time to build confidence and to right the “ship of state.” But it can be done.

I believe that there are three major arenas for actions that democracies can take to reduce divisiveness. The first area is what individuals can do. That is what I will discuss today. To simplify writing, and because I am most familiar with it, I will pose these actions and arguments in terms of the USA, but the general strategies might work in any society that wants to increase cohesion and decrease divisiveness. In two future blog posts, I will examine: 1) how changes in social media algorithms and interfaces might contribute in a positive way to increasing social capital across constituencies and 2) how government regulations (or voluntary agreements in industry) may also help stamp out the worst of fake news.

But let’s begin with what you and I can do to stop this madness. Because right now, most of us are actually contributing to the divisiveness plague without really meaning to. Rather than suggesting specific news sources that are good or bad, I recommend a set of questions to ask yourself about on-line communications. When someone posts or tweets a link to a story, you might ask some of the following questions.

Who are the advertisers or funders of a purported piece of news? If you click on a link and you go to a site filled with pop-up ads, banner ads, and side bar ads, what are those ads about? Do the ads themselves have credibility? Is it really all that likely that some new oil of oregano will cure every disease known to humanity? Or, that there is “one trick” that will make everyone find you sexually irresistible? What is the relationship between the image and headline that got you to click on something and the actual substance? What is the source of the story clicked on? Is this something you’ve heard of for twenty years like CNN, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, or even The National Enquirer? Or is it something that has sprung up recently? Naturally, a newspaper might sometimes get stories wrong too, but most of their revenue comes from subscriptions. By contrast, most on-line sources only gain revenue from ads. By the way, just because there is a website with a picture of a soldier or eagle or flag or Bible does not mean its stories are real. A fake Russian news article is not going to announce itself by saying, “We’re trying to destroy your country!” nor by having a site branded with a hammer and sickle.

When it comes to evaluating a news story, sometimes it helps to consider whether it is likely based on what you know about reality. What people know about reality, of course, varies a lot from person to person. If you’ve never taken a biology course or forgotten everything, you might think a headline such as “New Hope for the Dead!” or “The Zombie Apocalypse is Real!” could be true. But even if you’ve forgotten almost everything from biology class, you do know that there are doctors who dedicate their lives to learning about medicine and practicing it. If there were really, “New Hope for the Dead,” your doctor probably would have heard about it long before your seeing it in an on-line tabloid. They might well have mentioned it to you at your last physical. “Yes, you have really high blood pressure and that is a bad thing. However, if you do die, we have a new procedure to bring back to life.” You might ask your insurance agent what they think. “Hey Joe. Hi, this is Frank. I just read this article entitled New Hope for the Dead. Do I still need life insurance?” You might ask someone else who knows a lot more about life science that you do. You might google “New Hope for the Dead” and see what other types of sites collaborate the original story. There is no single method for checking the validity of a story, but there are some general principles that are always good for problem solving. Think of alternatives and think of consequences.

Maybe there really is new hope for the dead. That’s one possibility. Or, maybe there isn’t and someone wants to make you believe there is. Why might they do that? To get you to spend money would be one reason. Another might be just to make you feel anxious or angry or jealous. Another might be to make your distrust your fellow human beings. In that latter case, the story would be slanted slightly differently; for instance, “AMA refuses to acknowledge life-restoring value of rhino horn!” This story is trying to get you to believe that rhino horn can bring you back to life and that the American Medical Association is intentionally hiding that fact from you.

How well do you keep secrets? If you’re like many people, your idea of “keeping a secret” is to tell only your closest friend or two and swear them to secrecy. They will likely do the same. Eventually, secrets tend to “come out.” The idea that among a quarter million AMA members, they are all going to successfully keep a secret from the public does not hold water. A more “reasonable” conspiracy theory would be that three doctors did something unethical and kept anyone from discovering their unethical behavior.

Aside from making judgements about the stories, links, shares, tweets that we see, we also need to make judgements about what we ourselves communicate. We owe it to ourselves and everyone else to consider four basic criteria:

Is it true?
Is it kind to everyone involved?
Is it useful to the recipient?
Is this story going to increase or decrease trust?

If you cannot discover the truth value of a story, you might pick for sharing something you are fairly certain is true instead. Or, you could ask others if the story is likely true. Or, you could preface it by saying that you are not sure whether it’s true and you wonder what other people think.

Think about whether what you are propagating is kind. Of course, there are times when a truth will make someone feel bad. For example, if you’re interested in baseball, you might report on a pitcher walking in the winning run. If that’s what he, in fact, did, he will not especially like being reminded. I wouldn’t personally call this “unkind” though. If on the other hand, you embellished the report, it could easily become unkind. “So-called relief pitcher Wiley Wrists should be relieved permanently from the Red Sox lineup.” Or, worse, “Wiley Wrists is too fat and ugly to walk to the mound without waddling, let along pitch!”

Will the information be useful? In the case of Wiley Wrists, most people are not going to find it useful. A few gamblers or baseball players might find it useful. The useful part, by the way, is simply the fact of his losing the game by walking in the winning run. Making fun of people generally adds no value, makes no friends, and increases bad feelings.

The criteria of truth, utility, and kindness are not my own inventions. I think they are pretty much inculcated into the face to face culture I was brought up in. I have seen these explicitly repeated in numerous forums. But the fourth one I think is also important and while related to the others, deserves its own consideration.

If we want to avoid another Dark Ages, (and I mean, the real ones, not the childhood fantasy version), we need to do what we can to restore trust among the very diverse people we have in our country, whatever country you live in. As I said before, because we have such different experiences and backgrounds, it will naturally take us longer to find common ground. Yet, at the same time, we are being driven to faster and faster schedules and timeframes. Our communications may be misinterpreted or clumsy, but at least strive to communicate in a way that tends to increase rather than decrease trust. There are actually very few people that I distrust intensely. So calling them out on being untrustworthy is true and useful. It’s impact on trust is complicated. I believe that the untrustworthy in government are intentionally destroying trust in the country. If those untrustworthy people are trusted? Then, we are collectively toast.

Similarly, some modern politicians are doing things that are genuinely unkind; in fact, they are downright nasty. It is not really kind to them for me to point this out. On the other hand, if we can get rid of politicians who pass legislation that tries to destroy America or make it a crueler, meaner place, then even though the message is unkind to some, it hopefully encourages people to prevent turning America into Amerikkka. And, that is the kind of kind that trumps nice words.

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Excellent Analysis of “Fake News”