Cognitive bias plus curated information feeds industrial post-truth vulnerability

Evidence

If we are already motivated to want to believe certain things, it doesn’t take much to tip us over to believing them, especially if others we care about already do so. Our inherent cognitive biases make us ripe for manipulation and exploitation by those who have an agenda to push, especially if they can discredit all other sources of information. Just as there is no escape from cognitive bias, a news silo is no defense against post-truth. For the danger is that at some level they are connected. We are all beholden to our sources of information. But we are especially vulnerable when they tell us exactly what we want to hear. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 122

Categorization

• QUESTION: The mechanism connecting cognitive bias to news silos to manipulation is the chapter’s thesis and worth a fuller model.
• XREF: connects to: Post-truth roots lie in ancient cognitive bias, academic relativism, and media change; Motivated reasoning is the motive while confirmation bias is the mechanism — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 100; Digital media isolate people from contrary opinion which face-to-face life once forced — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 118 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Reducing existing prejudice requires countering confirmation-biased information processing #expands (0.85) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1994
• Social media amplifies rather than causes pre-existing biases in susceptible users #qualifies (0.80)
• Prediction-style claims immunize propaganda from present-tense refutation. #expands (0.78)
• Zero-sum environments make deceit and distrust rationally advantageous #expands (0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 473
• Reputation substitutes for truth in scientific and cognitive contexts #expands (0.72)
• Cognitive-science bias insights demand granular institutional examination to be useful #expands (0.72) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1377
• Surveillance capitalist experiments exploit knowledge asymmetry to engineer user behavior for profit #expands (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 934