tv Democracy of the Gullible Deutsche Welle July 1, 2020 3:15am-4:01am CEST
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qualification games across the continent a biennial cup of nations was due to kick off on january 9th next year and to be hosted by cameroon exacted for the rescheduled tournament is yet to be determined. and. you're watching news don't forget you can keep up to date on a website that's called thanks for watching. all of our mail and i'm good goalkeeper the 2nd season is only good for. the planet on the brink of disaster relief as long interviews with experts about one question leaching shock like ok razor.
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the following is neither a hoax nor a conspiracy do not adjust your computer telephone tablet or television we will be controlling all that you seen and hear and maybe even what you think so sit back relax and enjoy the world of covenanter sciences. in less than 20 years the internet revolution has had a deep impact on human behavior than all other media so that today it even affects the way we think. imagined and invented stories and even outright lies. become prominent in our media landscape how could this be. what
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underpins their popularity. why is it that we've come to down to expert testimony. could it be that our brains are predisposed towards compelling nonsense. when the world wide web was invented in the 1990 s. it was imagined as a democratic space that would provide everyone direct access to all of human knowledge yet today it seems knowledge is being eclipsed by conviction and we are all at risk of being dragged down into a democracy of the gullible. supporter usual dream there's now a competition between information providers from professional journalists to anyone with a facebook or twitter profile to capture our finite attention that will just put you generally get a job it would i never look at twitter and never comment on anything on twitter on
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face or likely if you keep hearing on t.v. about something going viral so well you know that when was the last time a you to a comic change someone's opinion could go. the internet has profoundly changed how we communicate as well as the rules of disseminating information. the value of truth and facts has been diminished online opinions are ranked according to engagement so that a much liked facebook post can be more prominent than an encyclopedia entry. it if you don't like the popular content is a problem because that determines whether it can reach and attempt to convince me it's going to become more important is it possibly to do the likelihood of capturing people's attention is increased if you shape your content to follow the direction of the brain's natural bias ease of. the internet today is full of manipulation beliefs and superstitions. and the key culprit is not google
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facebook or even the illuminati but our very own brains. our mind sometimes lead us away from objective reality they allow a number of shortcuts deviations from russia analyse that serve as entry point to so-called cognitive biases. these biases act on the way we think that they'd like how an optical illusion fools they are but recognising our little intellectual lapses is as difficult for us as it would be for a person who was born blind to understand an optical illusion. take this checkerboard boxes a and b. are exactly the same shade of gray but even when the illusion is revealed we continue to feel there is some kind of trick. we can see just how powerful these effects are in magic magicians are masters of manipulation cognitive biases.
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are set so low that if we removed all biases it would be very difficult to make magic come to life that it probably wouldn't be perceived as magic but as special effects the true emotion we feel the sense of wonder we have watching magic i'm not sure there would be any of that left without our inherent bias is that. magician create illusions that seem to defy the laws of physics. he does so also by exploiting our natural inclination to believe. also so i think over time the human brain created certain shortcuts that enable us to be more efficient but which also lead to errors of perception. cognitive biases may make us more efficient in everyday life but they explode
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online. here our natural weaknesses are exploited. and his poke the democracy of the gullible job of a well known sociologist from the paris de gaulle university has dissected the various biases in our brains that influence our judgment on the internet starting with doubt. a downside is fundamental especially in democracies people have a fundamental right to doubt things from official communications to scientific proposals but as i follow painfully learned the seeds of doubt can be easily planted sometimes just for the sake of doing so. if the right to doubt is not accompanied by jus diligence it's a real threat to democracy a good reason on the internet doubt is amplified by countless untrustworthy sources and although there are tools to check the truth of posts few people make
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that effort. by example for example you don't a priori believe that a man never walked on the moon. that bill should have probably soared on t.v. and so forth but by utilizing doubts we can tell you a story that will lead you step by step to a conclusion that seems completely unlikely at 1st. the belief that neil armstrong never set foot on the moon is untenable the u.s.s.r. would have been delighted to denounce even the slightest deception it was easy for them to aim their antennas towards the moon to confirm or refute the transmission losses and for those who say a satellite could have broadcast the images from space remember that in 1909
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a 100 megabyte disk weighed a ton and the saturn 5 rocket may have been able to transport the d.v.d. into space it would have had no room left for a player to play it on. board a ferris wheel and 20092012 evidence from indian chinese and american probes put an end to the room as she will need to do to do if you were to doubt everything you couldn't live view for example you'd say i know i'll burn my head if i put it close to a fire because i've already done that but what about my fruit my head i haven't tried those yet let that if i see. how cognitive biases and our emotions influence reasoning is a subject of great interest to is about that she's a professor at the university of beck a tough. it didn't bear how many doubt allows us to reassess our beliefs but at the same time we don't abandon everything because of one example that contradicts what we believe. or we have
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a tendency to characterize and categorize things are actually a new noise falls off a tree near us. we have an innate predisposition to attend to human faces this is crucial for recognizing people. but the same bias can lead us to question facts and believe in the presence of for example an ancient civilization on mars. and that's our boys and mash our brain is a sense made on machine so it is not surprising that we have difficulty accepting coincidence as an explanation yet when we see you know why shaped cloud in the sky of course there's no unicorn there but our brains superimposes that impression. and we see those types of cognitive processes often if at any point you saw them all and. if we asked
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a person whether they would use the numbers 12345618 lot of the ticket things most would say no because they'd feel they wouldn't win on that on this either what i think is best yeah it's all the guy. we constantly encounter content that exploits our difficulties and understanding statistics and probabilities our dismissal of coincidence as explanation influences our preferences in the tarrant of information . but a little love the deregulation of the information markedly jannah some of our minds natural slopes by for example if you have one chance in a 1000 of hitting the bull's eye with a dart it's only extraordinary if you hit it if you haven't tried a 1000 times. the need for the manipulation is to. nor the sample size amid the $999.00 tries that failed film the one that succeeded and say he's incredibly talented isn't the more do we spot. these days we are
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ceaseless lee alerted to very low risks and that has turned us into a society of hypochondriacs something that may have been useful in the past but is now cumbersome. for example we have retained our craving for sugar despite the consequences this has for our bodies such biases and heritage from our ancestors and not defects per se on not only want that long ago certain bias seas were arguably extremely useful let's say you lived in a hostile environment if you heard a rustling in the bushes it would be better to overestimate the risk and run because if you don't you might not be around long enough to tell the tale and pass on your genetic code. but in the jungle of the internet overestimating mess can lead to troubling results. says conspiracists often think that when 2 events occur at the same time it's not a coincidence obviously there's
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a correlation is not the same as causation but if things are related people say causality. each and her studied physics before specializing in the history of science he's particularly interested in the evolution of critical thinking. skills like on the loss of the short it all it did was something as our lawyers are destroying it is like yelling out i was ahead snack if you get an infinite terrorist there's a law that says if it takes this much energy to create a crash it'll take $100.00 times more to destroy it legally. hello. this law was formulated by a better bet and an italian program in 2013 a lot of legislation. which study. shit sprayed the list with next year got equal to about that it must either said that he studied. under leading formulated this principle after observing italy's
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former prime minister silvio berlusconi live on television without anyone being able to set the record straight. on my part i think they might say. that. this principle is used and to be used by scammers conspiracists and a growing number of politicians. on a market where we say everyone has a right to speak which is good and everyone takes the truth which is another thing our minds including mine will be tempted to accept that which resembles truth even if it contradicts the actual truth. and. we have a mental tendency to accept the latest conspiracy theory wave after wave ag 70. so we might begin by being wary of palm oil rightly or wrongly that brings us to another science research is about something entirely different israel's role in the
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terrorist attacks for example this aggregates into a multi-layered construct which is intimidating even for those who do not believe it. on this bill in the early 2000 we still hopes that the internet would spread massive amounts of knowledge but that hasn't happened at all 2nd ordered in a funny type of democracy it's what i call the democracy of the gullible yes it's true the internet is democratizing because it gives everyone access to public space but while some voter 1000 times others never voted at all and often those who vote most carry the strongest and most radical convictions and beliefs vic's you do quite y'all swaddle had to sit on a loss i could for you generally associate with those who think like us and view those who don't as fools young someone things like us often we tend to believe they're intelligent but they're someone it would be nice to have coffee with them or yeah this is exactly what's happening on the internet except much worse. as
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opinions are polarized into opposing camps diversity of viewpoints and new answers disappear. small highly motivated groups often attract so many clicks that their positions appear to be much more representative than they really are. years ago here in the of minorities who are louder than others unfortunately tyrannies know how to exploit the apathy of good reasonable people. to texas donnish in how conspiracy theories use highly technical arguments in a wide variety of fields. she said i can really design them up you accumulate arguments that have nothing to do with each other and which are all quite weak but bundled together the unprepared mind thinks they can't all be false he loves why conspiracy theories all the anti vaccine movement have such persuasive power that it's not that people believe each and
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every argument but there are so many of them counts as a. unit their. mental shortcuts help our brains save energy but they also need to biases such as the least effort principle which make us easier targets. early to rule is an conspiracy theories have existed for a long time in human imagination you know. rehashing is an internet speciality since old fake news is quickly forgotten it can be used again this fresh news a few months later. unlike us the internet never forgets. didn't let that get moved do in a sense the internet has transformed an oral tradition into a written one at the end with the copy paste function it's easy to distribute silly nonsense. it's like a dialogue of the deaf when a small group like the $911.00 truth there's still believes the fall of the twin
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towers was a government conspiracy. you do to look. like i also believe that it's impossible for an inexperienced pilot to fly a boeing with control because a video gamer fail to do so is far from reality t.v. for once in the air flying is almost child's play secret you could train a chimpanzee to do it. deployed furthermore no one had ever seen an aircraft crash at full speed into one of the most solid buildings ever built originally pentagon that good. to get excited it's pointless to argue with those who believe in conspiracy theories such as that the american government deciding illions. the mainstream media shouldn't feed off twitter reports only legitimate news and not engage with things that are pure delirium the oh shit.
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the least effort principle might be seen as the father of all biases being lazy can be useful and we can all be a bit gullible. on the. did this we don't have the power to completely disconnect from our prior knowledge and those expectations hopes and emotions us we are almost always biased only process information folks who doesn't necessarily that it serves a function it reduces the difficulty of processing our environment. it to fact there are 2 ways to accomplish a reasoning task one is more in shoes with automatic and faster and demands less continuity of juice the other exercises reasoning and reflection and requires more competent resources. you know not to too far is a great article saying that 70 percent of internet users only read headlines and to
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prove it the body was in placeholder text so many people shared it saying 70 percent of internet users only read headlines. is this kind of reduction in if it is frightening gleeful most of all so our brains are lazy in general we go through every day life and belief mode. and believe mode has advantages over knowledge because it doesn't require much effort we just believe on quell this. through. the belief about camp trails it imagines a conspiracy whereby the american government and the pharmaceutical industry use airlines to spread toxic substances to poison people and influence world affairs. the main suspects are human reptile hybrids and more luminati young jeezy you mean that. there are many erroneous beliefs that don't have any
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knock on effects people believe the sun moves around the earth it's what they see every day the sun rises in the east and sets in the west the scientific truth here is obstruct so that was fiction vitebsk that even that they could you share let's not worry about such in consequential beliefs we should focus on those beliefs that have consequences. if a group wants to change the law because they believe in camp trails that's something we should deal will. never kill you know everyone has opinions i always say twitter and facebook are really just part talk all this that on a global scale. shave the bat give it in the past always stayed at the bar where as now our nonsense is put on twitter and broadcast to the world this will be a woman. on the ball even the most intelligent person in the world could still be fooled by a magician. because that person does not have access to all the information the
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magician has. which can lead to the impression of precedence well teleportation or the spontaneous appearance of an object an object at all it was over there is always a trick i'm convinced that even albert einstein could have been taken in by magic we know there's a trick but we like to forget while watching our oil. unlike the internet we do not have unlimited resources the principle of least effort makes us accept easy explanations we only see what we want to see and we adopt the majority view. that's all the vision we invent a magic trick we create those conditions ultimately we for the brain and make it draw false conclusion falls. the fact that the fault is to rely on automatic cognitive processes allows the
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internet to make use of anything that is likely to deceive the spread of computer viruses and online scams are good examples as these largely play on our instinctive biases the fundamental law for it takes a similar skill set to plan a bank robbery has to come up with a trick that puts a cell phone inside a bottle that doesn't what they call this thing in computer science a virus is generally a program designed to act maliciously on a computer mansur's most all of the other women i've seen choose from street to. deal with tupac image but i think people are more to convince your employer. well. maybe one person. because you're. magic is often associated with scams because we use similar tactics. the simplest advice which sadly is seldom followed is to carry out updates. the least effort
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principle is a boon for scam artists we rarely change default settings and often use predictable passwords. fast the best and i don't think anyone is 100 percent protective we all have subconscious prejudices we all have things we believe or want to believe while any one of us can afford by a scammer who pulls the right straight and appears at the right moment while. computer experts have more information than most of us. we sometimes forget that storing data in the cloud actually mean sending it to massive data centers. there are many many websites that talk about ken trays the loch ness monster and such. let's consider how many sites internet users may visit to learn about
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a subject well of course who divorced won't look at more than 30 so if we take the top 30 sites listed on google search and look at how many support a particular belief or ya many argue it out from a rational point of view us and how many a neutral we find that 70 percent of those sites will support a belief with this heat quite yes. cognitive biases help us to tame our fear of the unknown we have a tendency to adopt the 1st belief that fills a void. when you ask someone whether they're superstitious most will say no that's you it's been shown that superstition is related to uncertain situations that our brain is trying to control our environment that's probably one reason why we've survived this well. to make sense out of a disturbing event people and situations where they are losing or of lost control or more easily rely on beliefs superstitions and conspiracy. these.
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in everyday life the feeling of losing control often translates into accept just touching wood for luck consulting horoscopes or exploring new beliefs. is the owner of a specialist boutique in quebec that serves an ever growing demand. for an additional salon because we other events we cannot control in our lives are quite good county and i believe that when we are more balanced it's easier to navigate these moments. i don't think i wrote a song portland. but rather it's a direction. superstitions have long roads to millennia after ptolemy no one has updated the zodiac although the constellations have moved on most people who believe they were born under the sign of virgo for
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example probably want. all to be able to journey value we generally need to have something else to compare it to so if there is an object being sold for 20 although it's normally worth for a normal brain will feel this is a good deal right. on my local situation when a phone he says we can call an anchor. according to the anchor bias we rely heavily on the 1st piece of information we receive this goes beyond economics. professor of cognitive sciences and restore man is especially interested in and curative theories as children we tend to form our own theories about the world that are meant to explain every day events around us but aren't necessarily accurate they don't necessarily comply with the scientific view of the world but these intuitive ideas never go away they are suppressed. and if a person is burdened under time pressure or has
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a lot on their mind this intuitive understanding re-emerges. it took us a lot longer to say that a plant was alive than to say an animal is alive because plants don't move so our earliest understanding of alive just not something that can move on its own. with the confirmation we have developed a series of automatic responses that make us more efficient as we go through daily life. visiting a country which is a very different culture. can feel that we experience cognitive pity because we are constantly having to learn such an expectation is in our knowledge a very useful enabling us to function on a daily basis. cognitive laziness does not necessarily translate to lack of energy on the contrary believers often increase their efforts to solidify their belief so
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. true believers are motivated than the average citizen and because they are more driven by occupy the spaces left empty in the deregulated information markets are empty chairs in this market and good. use of that produces a terrible effect these tyranny of minorities can convince people who are undecided to side with then. and have a powerful effect on line is conformity conformity is an active part of confirmation bias members of a homogenous group will ruthlessly reject any aliment that does not conform to their collective beliefs. yes the internet is extraordinary but we must be able to train people so that in the future they can read the internet. the 2 of it is i do the bending utensils trick often because i know that some people think it really is possible to measure necker like this it's in our collective imagination because of
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everything that happened around. because of what they've seen in films it allows them to dream. believing in fantasies helps us to feel cognitive forwards and may make us feel like we're privy to a secret like we're one of the initiators. a good example is the business question surrounding the many theories about how ancient monuments were built. a few times the base of the great pyramid of key is that by its height gets rough they said $3.00 dividing the large circle around the base by the small circle within gives the speed of light and then there's the golden ratio one wonders who design. age groups the ones who get most of their information online a younger people get the old and they're also the most likely to believe what they read online about them that. i couldn't imagine my life without the internet that's
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for sure i mean books are good but what your peers like are limited books facebook twitter facebook twitter and snap chat me about so. most of the information on facebook isn't necessarily credible. but young people don't come here to buy magazines they buy no magazines newspapers no more anybody. who i'm i had your 10 years young man around but younger than that no pollution no . the key is proportions have a factor of 2.64755 that of the pair met squared 7 the number of virginity we find pi again and the speed of light so who designed this mysterious kiosk in paris. our continent of bias as help us filter input to avoid cognitive overload. these
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mental watchdogs are not so much essential as they are never going to. get on the internet any manner of filtering as quickly seen as control propaganda and concealment. by. this information market was once regulated by gatekeepers by guardians of the threshold but usual which is to say journalists politicians academics and a whole series of people who were trusted to disseminate information in public spaces. secure the internet anyone can express their opinions to the world directly immense good. but in the nixon era we were lucky that there were honest players within a society of the spectacle. this is it did this bit that was really in their members today there isn't even a spectacle today it's a society of ads about a spectacle. to. draw least in us to. any
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journalist academic or writer who has tried to expose or criticize these things that any given moment down themselves immediately accused of being part of a conspiracy but. when things go viral we rarely check the content against expert testimony before believing that. our cognitive biases discourage us from investing the time and effort. by a lot of skill in the past when we. in the book though we knew that someone had taken the trouble to write it edit it and to get it published studies because of this it was a fisted he has a process that if you're posting on social networks is something you can do with one hand on your smartphone on a bus in order to visit. but the 1st battle the battle for attention has been won. we're in an attention economy where
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the amount of the brain time you can bring to your site is monetized the available information available has greatly increased since the early 2000 us feel. the need to see these older can debate is an intermediate and you know what they say about men with small hands. if you have to speak very loudly and one way of speaking loudly in the information economy is to make outrageous statements you know the 2nd amendment people maybe there is that are. deregulated information market also means tension had to radicalize discourse and the uncomfortable feeling of living in a society where everyone is shouting it because i. was clear that political debates in the us but not only in the us tend towards hysteria to stay busy. nothing we can still receive better than
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playing on public opinion and for instance disseminating accusations about politicians sex life or secret photos the futile so even if these aren't published the damage is done diffusion megan mullally feel political fights seem to have become battles for attention more than conviction. if you can fool people also for political ends i think the intellectual process is unfortunately very similar to misleading and deceiving people. traditionally journalists whether watchdogs have democracies. but can they hold on to this role in a virtual world and if not who will replace them. i mean with your priest anonymous we're not. and also. we are well romantics just human beings idealists who want to see
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a better future. for mongolia as a young computer entrepreneur and a proud member of anonymous a movement striving to reclaim freedom of expression in the internet era he agreed to be interviewed without a mask. suki disconcertingly saying that you don't need your communications to be private because you're not a criminal is similar to saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say about low. anyone including us you can't return with. the dog words replacement of a foreign coach for her to. morrisons so if a game. it's not a crime to have values that's where the dark web is an attempt to regain independence and freedom of communication between humans.
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sure russia to the. argentine the international russian t.v. network financed by the kremlin post all sorts of conspiracy theories originating in very ideological circles. russia today. r.t. has often shown journalism that wins awards. she pulls. that maybe proves that the truth is not necessarily to be found in mainstream media. we distrust the media as the press or even scientific experts on certain issues. are politically motivated misinformation and disinformation further amplify feelings of mistrust and insecurity. it's like a hobby to do it if someone is hashanah to about collecting champagne corks they can devote hours and hours to it i believe that here we are dealing with people who've gone crazy about their hobby who. continue to do it you can prove to glisten
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conspiracy theories doesn't mean that they don't exist. it's called no more of your own we do it arouses extraordinarily violent reactions see it will go over insults and name calling to intimidation into actual threats of world of element us. conversing with people you don't know one line who often use pseudonyms amplifies the violence of these exchanges it doesn't take long before you compare the other to hitler or a nazi one as well. when shirley abdul was attacked in france conspiracy theories were online just hours later the. january 7th on the day of the attack i logged more than 20 different conspiracy theories. broke 4 days later they were already more than 100 argument of you
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and you can put. these i t. valving my thoughts month people who feel as if their integrity of this attack 20 also feel their fundamental belief that the world is a safe place has been champion i'm only down on the security that. dissent from nation can maintain a state of denial it gives us the impression that we have regained a certain amount of control allowing us to keep our faith and our strongest convictions. if we listen to the media we end up hating ourselves as muslims and each other. i prefer to believe in conspiracy theories i found sources but i can't cite them i'm a muslim and i don't want to believe those people can kill in the name of god is what. we. let terrorists have a psychological intuition about what their actions provoke in people. to kill physical labor how this kind of terror shakes the fundamental belief that one needs
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to have to live in our societies the confidence that our lives will not be menaced every day and honestly at least will be loss of control bias can have a direct impact on other types of beliefs such as on the belief in conspiracies. by conforming you can give in to an idea and feel that it has always been your truth because it like a revelation it will never going to give you less your infant sure spirity theories can be consoling i don't like this reality so find another and flee parlaying support claim that we don't have a truth problem with u.t. it's a trust problem. to paraphrase brenda lee's know it takes a fountain times more effort to reestablish trust them to shake it. instant access to all of human knowledge has paradoxically brought us to a place where we have devoting less and less time to being one informed and fewer people are paying heed to scientific fact. on that was the day that if we all have
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cell phones but few people really understand how they work it's a bit like magic of the average week series of almost all mixing up serious facts with crazy information to excite certain natural tendencies in our minds just because we say what's the story about giants they discovered skeleton really we're even if we don't believe it we want to see the fake photos of quickies it up. we must be wary of what we call the authorities all white coat effect you appear on t.v. in a white lab coat and all of a sudden you have more authority. if it comes from a site no one has heard of but ask yourself there are other sites talking about this if it's unbelievable spectacular news in just one side is talking about it it's a spacious. spit series if you're me to state that there's a limo shitty part orbiting mars or pluto well then it's up to you to prove that it's enough for me to say no there is not i can't prove that it doesn't exist but
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both of it is true that. however there is adapted conspiracy theories leave it to others to refute their beliefs planting doubt is enough for them. i believe that humans could have rubbed shoulders with dinosaurs is easier to swallow than the fact that mice and elephants have a common ancestor the creationist movement uses this belief to joyfully discredit the evolution of the species yes you have some creationists have made it into universities and swear in the name of science that badly photoshop photos of storks could be terrible. to hell with science films and cartoons loved the idea of rubbing shoulders with dinosaurs. but you know as soon as there's a division of knowledge i have to trust my colleagues otherwise i'd have to always repeat every experiment which is impossible. which fulfill that you feel i think we need to recognize differences and constantly distinguish we need to reestablish
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hierarchies where there is a tendency to level all sources of information onto the same plane if it gives one side or decent information market revolution has to be accompanied by an education revolution to develop truly critical minds that. we all have cognitive biases they are present within us no matter how intelligent or educated we are. own people and extinguish the part of our brains that loves to discover things that is curious and loves to grow. i know it exists. perhaps the internet paradox is just a pendulum effect between knowledge and belief there are young people who are creatively reinventing networks of qualitatively valuable knowledge but for now without companies have bias says only the vicar of a critical mind can protect us from the trap of the democracy i think i'll double.
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3000. and 30 minutes on d.w. . tico africa. back to the future when centuries saunas become wondering headsman it's because of the ecological way of an eastern and southern africa abolishing fenced in grazing that keep. soil from becoming to chase him to plan protects the tatts of wild animals setting a mission skillet that's a contribution to sustainable future eco comfort. 90 minutes long t.w. . beethoven is for me it. is for you. beethoven is for help. beethoven is for her.
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is for. beethoven is for us. is for. beethoven 202250th anniversary here on. this is news and these are the top stories. the u.s. government's top infectious disease expert has issued a grim warning about the rapid spread of the corona virus in the country dr anthony felt she says the number of daily cases could reach 100000 if the country fails to contain a surge in infectious infections.
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