can also follow us on twitter and on instagram on all the social media we are at. i'm sara kelly in berlin thank you so much for joining us to take care and stacey. beyond. the stories that. hundreds. more ever it takes. a good job made for mines.

the following is neither a hoax nor a conspiracy do not adjust your computer telephone tablet or television we will be controlling all let you seen and hear and maybe even what you think so sit back relax and enjoy the world cup and to biases. and less than 20 years the internet revolution has had a deep impact on human behavior of an all of a media so that today it even affects the way we think. imagined and invented stories and even outright lies have become prominent in our media landscape how could this be. what underpins that popularity. why is it the. 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. who pulled the 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 would surely get the job it would i never look at twitter and never comment on anything on twitter on facebook 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 to see beauty 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 sees. the internet today is full of manipulation beliefs and superstition. and the key culprit is not google 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 service entry points to so-called cognitive biases. these biases act on the way we think a bit like how an optical illusion fools they are but recognizing our little intellectual lapses is 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. 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 luke 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 online. here our natural weaknesses are exploited. in his book the democracy of the gullible drop of

a well known sociologist from the paris did or university has dissected the various biases in our brains that influence our judgement on the internet starting with doubt. downs is fundamental especially in democracies people have a fundamental right to doubt things from official communication is 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. gives 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 that effort. by example for example you don't a priori believe that a man never walked on the moon. just

because we did have probably saw it 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 seemed 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 1969 a 100 megabyte disk weighed a ton 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 in 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 hand 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 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 after beck a tough b.f. . it doesn't bear how many doubt allows us to reassess our beliefs but at the same time when we don't abandon everything because of one example that contradicts what we believe. we have a tendency to characterize and categorize things that are actually on the moon oil spills off a tree near us. we have an innate predisposition to attend to human

faces this is crucial for recognising 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 void and mash our brain is a sense medo 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 a person whether they would use the numbers 123-4561 lottery tickets most would say no because they'd feel they wouldn't win on that on their side of what i think says basket case of the guy. we constantly encounter content that exploits our

difficulties in understanding statistics and probabilities i dismiss all of coincidence as explanation influences our preferences in the tarrant of information . but a little mushy love the deregulation of the information marketing channels some of our minds natural slopes 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 ignore the sample sizes you amid the 999 tries that failed film the one that succeeded and say he's incredibly talented isn't here quite yet we're more doing this but. so these days we are 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 diocese 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 pounce on your genetic code. but in the jungle of the internet overestimating rest can lead to troubling results. conspiracists often think that when 2 events occur at the same time it's not a coincidence obviously there's a correlation is not the same as causation but if things are related people say causality. even studied physics before specializing in the history of science

he's particularly interested in the evolution of critical thinking. what something is on law is destroying it is like killing i was it had its knack it's an infinite terrorist there's a law that says if it takes this much energy to create credit it'll take $100.00 times more to destroy it legally. a lot this law was formulated by a better but under an italian program in 2013. a lot of legislation. which started. when i start. shit spray the list with next year got equal to about that. bundle even formulated this principle after observing at least former prime minister silvio berlusconi lie on television without anyone being able to set the record straight.

not now but i think they might say. that this principle is used and abused by scam as conspiracists and a growing number of politicians. on a market where we say everyone has a right to speak which is good and everyone's likes 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. we have a mental tendency to accept the latest conspiracy theory wave after wave you have any. so we might begin by being wary of palm oil rightly or wrongly hopeful that it brings us to another science research is about something entirely different israel's role in the terrorist attacks for example this aggregates into a multi-layered construct which is intimidating even for those who do not believe it and. on this better am came naturally to thousands we still hope that

the internet would spread massive amounts of knowledge but that hasn't happened at all secure and 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 a oswell had. where 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 that they're someone it would be nice to have coffee with them oh yeah this is exactly what's happening on the internet except much worse. as opinions are polarized into opposing camps diversity of viewpoints and nuances disappear. small highly motivated groups often attract so many clicks

that depositions appear to be much more representative than they really are. there isn't tyranny of minorities who are louder than others unfortunately tyrannies know how to exploit the apathy of good reasonable people. see today it's astonishing how conspiracy theories use highly technical arguments in a wide variety of fields. 'd usually 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. gods why conspiracy theories all the anti vaccine movement have such persuasive power that it's not that people believe each and every argument but there are so many of them. yet there are. mental shortcuts

help our brains save energy but they also need to biases such as the least effort principle which make us an easier target. early to rule isn't conspiracy theories have existed for a long time in human imagination. rehashing is an internet speciality since all fake news is quickly forgotten it can be used again this fresh news a few months later. unlike us the internet never forgets. do you know since 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 towers was a government conspiracy. you do it to stoke. relief

that it's impossible for an inexperienced pilot to fly a boeing with control because a video game or fail to do so is far from reality when you thought once in the air flying is almost childs play secret you could train a chimpanzee to do it. deploy 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. i could get excited it's pointless to argue with those who believe in conspiracy theories such as that the american government deciding illions. have bought the mainstream media shouldn't feed off twitter but report only legitimate news of you not engage with things that are cured of your real daily oh shit. 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. deed this we don't have the power to completely disconnect from our prior knowledge and taisha its hopes and emotions. we are almost always biased only process information folks who doesn't necessarily matter and it serves a function it reduces the difficulty of processing our environment. if the fact there are 2 ways to accomplish a reasoning task one is more in shoes with automatic and faster and demands a lisp community of jews 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 prove it the body was in placeholder text so many people shared it saying 70 percent of internet users only read headlines of. this kind of production if it is

frightening gleeful most of all our brains are lazy in general we go through every day life and belief mode. and belief mode has advantages over knowledge because it doesn't require much effort we just believe on quell this. stuff. in 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 a young tree you mean that. there are many erroneous beliefs that don't have any knock on effect that if 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 abstract so it was fiction very tips that i have and that they could usually 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 with also i think i. know everyone has opinions i always say twitter and facebook are really just part talk all this that on a global scale. so you go back given the past always stayed at the bar whereas now our nonsense is put on twitter and broadcast to the world. on the boat even the most intelligent person in the world could still be fooled by a magician ask because that person does not have access to all the information the magician has. which can lead to the impression of precedence we'll tell it will take all the spontaneous appearance of an object an object or call it there's over

there's 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 the real ordeal. unlike the internet we do not have unlimited resources the principle of least effort makes us accept easy explanations we are only seeing what we want to see and we adopt the majority view. of the measure when we invent a magic trick we create those conditions ultimately we for the brain and make it draw false conclusion falls. the fact that a fault has to rely on automatic cognitive processes allows the 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 it wasn't what they called this thing in computer science a virus is generally a program designed to act maliciously on a computer most years most all of the other women i've seen choose from street to. deal with 2 documents and i think people are more to convince your employer. world records. for most of the books and not because you were. 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 principle is a boon for scam artists we rarely change default settings and often use predictable passwords. 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 be fooled 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 means sending it to massive data centers. of course data there are many many websites that talk about kent trey's the loch ness monster and such. let's consider how many sites internet users may visit to learn about a subject of course who devote most won't look at more than 30 odd jobs 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 have to look we find that 70 percent of those sites will support a belief with the 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 is that you've 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. he's. 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. on additional salonica we are other bands we cannot control in our lives. i believe that when we are more balanced it's easier to navigate these moments. i don't think the wrote a song portland. but rather the direction of. 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 example probably weren't. able to be able to journey value of 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 question on my local situation trimborn affair he says we can call an anchor by. according to the anchor bias we rely heavily on the 1st piece of information we receive this goes beyond economics. professor of cognitive sciences after a storm 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 that are suppressed. and if a person is burdened under time pressure or has 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 bias 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 we can feel that we experience cognitive 13 because we are constantly having to learn such expectations and our knowledge of very useful and i believe 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 that belief so. true believers a movie 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 this tyranny of minorities can convince people who are undecided to side with them. another powerful effect online is conformity conformity is an active part of confirmation bias members of a homogenous group will ruthlessly reject any element 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. because i do the bending utensils trick often because i know that some people think it really is possible imagine that it's in our collective imagination because of 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 discussion surrounding the many theories about how intricate monuments were built. 2 times the pace of the great pyramid of giza divided by its height gets rough they said 3.14 dividing the large circle around the base by the small circle where then gives the speed of light and then there's the golden ratio one wonders who design. leisure age groups the ones who get most of their information online or younger people typically 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 for sure. but work appears like a limited books facebook. twitter and snap chat give any of us.

most of the information on facebook isn't necessarily credible. but young people don't come here to buy magazines and buy no more magazines newspapers no more anybody. who were my actual 10 years young man around but younger than that no pollution no. the chios 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 mental watchdogs are not so much essential as they are never going to. get on the internet and

a manner of filtering is quickly seen as control propaganda and concealment. buys on the. this information market was once regulated by gatekeepers by guardians of the threshold of visual which is to say journalists politicians academics and a whole series of people who were trusted to disseminate information in public places like to secure the internet anyone can express their opinions to the world directly and that's good. but in the nixon era we were lucky that there were honest players within a society of the spectacle. this is it that this bit that was really in there members today there isn't even a spectacle today it's a society of ads about a spectacle. based soon you draw in your city. any 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 we knew that someone had taken the trouble to write it edit it and to get it published studies because of this it was of the studio as a process 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 because i mean we're in an attention economy where the amount of brain time you can bring to your site is monetized information available has greatly increased since the early 2000 us feel. the need to see these

on the condition it 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 out there. the regulated information market also means tension added 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 spin ocracy is better than 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 megan mullally fetus political fights seem to have become battles for attention more than a conviction. if you can for people also for political ends i think the electoral process is unfortunately very similar to misleading and deceiving people . that it's. 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. really was your priest anonymous we're not. and also. we are well romantics just human beings idealists who want to see a better future. as a young computer entrepreneur and a proud member of anonymous a movement striving to reclaim freedom of expression and the internet era he agreed

to be interviewed without a mask. 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. to live a exit. anyone including us you can't return with even. where discipline afford codes for her to go for reasons so they buy a game. it's not a crime to have value so that's where the dark web is an attempt to regain independence and freedom of communication between humans. 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 critically musky to russia to the.

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. you want who says we distrust the media the press or even scientific experts on certain issues because they're not politically motivated misinformation and disinformation further amplified feelings of mistrust and insecurity. it's like a hobby if someone is hashanah to mount collecting the 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 conspiracy theories doesn't mean that they don't exist. it's called no more of your

when we do it arouses extraordinarily violent reactions see it will go over insults and name calling to intimidation it actual frets. element us. even versing 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 time as equal work. really settled that when charlie hebdo was attacked in france conspiracy theories were online just hours later the days of january 7th on the day of the attack i logged more than 20 different conspiracy theories. 4 days later there were already more than $100.00 produced so argument of you and you can put. these i can evolve myself man people who feel as if their integrity to be attacked why also feel their fundamental belief that the world is

a safe place has been champion i'm only down on security that. descend from a sham 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. nourse you see if we listen to the media we end up hating ourselves as muslims and each other. scripture 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 what little is. the terrorists have a psychological intuition about what their actions provoke in people how to kill physical labor how this kind of terror shakes the fundamental belief that one needs to have to live in our societies the confidence that our lives will not be menaced every day and our 3 at least will move toward a 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 a bit like a revelation it will member communiqué last year you think sure spirity theories can be consoling i don't like this reality so find another and flee. we don't have a truth problems with u.t. it's a trust problem. to paraphrase brenda lee's know it takes a fasten times more effort to reestablish trust and 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 of informed and fewer people a paying heed to scientific fact. on the to do that if we all have cell phones but few people really understand how they work it's a bit like magic of age week seeds of almost all mixing up serious facts with crazy

information to excite certain natural tendencies in our minds just because we say what's this story about giants they discovered skeleton really well then if we don't believe it we want to see the fake photos to geeks 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 suspicious. suspect series if you mean if you state that there's a limoges teapot orbiting mars or pluto well then it's up to you to prove it it's not for me to say no there's not i can't prove that it doesn't exist but both of it is true but. however there is adapted conspiracy theories leave it to others to refute their beliefs planting doubt is enough for them. the

belief 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 know 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 to. watch for feel that you feel i think we need to recognize differences and constantly distinguish we need to reestablish hierarchies where there is a tendency to level all sources of information onto the same plane of focus who can give a. decent information market revolution has to be accompanied by an education revolution

to develop truly critical minds that. we all have cognition and biases they are present within us no matter how intelligent or educated we are. i'm pretty pointless extinguish the part of our brains that loves to discover things that is curious and loves to grow. i know it exists some skill exists. perhaps the internet paradox is just a pendulum of fact between knowledge and belief there are young people who are creatively reinventing networks of qualitatively valuable knowledge but for now when our cognitive bias says only the vicar of our critical minds can protect us from the trap of the democracy the gullible.

her. local. covert 19 comes to make disrupting supply. economic system. made in germany. in 30 minutes on d. w. . the last sentence is of i don't need to keep

a day available both for all the rights and home the force i am for the whole of the most recently the works well at least the bottom of the ballet that the last dragons and the. as you call it down to 3 year. deal we've got on. we know that this is a scary time for us the coronavirus is changing the world changing our lives so please take care of yourself keep your distance wash your hands if you can stay at how we deal with you for here for you we are working tirelessly to keep you informed on all of our platforms we are all in this together and together make it. stay safe everybody stays safe safe stay safe please stay safe.

this is the news live from berlin china britain as tensions grow over hong kong london says it will grant citizenship rights to 3000000 on call those living under a sweeping new security law and beijing threatens to retaliate also coming up the indian government has revamped its approach to slow the dramatic rise in corona virus cases coming just north you know show it was all about what the north book was so and they did get right to graduate.