more on the present trends diagnosis and its implications of top of the hour free up next our documentary democracy of the gullible the internet so i'm terry bart thanks for. any foolish small slugs are thrown out in the morning climb a tree because the stores this is my place where one week. can really just. we still have time to add.

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 of cognitive biases. and 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 lives have become prominent in our media landscape how could this be. what underpins that popularity. why is it that way for. 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. poor usual greece ecclesial there is now a competition between information providers from professional journalists to anyone with a facebook or twitter profile to capture our finite attention that would generally 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 together when was the last time a you to a comic change someone's of any and. 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 commit more prominent than an encyclopedia entry. in it if you don't like the popular content he has a problem because that determines whether it can reach and attempt to convince me it's going to become more important as the possibility to the likelihood of capturing people's attention is increased if you shape your content to follow the direction of the brain's natural biases. the internet today is full of manipulation beliefs and superstitions. 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 point 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 large creator allusions 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. a well

known sociologist from the paris de gaulle university has dissected the various biases in our brains that influence our judgement on the internet starting with doubt. lou due to the 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. on the internet doubtless amplified by countless untrustworthy sources and although there are tools to check the truth of posts few people make that effort. 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 seemed completely unlikely at 1st. the believe 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 and the saturn 5 rocket may have been able to transport the d.v.d. into space but would have had no room left for

a player to play it on. board affairs. 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 although in 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. 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 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 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 clash it 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 see. 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 the on this side of what i think this past year has something going up that. we constantly encounter content that

exploits our difficulties in understanding statistics and probabilities i dismissal of coincidence as explanation influences our preferences in the tarrant of information. but. the deregulation of the information market channel 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 quietly more doing this. 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 passe 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 in each but in the jungle of the internet overestimating rest can lead to troubling results. such conspiracists often think that when 2 events occur at the same time it's not a coincidence there's a correlation is not the same as causation but if things are related people see 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 shortage it was something as annoyed that destroying it is like killing i was ahead snack it's an infinite terrorists 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. a lot this law was formulated by a better but and an italian program and 2013. a lot of legit egypt. which study from god it must also. shit. the list with next year got equal to about that it must be that he studied. bundling formulated this principle after observing at least former prime minister silvio berlusconi live on television without anyone being able to set the record straight . off but 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 speaks 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 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. on his bed

a young in the early to thousands we still hope that the internet would spread massive amounts of knowledge but that hasn't happened at all sitting all day it's 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 vs you do quite a oswell do had to sit on a. generally associate with those who think like our cities 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 opinions are polarized into opposing camps diversity of viewpoints and nuances disappear.

small highly motivated groups often attract so many clicks that their positions appear to be much more representative than they really are. there's an 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 i truly desire 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 every argument but there are so many of them. yet they're not. mental shortcuts

help our brains save energy but they also need to biases such as the least effort principle which make us easy a target. early to rule is an conspiracy theories have existed for a long time in human imagination. rehashing is an internet speciality sent to old fake news as quickly forgotten it can be used again this fresh news a few months later. unlike us the internet never forgets. and that better move 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 are still believes the fall of the twin towers was a government conspiracy. you do toward. relief

that it's impossible for an inexperienced pilot to fly a boeing with controlling because a videogame or fail to do so is far from reality t.v. once in the air flying is almost child's play 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 you gently pentagon good . to get excited it's pointless to argue with those who believe in conspiracy theories such as that the american government deciding aliens. have the mainstream media shouldn't feed off twitter but report only legitimate news and not engage with things that are pure don't you real the. 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. we don't have the power to completely disconnect from our prior knowledge and. hopes and emotions. we are almost always biased only process information which isn't necessarily that 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 choosing automatic and faster and demands less 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. 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 believe mode has advantages over knowledge because it doesn't require much effort we just believe on quite as. true. it's. the belief about camp trails that 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 creed that. there are many erroneous beliefs that don't have any 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 a tract so it was fiction very tips that i've learned 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 all want to get by their particular you know everyone has opinions i always say twitter and facebook are really just part talk all this that on a global scale that gives in the past always stayed at the bar whereas now our nonsense is put on twitter and broadcast to the world. on a boat 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 magician has. which can lead to the impression of precedence well teleportation or the spontaneous appearance of an object or an object at all it's as over to 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 order. 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. says it's all the vision we invent a magic trick we create those conditions ultimately we for the brain and make it draw false conclusion it's all fals. the fact that the fault is 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 doesn't with a mask. in computer science a virus is generally a program designed to acknowledge asli on a computer. world . where one person a person or because you want. 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. 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 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 and. we sometimes forget that storing data in the cloud actually means sending it to massive data centers. of course data that 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 a subject well of course who devote most won't look at more than 30 pounds so if we take the top 30 sites listed on google search and look at how many support a particular belief or get how many argue it out from

a rational point of view and how many a neutral we find that 70 percent of those sites will support a belief with this. quote 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. more like it when you ask someone whether they're superstitious most will say no because that's huge it's been shown that superstition is related to uncertain situations that our brain is trying to control our environment fizzled 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. 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 specialized boutique in quebec that serves an ever growing demand. on additional 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 i wrote a song portland. or rather the 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 example probably want. all to be able to discern evaluate 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 trimborn affair his we can call an anchor bias. according to the anchor bias we rely heavily on the 1st piece of information we receive this goes beyond economics. professor of cognitive sciences 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 as 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 was 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. really of visiting a country which is a very different culture. can feel that we experience cognitive because we are constantly having to learn as such our 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 are more motivated than the average citizen and because they are more driven by occupying 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 on line 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 officers because i know that some people think it really is possible to measure necker like this it's in our collective imagination because of everything that happened around. because of what they've seen in films that 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 internet monuments were built. a few times the base of the great pyramid of key is that a badge 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 designed piece. lesions of all 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 on it. supported by my couldn't imagine my life without the internet that's for sure the army books are good but with your previous like unlimited books facebook face twitter and snap chat give me about as. most of the

information on facebook isn't necessarily credible lots of them will keep you. young people don't come here to buy magazines and buy no more magazines don't want newspapers no more anybody. who were miach or 10 years young man around young not regime know. the key has proportions have a factor of 2.64755 that of the paramount squared 7 the number of fraternity we find pi again and the speed of light so who designed this mysterious kiosk in paris. our company tobias says 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 controlled propaganda and concealment. by . this information market was once regulated by gatekeepers by guardians of the threshold which is to say journalists politicians academics and a whole series of people who were trusted to disseminate information in public spaces. 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. where your dream today there isn't even a spectacle today it's a society of. spectacles wholistic that. best soon released in us. 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. 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 opened a book we knew that someone had taken the trouble to write it edit it and to get it published. because of this it was of the studious 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 because i mean we're in an attention economy where the amount of the brain time you can bring to your site is monetized information available has greatly increased since the early 2000 us feel. the need

to clean your c.d.'s on the condition it is an intermediate and you know what they say about men with smaller ones. 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. deregulated information market also means tension added to radicalize discourse and the uncomfortable feeling of living in a society where everyone is shouting it because. it's clear that political debates in the us but not only in the us tend towards hysteria it's just easy. nothing we can receive 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 defuses i may go 90 feet of political fights seem to have become battles for attention more than for conviction. if you can fool people also for political ends i think the electoral 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. with your priest anonymous we're not. we are well romantics just human beings idealists who want to see a better future. for mongolia 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. 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 really tell what we think. the blog is a place for a foreign coach for her to. morrisons so if a game. it's not a crime to have values out there 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 it's in murky delusional 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. you want who says we distrust the media as the press or even scientific experts on certain issues. are 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 what. could you do if you can prove to glisten conspiracy theories doesn't mean that they don't exist. it folds no more of your

own we do it arouses extraordinarily violent reactions see it will go over insults and name calling to intimidation it actual threats this world of 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 as well. that when shirley abdul 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. broke 4 days later they were already more than 100 produced so argument of your new book. please i can evolve myself man 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. this information 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. prefer 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. little is why we have war scholars and the 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 to have to live in our societies the confidence that our lives will not be menaced every day. the athletes will move. the 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 but big like a revelation it will never come in the give us your infant 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 feels 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 well informed and fewer people are paying heed to scientific fact. on that was that they did it for we all have cell phones but few people really understand how they work and it's a bit like magic of them as weak see it as

a financial 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've discovered skeleton really we're even 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 it's a spacious. suspect series if you'll need to state that there's a limo shifty part orbiting mars or pluto well then it's up to you to prove it it's enough for me to say no there's not i can't prove that it doesn't exist but both of it is true that. however those adapted conspiracy theories leave it to others to refute their beliefs and 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 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 know which fulfill 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 us what. information market revolution has to be accompanied by an education

revolution to develop truly critical minds that. we all have cognisant biases they are present within us no matter how intelligent or educated we are. but you point extinguished 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 with our cognitive bias says i need to figure of a critical mind can protect us from the trap of the democracy of the gullible.

to the point the strong opinions clear position the international perspective so true maybe it's mocking the 30th anniversary of the reunification of the 2 gypsies east and west today it's a different country and gold makes all die 1st the younger generation of course has its own perspective so whose germany is it find out on so the point shortly. to the point is to. keep an eye on w. w's crime fighters are back africa's most successful radio

drama series continues this season the stories focus on hate speech prevention and sustainable child. introduction olympus odes are available online and of course you can share and discuss on africa's facebook page and other social media platforms. crime fighters to name no. it. has a virus spread. why do we panic and when will all this. just 3 of the topics covered in the weekly radio show is called spectrum if you would like and new information on the coronavirus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you can get your podcast you can also find us at dot com. science.

this is the w. news live from berlin with one months to go on to new faces reelection us president almost trump has been infected by the grown ups truck come from gone to twitter that both he and 1st played it melania trump after testing positive at 974 years old placing him in a high risk group for the disease his diagnosis comes.