Making (Non)Sense: Misinformation and Government Intervention

In this episode of Fascinating!, Rik from Planet Vulcan takes a critical look at a recent discussion between Sam Harris and legal scholar Cass Sunstein on the role of government in combating misinformation. With his signature dry wit, Rik explores the unsettling idea that government agencies should suppress “misinformation” on social media, pointing out the slippery slope of trusting those in authority to decide what’s true. Rik highlights the irony in how easily these intellectual giants dismiss concerns about government overreach, without acknowledging the historical examples where crises were used to expand political power.

Rik delves into the complexities of distinguishing misinformation from truth and the dangers of placing that power in the hands of a few. As he contemplates Mark Twain’s timeless question—are these really smart people who are just putting us on, or do they really mean it?—Rik reminds us of the wisdom in skepticism and the value of free speech. Tune in to this thought-provoking episode that challenges the modern rush to control information.

Transcript

Good day to you, and welcome to Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  My continuing mission on Planet Earth:  to search for signs of intelligence and to encourage its spread.

As I have previously mentioned on several occasions, I enjoy listening to Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast.  Sam is a well-established public intellectual, and thus is able to attract many interesting guests.  

I find myself on the same page as Sam quite often, even if I do balk at things like his advocacy of a modern-day version of human sacrifice, where the victim is not forcibly placed on the altar like in supposedly less enlightened times, but is instead expected to crawl up on to it themselves.  And the victims do not lose their entire lives, only pieces of it.

A recent guest on Sam’s podcast was Cass Sunstein, who is an eminent and much-cited legal scholar and political scientist who now teaches at Harvard, and formerly taught at the University of Chicago.  

He has served in government and he has authored and co-authored a number of books.  He appeared on Sam’s podcast as part of a tour where he is promoting his most recent book, co-authored with neuroscientist Tali Sharot, “Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There”.

And as soon as I heard Professor Sunstein speak in favorable terms about the work of Friedrich Hayek, the brilliant Earthling economist who has been a subject of a laudatory essay on this podcast, my opinion,  and opinions of Vulcans in general about the value of Sunstein’s thinking moved decidedly in the direction of approval.

I admire and respect both men for their commitment to the liberal tradition, i.e., the idea that free and open discussion not only is consistent with respect for the rights of the individual, but also has enormous benefits for the community.

Most of their discussion was about habituation, which is the central theme in Professor Sunstein’s new book.  I particularly liked his metaphor of “pixie dust” to describe the feeling you get when some area of your life is new or refreshed, and which is how you experience things before the effects of habituation assert themselves.

Other important phenomena discussed in the book include the “Illusory Truth Effect”, where hearing something repeatedly makes it seem more credible; and the “Echo Chamber Effect”, which is where speaking only to people who agree with you makes all of the Chamber denizens feel unified, extreme in the beliefs they agree on, and confident about the validity of those beliefs. 

Sunstein also points to the practice of lying as something to which one can become habituated.  He says that when you first begin lying, your amygdala produces a strong emotional reaction to what you see as morally wrong, but the strength of the reaction reliably diminishes over time.

He didn’t have anything to say about what happens when you are busted for lying, which in my experience is what usually happens to habitual liars.

And then towards the end the discussion got a bit surreal.

They discussed the problem of misinformation, particularly over the internet, and what they believed was the proper role of the institution of government with regard to this problem.

The two of them agreed that it was self-evidently proper for government to intervene to try to stem the flow of “misinformation” through both persuasion and various forms of coercion.  They justify intervention by reference to the harm that would otherwise result from people hearing the misinformation, e.g., that it’s a good idea to gargle with chlorine bleach to protect yourself from a viral infection.

There was not the slightest hint of a nod in the direction of how big a problem it is to distinguish true information from false information; or how nervous Earthlings ought to be when questions of truth and falsehood come to be decided by those in positions of authority.

They both actually pooh-pooh the idea that the authorities might possibly disseminate misinformation themselves, even when their intentions are good and they sincerely believe in what they are saying.  

And this even when we have a recent example of intentional misinformation by America’s Centers for Disease Control and the U.N.’s World Health Organization, when they “informed” the public that masking would not be particularly effective in stopping the spread of the COVID virus.  

These official “informers” defended their misinformation campaign by saying that the public response to their prevarication would produce a more favorable outcome than the public response to true information.  They were concerned that people might buy so many masks that there would not be enough for front-line workers.

It evidently never occurred to these brilliant nudgers that their credibility would suffer when people found out they had lied, and why; and they seem to have been genuinely surprised by the amount of skepticism they began to encounter from the public about their subsequent announcements.

Sam and Cass agreed that there was very little reason behind widespread belief in malicious intent on the part of the authorities.  And to counter charges of ongoing malicious intent, they present a large number of examples, such as the trust we put in these authorities when they announce a school closure for a snow day, or when they announce the closure of a motorway for repairs.  We believe them about these announcements, so what is the difference between trusting them about things like this and trusting them about what constitutes misinformation on social media?

The large number of examples itself aroused my suspicion that the two of them might have agreed in advance of the interview that they needed to make a strong case that the public has nothing to fear from the practice of agencies of government suppressing speech.  Giving these agencies the authority to do this is as innocuous as giving them the authority to put correct “Men” and “Women” (although that might not be such a clear example at this particular moment in time) signs on public restrooms, and are worthy of the same level of trust.

Sam goes so far as to say that anyone who opposes official intervention which is intended to suppress the flow of misinformation can only be doing so because they have signed on to conspiracy theories peddled by people wearing tinfoil hats, nut cases who are saying things like the COVID pandemic was faked so that politicians could use the crisis as an excuse to deepen and widen their authority.

And this condemnation also ensnares anyone who has the temerity to state what is clearly evident, which is that politicians actually DID use this crisis to deepen and widen their authority, as politicians routinely try to do with any crisis.  

Think of the World Trade Center attack as an example of such a crisis – which became a perfect excuse to conduct a war of choice on Iraq, and to expand the surveillance state.  

The 2008 financial meltdown is another example of a useful crisis -- it provided a perfect excuse to expand financial regulation, even though it was financial regulation in the form of the too-big-to-fail policy, along with other ill-conceived regulatory policies, that caused the crisis in the first place.

Et cetera.

I kept waiting for one of them to mention a possible downside to the effort to counter misinformation by government intervention, but I waited in vain.

I was especially surprised that Professor Sunstein, an authority on constitutional law, did not find it relevant to mention the work of James Madison and others, who had the nerve to make it part of the United States Constitution’s bill of rights, to wit that government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.  

Does Sunstein believe that Madison et. al. were also part of the tinfoil-hat crowd?

I am baffled by having heard these two men advocating precisely what the first amendment explicitly prohibits.  What could they possibly be thinking? What could their motivation possibly be for this advocacy?

Fascinating!

While I was listening to their discussion, I was reminded of Earthling Mark Twain’s perennial question:  Are these really, really smart people who are just putting us on, or are they imbeciles who really mean it?

I cannot convince myself that Sam Harris and Cass Sunstein are imbeciles.  But for the life of me, I cannot imagine the purpose behind the put-on.

Maybe it really is time for me to pay heed to my Vulcan friends, just give up on Planet Earth and return home.  Or at least move to Hawaii.  At this point, I must confess that the strongest reason I am still here on Planet Earth is that I don’t want to give up the chocolate.

I invite you to have a listen to the next installment of Fascinating!.

If you find the lessons from nature in these podcasts personally valuable, please recommend it to your friends.  See also our YouTube Channel, Fascinating@pregodenada.

Theme music:  Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

Live long and prosper.  Savor your experiences.  Treasure your memories.  Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.

And respect nature’s wisdom.