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Falsehoods Fly
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Falsehoods Fly

Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It

Paul Thagard
Columbia UP, 2024
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9

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Ubiquitous misinformation, rumors, hoaxes, mistakes, and lies weaken popular understanding of critical issues. New communication technologies — particularly social media — help distortions and lies spread wider and faster, playing havoc with politics, healthcare, science, and other functions of modern society. University of Waterloo philosophy professor Paul Thagard explores how people produce and share information and how mistakes or malice undermine the process. He describes the cognitive mechanisms involved in generating and spreading information, shows how they can break down, and prescribes strategies for identifying, confronting, and neutralizing misinformation.

Summary

Misinformation threatens almost every human activity.

The spread of misinformation is not a new problem, but innovations in communication technology have intensified its dangers by streamlining its transmission. A social media post can spread a rumor, lie, or hoax around the world in seconds.

In the past few years, society has dealt with the sometimes deadly consequences of misinformation about a variety of crucial subjects, including Covid-19 vaccines, the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Information springs from four cognitive and societal mechanisms.

Information emerges from this quartet of cognitive and social functions:

  1. “Acquisition” — This encompasses two processes, “collecting” and “representing.” People can gather information directly through their senses, or with instruments such as telescopes or scales, or through scientific experiments. Those who have information can keep it to themselves, internally, or share it externally through the spoken or written word or with images. 
  2. “Inference” — This...

About the Author

Paul Thagard, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has written numerous books including Conceptual Revolutions and Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?

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