kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@dump_stack

So what you're basically saying - correct me if I'm wrong - is that if you watch Russian news long enough you will develop a false memory that "пломбир был вкуснее". Which is of course true, for unprotected audience.

To which I respond that it's the same with any exposure to any stochastic risk factor, like SARS-CoV-2 for example.

Once you're aware of the risk, and use safeguards, you can reduce the risk below the threshold of being viable.

@dump_stack Absolutely not, because as originally formulated - "speed of light is constant" - it's not true.

@dump_stack

> work with it mostly as a black box, with experiments

It's not a problem, most of today's science constantly jumps between behavioural and mechanistic approach, whichever is available at given moment. Theory of neural networks operations is an early attempt on mechanistic approach to human brain, the suggestability research you cited is behavioural, and I'm pretty sure we'll eventually get there.

@dump_stack

> And kind of successful

Define "successful" 🤷

@dump_stack

> speed of light is constant in the vacuum

I know, but you never said "in vacuum"! 😛 That's the very point, in order to make statements verifiable you need to clearly define the boundary conditions.

@dump_stack

So how come you get such a massive disparity between WCIOM trust in Putin (27%) and Levada approval rating (65%) and which one is true? 🤔

I think the reasons are twofold:

1) Levada is still an closed question - you have to answer yes or no, there's no "go away" answer and in the current political situation you need to be determined to say "no"

2) it's possible not to trust someone, and still approve of their decisions - for example, because there's no other choice

@dump_stack

> Hint: data poisoning

It's an actual effect, just as the suggestability, but saying that you should avoid any news sources in fear of getting suggested is like saying you should avoid machine learning because data could be biased. Both are real issues, but once you know about them, you can prevent them.

Preventing disinformation is about basic data hygiene - don't trust blindly, be cautious, verify.

@dump_stack

> Different scales

Precisely! So you may be actually formally "impacted" by something, but the effect may be so small that it's effectively negligible.

For example, we are all the time "impacted" by background radiation from the ground, cosmic radiation, foods and even past nuclear bomb testing, and you can actually measure that impact, but it has zero biological effect.

@dump_stack

> that speed of light is constant

That's precisely the difference between a scientific theory and a truism - for the claim "speed of light is constant" you can define unambiguous criteria of falsifiability and design an test.*

For a claims like "all information affects people" or "everything changes" you cannot - or, more precisely, the number of criteria & tests will be infinite, because they are so vague.

* which will show it actually isn't, it's often slower than c

@dump_stack

You didn't specify the source nor define which Putin rating you have in mind, so I assumed you referred to the WCIOM closed question poll which indeed gives Putin ~67%.

https://wciom.ru/ratings/doverie-politikam/

@dump_stack

> That's actually true if you live in society. Sad isn't it

It's not sad. It just demonstrates that the "trust no-one" nihilism is useless way of looking at the world.

@dump_stack

You didn't refer to the source so I assumed the same WCIOM "trust in politicians, closed question" poll.

@dump_stack

> Echo of Moscow is also Russian state media

Technically it's not. Ekho Moskvy is 66% owned by Gazprom-Media which belongs to Gazprombank. Rossiya-1 on the other side is fully controlled by ВГТРК (All-Russian state television and radio broadcasting company). Of course, Ekho Moskvy could be controlled by the state if they wanted, for some reason they don't.

@dump_stack

That's closed question result ("select from a list").

Here's WCIOM open question https://wciom.ru/ratings/doverie-politikam/ no longer so "high", isn't it?

@dump_stack

> why Putin's rating is high

Is it?

@dump_stack

> the simple fact that any information affects you

Precisely! You got to the very definition of the word "truism". Marxist "laws" were equally cutting-edge, as in "everything changes".

> always affects you

And a butterfly flapping its wings in China affects you in France, doesn't it?

> neural networks as a model

Hint: why do you train neural networks iteratively, with hundreds or thousands of iterations?

> I still read papers on this topic

What prevents you from citing?

@copyme

Nowsza wersja :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tctc2fkqTwY

@dump_stack

> It works anyway

And this, coupled with your earlier statements about no trustworthy media, is probably the ultimate nihilist position that USSR has mastered and Putin can only dream of.

If all media - either state, or opposition, or foreign - have an agenda, and all are lying, then logically one should avoid all of them, just close inside oneself and disconnect from any public debate or politics. Homo Sovieticus level master.

Of course, the fallacy here is in "all media".