On Rumors

Meh, fine, okay.

A short (100-page) booklet using some light economic theorizing to model how rumors spread. Poignant because this was written BEFORE that one time when fake news ruined our democracy ho ho. Interesting because Sunstein discards the notion of a “marketplace for ideas” being inoculation enough - and for the same reason that all markets fail: behavioral economics (and, well, externalities :)). That is, “markets” assume homo economicus, i.e. humans as rational and selfish beings. Given that we're, as Dan Ariely would say, predictably irrational - i.e. we make systematic cognitive errors (hello, what is the therapy industry all about!) - praying to some invisible hand where Truth and Profit always win out is dumb dumb dumb.

Examples of our predictable irrationality, when it comes to processing information:
- Experiments have shown that, when people believe X and are shown strong evidence that ‘not X', they will - on average - BELIEVE MORE STRONGLY IN X.
- Information processing is totally social. One experiment has participants identifying how long a string is (short/medium/long), in a group. The group is “in on” the experiment and, after everyone identifying strings correctly, the group suddenly switches and - all together - says the wrong thing. Does the experiment's participant point out the Truth? No, more often than not, THEY SWITCH TOO. i.e. People will perpetuate stuff they KNOW TO BE FALSE just for social conformism.
- Polarization leads to radicalization/more extreme thinking.
- Confirmation bias.

I mean, it's like, in our current age of extreme political polarization, where everyone is self-radicalizing themselves in their perfectly curated Facebook echo chambers, none of this is new/surprising. Sunstein's proposed solution - stronger libel laws that lead to a “chilling effect” to rumor-mongerers - seems meh. I would just shut down Facebook, honestly. It's a net loss, people! You can EMAIL your old high school friends, if you really want to keep in touch, for the love of God.