Some Defenses Against Misinformation

According to Chase Hughes, one of the best defenses against misinformation, psyops, propaganda, or whatever you want to call it is to be very good in spotting logical fallacies.

He reports that you should first remember that "emotional response suppresses critical thinking". So teach yourself to stay calm when you see the news. Furthermore, train yourself to spot the following fallacies:

  1. Appeal to emotion. Our brain is more inclined to believe information if it looks scary. So be careful around scary looking pictures or words since they might override your rational brain.

  2. Strawman Argument. This is misrepresenting the argument of the opponent. For example, summarizing the argument of a politician in a simplified way so that the argument makes no sense anymore.

  3. Bandwagon Fallacy. This is claiming something is true just because everyone says it is.

  4. False Dilemma. The world is very nuanced. With a false dilemma you pretend that you are right by claiming that it must be right because the opposite is wrong.

  5. Ad Hominem. Attacking the person and not the argument. I see this all the time on Reddit. For example, Person X has said that we should buy more buildings because we have a housing shortage. Then a commenter says that is false because person X is just a ********.

  6. Appeal to Authority. This is claiming something is true because an authority figure like a politician or scientist says it is true.

  7. Slippery Slope. A claim that says "if we don't fix X now, then extremely negative outcome Y will happen". For example, if we allow this, we will lose all of our freedoms.

  8. Hasty Generalization. Making giant claims from a tiny bit of evidence. For example, one athlete cheating doesn't mean all do. Another way to spot this is to remember "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

  9. Red Herring. This is when someone introduces a irrelevant topic or argument to divert attention away from the original issue.

  10. False Equivalence. Pretending that two things are equal even when they are not. For example, both political parties have extremists so they are exactly the same.

In another video he adds that it is important to check for multiple outlets parroting the exact same language. When you see that happen, you should "be very terrified that something is going into your brain that doesn't belong there."

I've read this also in the book Propaganda by Bernays from 1928 that if you repeat a message often enough, then people will start to believe it. So in this case, multiple media using the exact same phrasing makes it more likely that people learn and remember this false information.