Nice ideas, but kinda vague. Dan Williams also has a Market of Rationalizations paper with the idea that news buyers actually want rationalizations to confirm their current beliefs. Neither he nor you specify NYT lies, like Israeli bombing or Trump collusion. Yet most Dems complain that Republicans don’t believe the lies.
Also not mentioned is that many facts are disputed in definition. Does abortion kill a human? Is a human fetus a human? Whichever yes/no answer you give, many will consider you untrustworthy.
Williams writes, in your words "If we want to tackle the source of misinfo, investing in making institutions trustworthy is more efficient than trying to make people compliant."
The problem, from where I sit, is that earning trust fails to produce short term profit. It's better for your stock price, or even your chance of re-election, to run yet another misleading or outright inaccurate advertising campaign.
Some put some work into being perceived as trustworthy, since that can perhaps be achieved by short term advertising, sometimes simply by proclaiming shibboleths of one or other polarized group. But actually earning trust? (I.e. behaving in a consistently trustworthy way.) That appears to be far too much like work. There are easier ways to get the same short term result.
Some people behave more or less decently, even in their capacity as agent or representative of some organization, such as a corporation. But that's usually because of their own nature - dare I say "character" - not because of the incentives of their situation.
Certainly a little bit of greed is good, as well as attention to the short term. But when either one is dominant to the point of almost excluding alternate approaches, you get a lot of the problems we actually see.
Nice ideas, but kinda vague. Dan Williams also has a Market of Rationalizations paper with the idea that news buyers actually want rationalizations to confirm their current beliefs. Neither he nor you specify NYT lies, like Israeli bombing or Trump collusion. Yet most Dems complain that Republicans don’t believe the lies.
Also not mentioned is that many facts are disputed in definition. Does abortion kill a human? Is a human fetus a human? Whichever yes/no answer you give, many will consider you untrustworthy.
It’s an important topic.
Williams writes, in your words "If we want to tackle the source of misinfo, investing in making institutions trustworthy is more efficient than trying to make people compliant."
The problem, from where I sit, is that earning trust fails to produce short term profit. It's better for your stock price, or even your chance of re-election, to run yet another misleading or outright inaccurate advertising campaign.
Some put some work into being perceived as trustworthy, since that can perhaps be achieved by short term advertising, sometimes simply by proclaiming shibboleths of one or other polarized group. But actually earning trust? (I.e. behaving in a consistently trustworthy way.) That appears to be far too much like work. There are easier ways to get the same short term result.
Some people behave more or less decently, even in their capacity as agent or representative of some organization, such as a corporation. But that's usually because of their own nature - dare I say "character" - not because of the incentives of their situation.
"Greed is good," or so we've been told. (See, e.g. https://www.thoughtco.com/greed-is-good-or-is-it-quote-and-meaning-3306247.) And "in the long run we are all dead", according to Keynes.
Certainly a little bit of greed is good, as well as attention to the short term. But when either one is dominant to the point of almost excluding alternate approaches, you get a lot of the problems we actually see.