> Along these lines, if Facebook, Twitter, etc. were sincerely interested in improving online discourse, they would jettison "fact checking" and censorship for additional content that focuses on the safety of the present moment, temporal perspective, breathing, visualization, humor & timeouts.

Except those companies are in the business of emotional disregulation in the name of “engagement”.

Last thing I want is for them to have even more authority on the participants’ emotional states. When not riled up through manipulation of what they see, most people have a good sense of how to be good to each other.

The other problem is social media getting overrepresented in comparison to real world interactions in our lifetime of discourses. I want the full experience of the disagreeable other, ideally in a friend, so that we can hold the tension of disagreement with some love and beers. Textual/propositional discourse is a mere simulation of this, we’re all stranger brains in vats spitting out argumentation in a truncated form of existence. Perception of being right overcomes the actual need for being right and being held in positive regard. We’re here more to impress, and less to dialogue and cohere.

Is this paper exclusive to a certain website? I've had discussions with people of various political persuasions that are downright hostile on this website. If people on this website with engagement mostly removed can't control themselves, who can?

I've looked through some of these people's profiles before and I've been shocked to find that in non-political discussions they're pretty normal. They're not trolls per se, unless you threaten (using this loosely, such as believing in or having experiences counter to) something core to their identity or way of life.

My takeaway, thus far, has been that without you being physically sat in front of someone they can't observe how something so close and dear to them could possibly hurt someone. They can't imagine that something that seems "righteous" could alienate people or the wrong people if their purpose was to alienate. They only see that through the various signals we can't capture in a DOM or across HTTP.

any sources on the effects of

> content that focuses on the safety of the present moment, temporal perspective, breathing, visualization, humor & timeouts

The purpose of fact-checking isn't to improve online discourse. It's to reduce public health crises, like vaccination hesitancy, and extremism based on falsehoods (e.g. countless false claims of ballot irregularities), leading to political violence. But in terms of reducing toxicity, your idea of introducing self-care interventions is great.

I kinda feel like your post is an (implicit) argument in favor of the scientific method:

1. Form a hypothesis (i.e., our current best guess based on what we know, and what we think is going on).

2. Test the hypothesis (i.e., try it and see if it work :) )

3. Based on (2), go back and update our hypothesis

I think it's both reasonable and good to change one's mind over time because you've seen new data / you're in a new situation.

I think also part of the problem is English semantics. The terms fact, myth, theory, evidence, research, etc., get thrown around everywhere when it comes to epistemology and peer discussion. They have different meanings in different contexts. People don't always speak with maximum precision. Take GP's comments of the form "Fact checkers said X". This is a hard stance. It also completely contradicts my experience. It would have been softened with "I remember fact checkers saying X" because that opens the door to the possibility their experience does not reflect the whole. A unique reality tunnel. But saying "X happened" opens the door for argumentative replies from anyone with a different experience.

I'm guilty of this, many people do it, maybe even most people. It's easy to lapse into the subconscious mentality that your experience reflects universal experience.

"When facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?"

— Attributed to Keynes, Churchill, and others with varying details but probably apocryphal.

Looks like jackalopes have flagged the parent, but I’m guessing they were referring to how politicized the “facts” were last year. When people were criticized for wearing masks, and laughed at for saying it was irresponsible to keep New York open and accuse Trump of “scare mongering” over the virus. People were kicked off social media for saying “conspiracy theories” which are considered facts today. Remember Biden and Harris saying no one should take vaccines that haven’t gone through standard FDA approval process? Likely not since our “fact checkers” are horribly biased and couldn’t care less about the scientific method.

We all need to update our mental models if they don't match the reality we're presented with.

What I reject is someone else's claiming the right to censor my comments or append a wrongthink warning to them.

In your response to your last paragraph:

It’s a slippery slope and some fortune-telling to assume that Facebook and Twitter will not let you post based off potential incorrect facts. If anything, a caution or warning label regarding facts should offer the reader extra information. As MikeTheGreat has aptly highlighted, science is a self correcting paradigm that seeks to prove itself wrong. Old facts, tried and tested overtime, may seldom update but new and not well tested facts may evolve in due time.

Also, the claim that fact checkers are wrong more than they are right is a non-sequiter. Because the prevailing truth at the time of fact checking is the most accurate based off the current body of evidence. And as stated in my point above, our understanding of the truth crystallizes over time.

Truth doesn't evolve.

What's true now was true a year ago, even if we didn't know it.

This idea of evolving truth is a mealy-mouthed way of saying, "We were wrong."

"Truth doesn't evolve" is a profound statement. Is it from Hermes? The downvotes on your comment reminded me of one well known historical figure who told not to give jewels to the crowd as they would get agitated, because of ignorance, and try to lynch you.

I corrected my op to clear up ambiguity. What I meant was our understanding of “the truth” evolves and crystallizes over time. Not Truth itself (the truth I was referring to in my OP was our own truth about the truth). So, as we gather more data, revise our hypothesis, throw away wrong ideas and formulate new ones, we get a clearer picture.

Speaking of fact checking, this whole post needs a _citation needed_. I don't recall fact checkers _ever_ say masks below N95 "doesn't work". There was a brief period where mask wearing wasn't recommended, in a possibly ill-suited ploy to prevent hoarding.

I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the lab theory was "preposterous", only that it was unsupported by evidence at the time.

I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the vaccine "stops" the virus spread, only that it dramatically reduces transmission. There was always concerns about variant escape from like, April 2020.

Addition: Clearly, there is a disconnect between what I experienced "fact checkers" saying, and you, or others, experienced. Using the phrasing "fact checkers said X" is extremely veridical in tone, and opens the door for lots of clashing with anyone (such as myself) with differing observations.

Also, when you say "fact checkers did X", are you speaking for _all_ fact checkers? Some? Which ones? It's an epistemological mine field.

Addition 2, before I get nit-picked over the "masks don't work". OP's statement is:

> In early 2020, the fact checkers told us that anything less than an N95 mask doesn't work. The fact checkers of today tell us that any face mask prevents the transmission of the virus...

So I interpret "work" here to mean "prevent transmission of the virus." I remember extremely distinctly at the time the recommended guidance, because my aunt asked about whether she should wear a mask. I told her, as was guidance at the time, late Feb 2020, that a typical surgical mask would not dramatically reduce her risk of contracting COVID, she would need a respirator (N95), and at this point in time, unless you were high risk, this was probably overkill. Cases were rare enough that your best bet at the time was handwashing and social distancing. Then, two weeks later, around Mar 14, I told her "yeah actually you should be wearing a mask around others, even cloth ones, lest you be an asymptomatic carrier." What changed in that timeframe? The number of cases in the USA started skyrocketing, and we discovered that COVID can be asymptomatic in a large percent of cases, and has a long incubation period. New information was acquired, the recommendations changed. That's how all rational, informed decision making should work.

Indeed.

I really don't think it's helpful to say "Fact checkers said X" without providing proof and context.

Unsurprisingly it turns out that social media - platforms designed to promote aggressive argument for "engagement" - are a very bad way to distribute public health information. Or reputable factual information about anything at all.

Reality-based audiences will try to select credible sources. But everyone else gets a diet of anger, fear, hearsay, misunderstandings, shock-value anecdotes, lies, and noise.

I think it's unwise to ignore how much of an influence this has had on what's happening now.

As it turns out, I apparently don't interact with media employing fact checkers all that much. Apparently, I get stuff from the horse's mouth.

"I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the lab theory was "preposterous", only that it was unsupported by evidence at the time."

As I recall, officials and experts were saying that the lab-leak theory was unsupported by evidence, while people were boycotting Chinese restaurants and attacking vaguely Asian looking people because they held "China" responsible for the pandemic.

"I don't recall fact checkers ever saying the vaccine "stops" the virus spread, only that it dramatically reduces transmission. There was always concerns about variant escape from like, April 2020."

As I recall, experts have always been saying that the vaccines were very effective at preventing death and hospitalization, but did not eliminate the possibility of infection and if you were infected, it might still be possible to transmit the virus. And yes, the effectiveness of the vaccines against variants of the virus has always been a question.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210326123341/https://www.cdc.g... Could someone provide a link to anyone saying anything else?

(I've previously posted articles about the history of the evolving mask issue.)

I'm glad to see another person with a long term memory, for some reason this is very rare online.

People who believe in things like flat earth have already rejected argument from authority. Ostensibly, fact-checkers exist for the benefit of people who do trust experts but also would be convinced by a random facebook post. Maybe such people exist, but, like you say, in the 5 years (?) that fact-checkers have been implemented on social media, they've already overplayed their hand and can no longer be viewed as totally consistent with expert opinion. They are often used to manipulate political opinions and distribute propaganda.

It's a little ironic. They probably introduced fact-checkers to avoid regulation, but in an ideal world I feel the most important regulation would be expressly to prevent big social media corporations from centrally controlling information like that.

I don't think 'wrong more often than they're right' is accurate, we just hear about when they're wrong and not when they're right. I also want to say that 'ineffective' is the wrong word for vaccine's relationship to new variants. The vaccine still dramatically reduces spread, and almost always prevents hospitalization and death.

A related idea to your thought while reading your comment is that it appears that two groups of people arguing competing ideas don’t agree on how to derive the truth; one being the scientific approach (bending over backwards to prove yourself wrong) and the other seeking through confirmation bias and both claiming victory.

There is a less popular to mention third group. The majority of people are midwits who are neither stupid enough to believe the truly ridiculous (flat earth), nor critical enough to think for themselves. They are the ones welcoming the tyranny our ruling class is only too happy to facilitate.