Kind: captions
Language: en
this is the challenge of a YouTuber
which is uh you know pushing that record
button and actually filming something
because you never know are people going
to hate it or you know is it good enough
uh have you thought through what you're
going to say I have not thought through
what I'm going to
say okay so um I want to talk about the
question of why is it that right now
when it is really easy to get access to
facts and information where you can just
pull up your phone and look up anything
the world why is it now that we have the
most access to facts do facts mean the
least this is what I want to know why
does fake news spread now why are we
more polarized now than ever before and
what I have to kind of admit to you is
that I was a real Optimist maybe I was
naive about the internet but my thinking
about having an International
Communication System whereby anyone
anywhere can share anything and anyone
anywhere regardless of say their
education background or their class
standing can get access to real
information through Wikipedia okay my
thinking was the internet was going to
make everyone happier and more informed
more educated uh and and probably more
tolerant of others around them and the
reason why I think that the internet
should make people more tolerant is
because it should expose people
to people who are not like them right I
mean is this is this crazy my thinking
is that like as we have a platform to
communicate with each other people in
diverse places people with different
interests from us uh and we all have the
ability to sort of debate and agree upon
what is true we all would become more
accepting
of the facts maybe I'm ranting on about
this too much is this too much
okay
so we can edit we can edit so I guess
the point is in summary I thought that
the um I thought that the internet would
make the world more connected more
tolerant more educated and more true
like more agreed upon the facts and the
way things are and for a while I think
there were signs that this was happening
there was the Arab Spring where you know
people in countries that had been kind
of dictatorships or people who had been
oppressed were rising up there was the
approval of gay marriage in a number of
countries there were agreed upon uh
climate agreements uh that seemed to
suggest the whole International
Community was coming together there are
things like my YouTube channel where
there can be four million people who can
watch or subscribe to a channel that's
about information and about learning new
things about the universe right the
whole rise of smart content on YouTube I
took as an indication that things were
going in the right direction that here
we can get communities together uh who
are all interested in the same sort
of in the
same quite high level phenomena you know
the same like if if I made a TV show I
could never convince anyone to uh make
an episode about interpretations of
quantum mechanics I could never convince
someone to make a video about pilot wave
theory and go in as much depth as I went
into in my videos but on the internet
you can find that audience because you
can aggregate across the whole world so
little niche audiences across every
country can all come together and say
you know we want to learn this and we uh
can support this sort of
Enterprise are you guys in
agreement okay now here's the problem
what I didn't think about was that other
communities can form communities where
people have particular agendas
ideological or religious or you know
people with extreme biases normally they
are not much of a force to reckon with
because they are dilute in our
populations but on the internet just
like the people who love physics people
who hate science or uh people with with
differing ideologies and people who are
intolerant can each other and they can
come together into these camps so I
think that starts to suggest why we have
the problem that we have
today and then what do people do once
they've found their communities once
they found their people well we have
meetups but we also we share things with
each other online and you can think
about some communities that are really
innocuous like the communities of people
who are cat lovers who love sharing like
pictures of kittens and then someone
gets the idea to write like a really
cute phrase like I can has cheeseburger
on a picture of a kitten and then that
little image tickles our brains in a way
that is really strong and really
incredible and then that spreads
throughout the internet and what you
have in essence is kind of evolution
taking place an evolution of ideas on
the internet and so I guess what I mean
is you know one person can post this
picture of a cat and then people can
vary the phrases that are on it and the
the best phrase is going to win out and
get itself replicated and shared across
the web more than any other
and the same thing happens with
ideological arguments right if if
there's some sort of debate that's
happening on the internet different
versions of arguments can pop up and
when you think about two groups on the
internet debating they're not really
debating each other each Community
creates what they think the opponent's
argument is and then people within that
Community can tweak that argument to
make it worse and worse and worse to
make it the the most most awful version
of itself that pushes our buttons and
when it pushes our buttons then we share
it with everyone we know and we say look
at what the other side is talking about
look at how how awful it is and and we
keep evolving the ideas to make them
really really bad those are the ones
that that get shared and spread just
like in evolution we are evolving
arguments to make them the worst form of
themselves and then to make the the push
back you know even worse and that I
think is leading to this polarization
and what's worse the internet is
organized by algorithms algorithms that
are designed to take the things that are
most engaged with most that that most
push our buttons that get us going and
get us sharing and liking or hating and
they promote those even
further and this I think is where
something like fake news comes in how is
it possible
that during the last election cycle in
the US more fake news was spread and
shared than real
news that is
extraordinary and I think it happens
Because the Internet allows groups of
people to come together who have really
particular views it allows them to share
things with each other even sharing what
they think the opponent's argument is
tweaking it ever so slightly doing all
of these little mutations little
alterations and finding the ones that
push our buttons the most and then those
are the ones that get shared those are
the ones that get liked and hated and
everything and those are the ones the
algorithm elevates to the very top so
rather the rather than the internet
bringing us together rather than us
converging around the facts instead the
internet allows us to divide ourselves
into factions and to have this crazy
evolution of arguments which is
facilitated by the algorithms pushing us
ever further apart
and that is the the the best that I've
been able to reason about
why we now care less about facts than we
ever did before because deep down each
one of
us is based on confirmation
bias we naturally go out into our world
and we seek things that agree with what
we think rather than looking for things
that disagree with what we think that's
an innate human trait as you can see in
my video can you solve
this so it's upsetting and uh I think we
need to find a way to overcome this
Division and find a way to uh agree
again on what is truth and what is
not thank you
[Applause]
all right all right so uh questions
anyone want to question or comment we
have a gentleman down the front yes um
you know that term has a word cyber
balcon I learned it from Visa it's very
useful term say it again cyber
vulcanization balcon isation balcon
isation yeah sort of the SPL the
splinternet you know everything sort of
the splinternet I love
it cyber balkanization I don't know what
balkanization is well I guess it has to
do the political situation in the
Balkans at some oh cyber
balkanization yeah I don't know if you
heard youber name
CP but he has this idea yeah shout out
to cgp Gray's video here he has this
idea that you should um try you should
think of your opinions like papers in a
box and if you find another opinion that
is better than the opinion that you have
in the Box you should Swit switches out
you should not believe us you are not
your opinions your opinions are just
like stuff you car with you and that
should be easily changed it's a very
good point I also I should cite cgp
Gray's video about the evolution of
ideas because I was strongly influenced
by that video I think it's one of his
his best and most important videos yes
um so we have this mechanics that
evolves strong IDs that polarize people
do you think there's a way to utilize
this mechan mechanic to make the
internet better to bring us all together
to not being pushed around but it by
utilizing to better stuff right I mean I
personally think that the mechanics
that's brought us here to division is
not in its current form going to lead us
to convergence so I think something has
to change about the mechanics and if I
think about one of these options right
who was uh saying about the ideas that
being the paper and you should really
swap them out that's a very
sophisticated mature idea right it's a
very sophisticated and mature to think
that we can have our beliefs set down
and then when they get challenged we can
think about them and and swap them out
for new ones that's not something that
humans like to do it's hard it's hard I
was um recently in the Netherlands and
the guy who was driving this van we were
going around shooting a TV series guy
who was driving the van talked to me
about electric cars and he was saying to
me Derek you know that even if you get
like a low emissions or a zero emissions
car an electric car half of the
emissions of any vehicle come from the
production of the vehicle in the first
place so really if you think you're
cutting down a lot of the emissions of
your vehicle by getting an electric car
which full disclosure I do have uh he's
saying you're you're not really you know
dramatically decreasing the emissions
because still half the emissions happen
when the car was made so a better
strategy than buying all electric cars
would be to not buy any cars at all and
just keep driving your cars a few years
longer because that's going to save a
lot more because you know a lot of the
Wast is up front and I did not believe
him I was like that is crazy half the
emissions half like I know it's hard to
make a car but half the emissions and
you think it's going to drive for you
know hundreds hundreds of thousands of
kilometers and I went and I looked it up
and it was true and I take his piece of
paper and I swap it in and I move mine
out but I think it's a really hard thing
to do and it's something that like I
felt repulsed by like I didn't want to
swap my piece of paper out that's why I
think I don't know that that can be the
solution wholesale cuz we can't just say
to everyone hang on a lot of you have
beliefs that are not true can we just
swap some paper out with you they'll say
no that's my
paper um so I was going to say to me the
thing that needs to change I would say
is some of the systems and particularly
the algor algorithms because I think
Facebook and I think they are looking at
this now needs to figure out a way not
to elevate fake news but to let it
languish and promote real news they have
a responsibility because they are cating
the feeds of a billion people around the
world they have the responsibility to
make sure those feeds are not misleading
and that is something that they were um
bad about doing in the last uh last
election yeah if you're uh determined to
find the real news you go out on a
marathon of research and usually you dig
deeper and deeper past the sort of junk
that's being catered to us by the
algorithms but what you're essentially
proposing is some sort of AE detector to
be implemented in algorithms that's kind
of hard to do right unless it's manually
altered by companies like Facebook I I
don't think you can manually alter the
algorithm I I think you have to find a
way and I think the algorithms can be
made I think it's a big challenge I
agree with you but I think there's a way
to do it I mean if you look at Google
search results there's constantly people
trying to game what Google's doing but
you don't end up with fake news sites at
the top you don't end up with Spam sites
coming up top in the Google search
results that's because they battled and
batt ATT and battled to find these
signals that that separate what's a
valuable site what's a site that people
appreciate and and seems to be linked
into a whole bunch of other sites which
are all part of a factual web right and
I think that similarly Facebook needs to
do something like that where in essence
they look for signals of
truth I agree very hard and it's going
to be a constant battle but I think you
need to look for the signal of Truth
rather than just the signal of what
pushes people's buttons yeah I really
liked your point by space because I feel
like if you look back at like the Stone
Age if you had a weird opinion and you
were in your little tribe either you
convinced everyone or you changed your
mind right so you know Facebook is kind
of like our tribe right so some people
use Facebook as more like oh these are
my acquaintances but a lot of people use
it like these are my close friends and
if a close friend says something weird
about about something on Facebook you
comment right you have a discussion and
you know you don't say no you're wrong
I'm not going to talk to you anymore
right right because he's your friend so
either you change your mind or you
convince the other person right but if
you go on like Reddit you're not going
to convince like 10 million billion
people so uh yeah I don't know maybe
like if you have ever like tried the
controversial tab on Reddit that's
usually where some of the most
interesting discussions are but yeah
sometimes it's not so and uh I think
this brings me to one of my kind of
points that I think is a little bit
counterintuitive and it's a point that's
difficult for me to think about I I'm
still
not settled on this idea but I wonder if
sometimes that arguing just makes things
worse you know and as someone who makes
science films I wonder like if I go out
and make a film about something that's
controversial I don't know if maybe I'm
just making it worse and so I I think we
all have to think about that really
carefully before we engage in
discussions which is is there a chance
by making these points which you think
are really clear and really get at the
truth is it possible that you were just
causing the other um side to be more
deeply entrenched their beliefs in the
first place down here y do you think
that adapting algorithms to like
identify true statements can have some
issues with like separating true or like
uncontroversial statements from
controversial that um what's
uncontroversial will more likely seem
true simply yeah I get you there I as I
say I don't know the solution I think it
is hard but I do think we have to figure
it out I think think that there are
places on the web that have a good
record of Truth Wikipedia for example
for all of its ability to be edited is
still more likely than not to be true so
I think there's all these places that do
signal true things I think you know CNN
is more likely to be true than Breitbart
News so I
mean there has got to be some signal in
the noise some way to trace back
references and things right some of the
things we talked about were um
some of the things we talked about were
manual intervention or or deeply
searching right going back and looking
at all these different sources that's
something that most humans don't do and
won't do and can't do don't have the
time to do that's why I'm saying a
machine can look at references a machine
can look at uh signals that spread you
know and and they can do that very
rapidly so you want to find out who are
these people do they have a record of
you know false are they actually
accredited are they at a university
there's there's a variety of things that
you can do to see whether things have
have a Tru signal or not I don't think
it's easy but I I think it's possible
yes there are traditional news Medias
that may uh uh present the news or these
articles fake or not to the public don't
you think they sort of have part of
the uh blame because they fact checked
those fake
articles when the results already were
in like all these statements were said
and then when the results were in say in
the last election they just went oh wait
uh these statements were they true oh
wait they weren't but too late to alter
the results from false statements yeah
but I think there was a lot of live
factchecking but it didn't seem to do
anything like people didn't seem to care
about facts and that deep down is the is
the real question I want to get the
answer to which is like why don't people
seem to care what's true and I
guess maybe rather than putting it that
way there were different camps which
each had their own narratives and their
own things that they believed was true
and that was different from the other
side and so figuring out what true was
was was really hard especially if you
were completely in one Camp I mean M
there were there were fake things around
on both sides yep