The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread

279 Pages·2019·1.79 MB·English

by  Cailin O’Connor

The Misinformation Age
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The
Misinformation
Age
How False Beliefs Spread
Cailin O’Connor
James Owen Weatherall
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of
Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College.
Copyright © 2019 by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the
U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
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Set in Janson Roman type by Integrated Publishing Solutions.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940288
ISBN 978-0-300-23401-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Eve and Vera
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Contents
Note to Reader ix
Introduction
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary 1
ONE
What Is Truth? 19
TWO
Polarization and Conformity 46
THREE
The Evangelization of Peoples 93
FOUR
The Social Network 147
Contents
Notes 187
Bibliography 215
Acknowledgments 251
Index 253
viii
Note to Reader
Throughout the text, we use the plural pronouns “they” and “them”
to refer to individual (i.e., singular) “agents” in mathematical and
computational models of social learning. This usage follows the
practice in the relevant academic literature. Although it may seem
strange to some readers, the idea is to both (1) avoid assigning a
gender to an abstract entity and (2) preserve the sense of “agency”
of those entities, which would be lost if one were to use the singu-
lar “it.”
ix