I think we're on the same page here. The point is that a lot of folks aren't doing the needed corrections you are recommending.

After researching this topic for five years, I have concluded that making the AI better is NOT HELPING MUCH. I started working on this topic because I had a nice student who I wanted to help. But TBH I would never touch it again, unless the focus was on helping survivors.

The confusing thing is that there are two different meanings of "bias": bias in society and bias where the data set is literally wrong. That last one is what we're talking about in this paper.

Oh sorry--that was the term we used in an earlier draft of the paper, and it's stuck in my head. We changed it to "Steadfast Non-Standard Belief." That's a much better term because we're not necessarily saying their belief is wrong--just that it's non-standard.

The point of the study is that people fall into different groups, and if we are to design ways to help them then we need different approaches for each group?

What does she say when you tell her "Snopes says this is wrong"? If she says "oh, ok" then she's Changed Belief. If she says "I don't trust Snopes" then she's Reason to Disagree. If she says "I don't trust any fact checkers" then she's Steadfast Non-Standard Belief.

(edited to correct category name)

Actually I think our findings suggest that you need different approaches to helping someone who is rational (Reason to Disagree) than someone who is not (Persistent False Belief). That's the point.

It’s a nice idea. But all the people who shared X is an identifiable group? And also, not enough folks share the same story to make a study.

Great question. Confident. The RD folks said things like “Snopes is biased,” and the PFB folks said things like “I see you have succumbed to the globalist conspiracy.”

SD was more like “this is self evidently ridiculous—can you believe people buy into garbage like this?” They didn’t say “this is false” because they believe that omg their readers know it’s false.

I’m not saying Snopes is always right. But the specific stories in the study were not borderline—they were provably wrong.

We were surprised to find Snopes fact checking some obviously humorous stories. But I guess sometimes people believe them?

Table 2 in the paper is helpful to understand the groups. It says:

• Reason to disagree: trust snopes: no (but trust other fact checkers); knew misinfo: no
• Changed belief: trust snopes: yes; knew misinfo: no
• Non-standard belief: trust snopes: no (and don't trust any fact checkers); knew misinfo: no
• Sharing to debunk: trust snopes: yes; knew misinfo: yes
• Sharing for humor: trust snopes: yes; knew misinfo: yes

I agree it would be nice. We unfortunately couldn't share the specific stories, because the subjects in the study are anonymous and if we name the stories then we identify the people who posted them.

There are a few generalized descriptions of the stories in the paper.

People who feel that Snopes is not reliable are in the “reason to disagree” category

Douglas Adams would be amused!

I found this podcast fascinating. While early search for extraterrestrial intelligent life looked for radio signals, newer work is looking for "technosignals" like signs of pollution. There are two new space telescopes being designed specifically with features to look for these technosignals. If either is launched, it will be two decades from now or longer. The challenging science problem right now is: what signals should we look for?

There was an interesting discussion of the fact that many exoplanets are covered in water. If an intelligent species evolved that was aquatic, what kinds of technologies might they develop and what would signals of their tech look like?