Stop Spreading the News

Lightfoot: ”Caedmon, I’m concerned about the tooth fairy.”
Caedmon: “What manner of flummery is this?” Lightfoot: “No, think about it. A child loses one of his primary teeth, which is perfectly natural. The child places the tooth under his pillow, and the next morning, he finds candy there.”
Lightfoot: “The candy will unquestionably promote cavities, which means that the child will lose more teeth in the future. It’s clear that the tooth fairy is a dangerous conspiracy against children.” Caedmon: “What brought this on?”
Lightfoot: “I’m trying to understand how fake news works.” Caedmon: “Use a fictitious point to create a specious argument for a non-existent threat. Well done.”

Artificial-intelligence researcher Robert Wilensky (1951-2013), in a 1996 speech, said: “We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” Both ideas, as presented, are false. First, it was an infinite number of monkeys, and the idea was a nutshell-notion about statistical probability. Second, the Internet has more than a million monkeys on it (and a good number of other species as well). Trust me — I’ve been suckered by more than a few bits of fake news over the years. Check your sources along with your gut. And beware of Santa Claus — he’s obviously a home invader!

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Older Comments (Closed for Reply)

Darevenin
November 13, 2019, 8:13 am
There is worse than fake news : there is extrapolation (generalizing something from minor or fragmentary facts).

In my country, some hate-mongers use extrapolation in order to make people hate minorities. They talk about about minor of fake threats and make people believe that they are far more dangerous than in reality. And the worse is that it can work… So, it’s a sort of fake news but as dangerous.

C E Elledge
November 18, 2019, 11:35 pm
Caedmon, in grad school you never saw the “BEWARE the new food additive ‘Dihydrogen Oxide”, it is killing over 1000 per year!” petition posted in the dining hall?