mark ackerman 01 reedit — Transcript

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1. 0:00hi i'm mark ackerman i'm a professor in
2. 0:02the school of information
3. 0:03computer science and the medical school
4. 0:06and i've been studying
5. 0:07sharing information on the internet and
6. 0:09increasingly misinformation and
7. 0:11disinformation
8. 0:12i want to tell you today about a way of
9. 0:15looking at
10. 0:16argumentation and information on the
11. 0:18internet
12. 0:19something that i found valuable over the
13. 0:21last few years
14. 0:22it's called warren theory and it comes
15. 0:24from wayne booth and his colleagues at
16. 0:26the university of chicago
17. 0:28warrant theory which can be applied to
18. 0:29any kind of information on the internet
19. 0:31argumentation conversations news there
20. 0:34are four types of things that go on in
21. 0:36an
22. 0:37argument the first is claims those are
23. 0:39the kinds of assertions that you want to
24. 0:41make
25. 0:42there are sub-claims which are
26. 0:44sub-arguments or
27. 0:45other kinds of assertions that you want
28. 0:47to make in support of the main claim
29. 0:49there's evidence which sounds just like
30. 0:52it is
31. 0:53and uh there's something called warrants
32. 0:56warrants are kind of the glue that holds
33. 0:59an argument together they're often
34. 1:01implicit
35. 1:02and they're hard to see but they're
36. 1:04really valuable once you start to see
37. 1:06them
38. 1:07i'm going to arbitrarily divide warrants
39. 1:08into two parts
40. 1:10the first i'm going to call big picture
41. 1:12warrants those are the kinds of reasons
42. 1:13that you're allowed to have within a
43. 1:15conversation or an argument
44. 1:17so for example in science we're allowed
45. 1:19to do statistical reasoning based on
46. 1:21observational data you would find it
47. 1:24very disturbing on the other hand if you
48. 1:26went into a doctor's office and he or
49. 1:27she said well i read the tarot cards
50. 1:29today and i'm pretty sure this medicine
51. 1:31will work
52. 1:32or you find it very disconcerting in a
53. 1:34conversation if someone said well i have
54. 1:36brown eyes so you should trust me
55. 1:38on the other hand there can be competing
56. 1:40warrants as well
57. 1:41so for example some people may use
58. 1:43scripture some people may use authority
59. 1:45that's fine as long as you understand
60. 1:48what the underlying warrants are
61. 1:50otherwise you end up talking past each
62. 1:52other the warrants that are particularly
63. 1:54interesting
64. 1:56for misinformation are what i'm going to
65. 1:57call glue warrants those are really
66. 1:59small warrants that are
67. 2:00used to hold an argument together some
68. 2:03of the more problematic ones the ones
69. 2:05that i've just seen
70. 2:06even in the last week are things like
71. 2:09um people who hang out with other people
72. 2:12like
73. 2:13x are like that person so for example if
74. 2:17uh you're italian maybe you act this way
75. 2:21if you hang out with criminals you must
76. 2:23be a criminal
77. 2:26sometimes this is true but notice the
78. 2:28difference between
79. 2:30saying sometimes and saying always so a
80. 2:33lot of misinformation proceeds along
81. 2:35the lines of always another problematic
82. 2:39warrant
83. 2:39is that people within a large
84. 2:41organization can keep a secret for 20
85. 2:43years
86. 2:45this for example is the warrant that
87. 2:47sits underneath the moon landing could
88. 2:48have been faked
89. 2:50another warrant which we see in
90. 2:52misinformation especially around covid
91. 2:54is people are doing it just for the
92. 2:56money and again
93. 2:58sometimes that's true but not always and
94. 3:00there's a real difference between a
95. 3:02warrant that says
96. 3:03always and a warrant that says sometimes
97. 3:05there are many other
98. 3:06of these small warrants that are very
99. 3:09problematic and misinformation
100. 3:11and it's fun to kind of try to uncover
101. 3:13what they are
102. 3:14i will point out though that sometimes
103. 3:17misinformation proceeds in
104. 3:19a way that looks a lot like science and
105. 3:21the arguments in science
106. 3:23and then at some point it just kind of
107. 3:25goes sideways other times they rely on
108. 3:28circular evidence
109. 3:30if you go and follow the reference chain
110. 3:32you'll find that
111. 3:33they're just referring back and forth to
112. 3:34one another
113. 3:36understanding warrants is very important
114. 3:39in trying to kind of deconstruct
115. 3:42the arguments that are occurring within
116. 3:44misinformation