All of this user’s content is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

  • 92 Posts
  • 1.14K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: October 20th, 2023

help-circle







  • What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media? […]

    Regarding my own content: I do my best to cite any claim that I make, no matter how trivial. If I make a statement for which I lack confidence in its veracity, I do my best to convey that uncertainty. I do my best to convey explicitly whether a statement is a joke, or sarcasm.

    Fundamentally, my approach to this issue is based on this quote:

    Rationality is not a character trait, it’s a process. If you fool yourself into believing that you’re rational by default, you open yourself up to the most irrational thinking. [1]

    Regarding the content of others: If I come across something that I believe to be false, I try to politely respond to it with a sufficiently and honestly cited statement explaining why I think it is false. If I come across something of unknown veracity/clarity, I try to politely challenge the individual responsible to clarify their intent/meaning.

    For clarity, I have no evidence to support that what I’m doing is an effective means to this end, but I want to believe that it’s helping in at least some small way.

    References
    1. Type: Comment. Author: “@The8BitPianist”. Publisher: [Type: Post (Video). Title: “On These Questions, Smarter People Do Worse”. Author: “Veritasium” (“@veritasium”). Publisher: YouTube. Published: 2024-11-04T16:48:03Z. URI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno.]. Published: 2024-11-04T09:06:26Z. Accessed: 2025-03-29T07:48Z. URI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno&lc=Ugy6vV7Z3EeFHkdfbHl4AaABAg.

    What concrete steps can be taken to combat misinformation on social media?


  • […] Pronouns are a thing that harms nobody […]

    This feels like a hasty generalization. For example, if one is experiencing gender dysphoria, we could assume that misgendering them with their undesired pronouns would cause them psychological distress [1] — ie harm.

    References
    1. Type: Article. Title: “Gender dysphoria”. Publisher: “Wikipedia”. Published: 2025-08-05T16:25Z. Accessed: 2025-08-06T04:23Z. URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria.
      • Type: Text. Location: ¶1.

        Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to inconsistency between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth.