betterthinkers

You are increasingly interacting not just with false information, but with false people online. In other words, you are interacting with counterfeit people. What is the concept of counterfeit people? What frames of mind can we cultivate into students and society to manage counterfeit people and ensure epistemic well-being?

Counterfeit People

The Problem With Counterfeit People is an article written by Philosopher Daniel Dennett for The Atlantic which basically outlines the risk human society faces when we pollute media streams with artificial agents who convey information to users, become increasingly difficult to distinguish information synthetically generated by AI from real human-beings. Since we can be manipulated by AI-agents with false information, or influential ways of communication that tap into our emotions, persuading us to believe or act based on the information we receive, according to Dennett (2023), these “counterfeit people are the most dangerous artifacts in human history, capable of destroying not just economies but human freedom itself.”

Dennett further states:

Democracy depends on the informed (not misinformed) consent of the governed. By allowing the most economically and politically powerful people, corporations, and governments to control our attention, these systems will control us. Counterfeit people, by distracting and confusing us and by exploiting our most irresistible fears and anxieties, will lead us into temptation and, from there, into acquiescing to our own subjugation. The counterfeit people will talk us into adopting policies and convictions that will make us vulnerable to still more manipulation. Or we will simply turn off our attention and become passive and ignorant pawns. This is a terrifying prospect.

Whether Dennett’s doomsday sentiments align with your own intuitions or not, his argument it is a compelling and worthy read (warning, it is paywalled). Indeed his prognostications fall in line with a Carl Sagan quote that resonates with me in regards to an increasingly scientifically illiterate society on one hand and increasingly advanced science in the hands of private industry on the other.

We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it? Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious leader who comes ambling along. It’s a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the people had to be educated and they have to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don’t run the government, the government runs us.

Carl Sagan, Charlie Rose, May 27th, 1996 (Watch the clip)

People have always been susceptible to manipulation from snake oil salesman and false prophets, or people that “know” what will happen in the future, but there is a different threat level of the wool being pulled over our eyes, a much more sophisticated and complex orchestration of manipulation through our digital media streams. Not just the threat of being led by false information but being being exposed to an information ecosystem that is so polluted with misinformation that knowing what to believe will force us to subscribe to a fervent level of either skepticism or faith.

Be it fervent skepticism (rejection) or fervent faith (acceptance), both lend themselves to emotive knee-jerk thinking, the former denying anything as true, the latter believing what ever pops up in their increasingly narrowed media stream. Fervent skepticism or faith should be an unnecessary dichotomy but one of habitual default when one does not give oneself time to reason. One way to sit longer with what streams towards us is my notion of epistemic well-being.

Epistemic Well-Being (Checkout my previous post on epistemic well-being)

Briefly defined, epistemic well-being is the idea that there are conditions we can uphold in ourselves and society that ensure that notions of knowledge and truth keep well. Like mental or physical well-being, we must intentionally develop habits and build routines in order to improve healthier thinking practices, practices that keep us epistemically well. And if we find ourselves in a state of co-dependency with media streams where deciphering the difference between good and false information is an impossible entanglement, we will need ways enhance our ability to reason through the good, the bad, and the ugly. Perhaps then, media polluted with counterfeit people, won’t really affect us all that much. Unbind your dependency on media streams, by building space for thinking.

Unbound Thinking Spaces: Try the CLU framework

One way to build epistemic well-being is to set up thinking spaces in our lives to sit with information, and to include diverse perspectives into these spaces. Let’s call this Unbound Thinking Spaces where sitting with information means we can look at what is being conveyed, pick apart what we know is likely true regardless of what we want to believe, and observe how others of different perspectives react to the same information. Do you or they have reactions that emotive and knee-jerk? Are they sure of something that is likely or unlikely? Do they have good reasons or vetted evidence to back their opinions? One way to frame discussions is to frame claims of truth as certain, likely, and unlikely.

CLU Framework

Claim X is certain because….followed by reasons and evidence

Claim X is likely because….followed by reasons and evidence

Claim X is unlikely because….followed by reasons and evidence

Claim not-X is certain because….followed by reasons and evidence

Claim not-X is likely because….followed by reasons and evidence

Claim not-X is unlikely because….followed by reasons and evidence

We have time to build this into K-12 classroom culture for sure. But its also an easy habit of mindset to cultivate in ourselves as adults when we or someone emotively makes any claim. Honor our intuitions, not by accepting them, but by acknowledging them and testing them.