User education and self-improvement

Education

The ratings system we are designing could help people become better thinkers, question their assumptions, break cognitive bad habits and build new ones. Courses on logic, debate, and identifying misinformation can be offered as we alluded to last time. Soft skills courses could also be offered to promote civility such as empathy, constructive communication, emotion management, etc. Helping people think more broadly and open-mindedly in general would complement a curriculum of this nature. For people who complete such a course, a certification could be given which provides ratings benefits. And, for those who haven’t, the course would be an easy way to demonstrate improvement and work toward improved ratings, as discussed above.

Educational material

Our rating system should provide an array of curated sources to help users analyze information, eg:

A book on Web-literacy for students:

https://pressbooks.pub/webliteracy/chapter/finding-a-journals-impact-factor/

PROVEN method pdf:

https://rasmussen.libanswers.com/loader?fid=10596&type=1&key=cd4bb6f4a24a74c36a7ce63cd1cfc254

Fact checking sites:

Politifact – https://www.politifact.com/

Snopes – https://www.snopes.com/

Media bias ratings:

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/straight-arrow-news-media-bias

https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/

This material could be used to create courses on information literacy, spotting misinformation, persuasive debate, etc. Those passing the course could be provided with a certificate or a plus-up in their ratings. In any event, the information should be presented in an obvious, easily accessible way, and efforts should be made to encourage users to engage with it.

An interesting book written in the wake of the 2016 election was Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny”snyder.pdf. It is essentially a guide for what to watch for and how to fight incipient tyranny. A large part of this is becoming familiar with how information is distorted and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against bias. We are building an information system which must educate its users in how to consume information. In the book, Snyder provides 20 rules for combatting incipient tyranny, a few of which are listed here:

Believe in Truth
Investigate
Remember professional ethics
Contribute to good causes
Learn from peers in other countries
etc

These are among those that are directly amenable to our rating system. A few of them ask that we take part in demonstrations and meet in person which our system might help organize but doesn’t directly enable. Snyder, a student of European history (particularly Eastern Europe), wrote the book as a guide for Americans to prevent authoritarianism from taking hold here. Many of its recommendations are things we value (eg believe in truth, investigate) and can be part of our ratings system.

Needless to say, we also value Snyder’s overall objective of keeping tyranny at bay and I submit that it is one of the fundamental justifications for undertaking this project. Misinformation may have been a curiosity in the past. But no longer.

“On Tyranny” highlights the notion that we can create ratings to suit particular purposes. In this case it is preventing authoritarian rule, particularly in the US. But it can be for any purpose: medical advice, humor, collaborative engineering design, etc. With a diverse enough user base communities of interest should arise and create ratings suitable to their purpose.