دانلود کتاب گمراه‌کننده -اطلاعات نادرست از کجا شروع می‌شود، چگونه گسترش می‌یابد و در مورد آن چه باید کرد

Imagine you have an old friend named John. You went to high school with him and remember him being a friendly and curious person. You haven’t spoken to him in a while, but you keep connected through social media and occasionally see pictures of his dog and his travels as they pop up in your newsfeed. One day you notice John has shared a link to a video that claims the Earth is flat. This surprises you because you don’t remember John being into conspiracies. You click on his profile to delve deeper and see, scattered among travel and dog pictures, various links to articles and videos claiming the Earth is flat. As you scroll through his posts, you are surprised to see that he recently attended a Flat Earth Society meeting. You scratch your head. You wonder how your friend can believe something like this that is so clearly untrue. John, being the curious person that he is, may have started out watching a few conspiracy videos online—whether seeking them out himself or engaging with them at the suggestion of social media algorithms. John always liked to think of himself as a contrarian and felt a sense of pride when he believed something that others did not. This personality quirk further led him to seek out other conspiracy theory videos and online discussion groups. He found out that a local Flat Earth Society group was having a meetup near him, and he decided to check it out. At the meeting, he met several friendly people and had a very positive experience. These positive social connections made him want to also attend a conference for flat-earthers that was just a few hours’ drive away. These social components contributed to John’s Flat Earth beliefs as well as his desire to share Flat Earth content online. John is fictional, but his story is not far-fetched at all. In fact, a 2018 documentary titled Behind the Curve shares the stories of various people who believe the Earth is flat.1 We might think this is an absurd belief, but the documentary illustrates how powerful social connection is in supporting such ideas. There are Flat Earth online communities and in-person conferences, which make it easy for flat-earthers to befriend those who already share their beliefs or to connect with or attract others who may come to share their beliefs with time and community influence. When you think about how important it is to maintain our social connections, it becomes clearer why someone might be motivated to protect a belief that connects them with people who provide friendship and a sense of belonging. Additionally, if that person takes pride in being an independent thinker, then they may be further motivated to believe something different from what other people believe. The film resonated with me because it also discusses how we are all vulnerable to social biases that influence our beliefs. Believing the Earth is flat may be an extreme example, but we probably all believe something untrue because people around us endorse it. This may be something innocuous, like believing a particular sports team is the best, or it could be something more serious and insidious, like believing an unproven supplement cures a life-threatening illness. Daniel Clark, the director of Behind the Curve, was asked what lessons he hoped people would learn from his film. He answered: “My dream would be that when people watch it, they take Flat Eartherism as an analogy to something they believe in because it’s so easy to demonize another group or another person for something they think, but you’re kind of just as guilty if you do that.”2 This book is about the social and psychological forces that guide us into believing false information. I hope it will help increase our understanding of why people believe falsehoods and will offer insight that helps us recognize times when we may be vulnerable to false and misleading information. It is easy to identify when someone else’s beliefs are incorrect, but it is much harder to recognize our own biases. By learning about the social and psychological factors that impact how we evaluate information, we are better equipped to navigate the rapidly evolving information landscape.