Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Preface

Introduction

1 More is Less: Mental Avarice and Mass Information

1.1. The revolution of the cognitive market
1.2. Amplification of the confirmation bias
1.3. The Seattle affair
1.4. The theorem of information credulity
1.5. Filter bubbles

2 Why Does the Internet Side with Dubious Ideas?

2.1. The utopia of the knowledge society and the empire of beliefs
2.2. The ditherer’s problem
2.3. Competition between belief and knowledge on the Internet
2.4. Psychokinesis
2.5. The Loch Ness Monster
2.6. Aspartame
2.7. Crop circles
2.8. Astrology
2.9. Overview of resutls
2.10. How can we explain these results?
2.11. The Titanic syndrome
2.12. When Olson’s paradox plays against knowledge
2.13. Charles Fort, his life, and his works in a few words
2.14. Fort products: argumentative mille-feuilles
2.15. The sharing of the arguments of conviction
2.16. A Fortean product in the making: Michael Jackson’s fake death
2.17. When Fort reinforces Olson
2.18. Would you believe it!
2.19. It is all in the Bible, all of it
2.20. The transparency paradox
2.21. A shorter incubation period

3 Competition Serves the Truth, Excessive Competition Harms It

3.1. Michael Jackson’s son, abused by Nicolas Sarkozy
3.2. A “prisoner’s dilemma” kind of situation
3.3. Presidential unfaithfulness and the burnt Koran
3.4. The IRC curve (information reliability/competition)

4 What Can Be Done? From the Democracy of the Gullible to the Democracy of Enlightenment

4.1. The hope of the astrophysicist
4.2. The bad education
4.3. When gullibility looks like intelligence
4.4. The sum of imperfections
4.5. Toward cognitive demagogy
4.6. How to keep the illusion scholar inside us in check
4.7. Declaration of mental independence
4.8. The fourth power
4.9. A new form of scientific communication
4.10. A new militancy

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

1 More is Less: Mental Avarice and Mass Information

Figure 1.1. Number of Internet users (in millions) across the globe

2 Why Does the Internet Side with Dubious Ideas?

Figure 2.1. The devil shape and the 9/11 attacks
Figure 2.2. Searches on Google for the words “Haiti earthquake” (dotted) and “HAARP”
Figure 2.3. Conspiracy-related arguments after the Charlie Hebdo attacks

3 Competition Serves the Truth, Excessive Competition Harms It

Figure 3.1. Degree of competition

4 What Can Be Done? From the Democracy of the Gullible to the Democracy of Enlightenment

Figure 4.1. Curve of subjective probabilities

List of Tables

1 More is Less: Mental Avarice and Mass Information

Table 1.1. Number of websites dedicated to conspiracy theories out of the first 30 results given by Google

2 Why Does the Internet Side with Dubious Ideas?

Table 2.1. Orientation of the first 30 websites displayed by Google in relation to the topic of psychokinesis
Table 2.2. Orientation of the first 30 websites displayed by Google in relation to the topic of the Loch Ness Monster
Table 2.3. Orientation of the first 30 websites displayed by Google in relation to the topic of the health hazard posed by aspartame
Table 2.4. Orientation of the first 30 websites displayed by Google in relation to the topic of crop circles.
Table 2.5. Orientation of the first 30 websites displayed by Google in relation to the topic of astrology

First published in the English language 2016 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

First published in the French language by Presses Universitaires de France, from pages 3–146 and 275–325 (of the French Edition) © La démocratie des crédules, Presses Universitaires de France, 2013.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

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www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Hoboken, NJ 07030
USA

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954428

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISSN 2051-2481 (Print)
ISSN 2051-249X (Online)
ISBN 978-1-84821-916-8

Preface

This book will mention the media, beliefs, the news, the Internet, etc. but it should not be seen as yet another critique of the media system, exploring with indignant fascination the idea of a machination against truth set up to serve a society of domination. These kinds of theories, whether they pertain to conspiracy theories or, more subtly, to a self-styled “critical” way of thinking, have always seemed to me the expression of a form of intellectual puerility. This is not to say that attempts at manipulating opinions do not occur, or that our world is free from compromised principles, or indeed corruption; far from it, but none of this is the key issue.

In fact, reality somehow strikes me as even more unsettling than those myths, however sophisticated they might be, which envisage the media system hand-in-hand with industry, science and so forth, all in agreement to lead the “people” away from the truth. This is more unsettling, because the processes that will be described in this book and that allow falsehood and dubiousness to take hold of the public sphere are boosted by the development of IT, the workings of our mind, and the very nature of democracy… It is more unsettling then because we are all responsible for what is going to happen to us.