Hapgood

When everything is evidence, discourse can get a bit stupid In case you didn’t hear, smoke was bad in NYC a couple of weeks ago. A thick blanket of the stuff, the result of distant wildfires, c...

https://hapgood.us/2023/06/22/the-open-argument-must-be-fed-the-peculiar-case-of-fox-news-and-the-pleasant-smoke/

There are two primary accounts of the relation between evidence and belief in misinformation research, and neither is adequate. The first model is simple and direct. The idea here is you see misi...

https://hapgood.us/2023/06/10/reasonableness-an-introduction/

With that as your narrative, what evidence can you bring to bear? Repeatedly since at least 2020, the “riot bricks” trope has been popular. The idea, of course, is some secret conspiracy is m...

https://hapgood.us/2022/07/03/scene-level-trope-riot-bricks/

Polling locations are, by necessity, formed out of locations that do other things the rest of the year. Schools, churches, community centers, and the like. They sometimes have cameras installed. ...

https://hapgood.us/2022/07/02/voting-location-cameras-covered-up/

From the book Ballot Battles: In Texas the institution currently empowered to adjudicate a disputed election is its legislature, far from the ideal institution for the dispute. If Texas experienc...

https://hapgood.us/2022/07/01/vulnerability-of-texas-to-gubernatorial-vote-counting-dispute/

Terraforming is a process found in science fiction novels of deliberately modifying the atmosphere and ecology of a planet to make it more habitable for a given life-form. In early sci-fi, that l...

https://hapgood.us/2022/01/18/disinformation-terraforms-its-information-environment/

If you want to study something, a first step might be to go out and collect it. If I was looking for themes in 16th century poetry about food, I’d go out and get 16th century poems about food. ...

https://hapgood.us/2022/01/15/rumors-are-bothersome-because-they-may-turn-out-to-be-true/

There is a well-known saying — “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup that gets you.” This is true in the obvious way it is usually meant: many administrative crimes are difficult to pro...

https://hapgood.us/2022/01/13/transparent-wrongdoing-and-mundane-revelations/

A couple days ago I wrote up my description of the Information Intervention Chain. One of the points there was that work on each layer decreases the load on the layers below, and helps cover some...

https://hapgood.us/2021/09/07/the-information-intervention-chain-interface-layer-example/

Some notes I just wanted to get down. There are four places where information interventions can be applied. Moderation/Promotion. A platform always makes decisions on what to put in front of a us...

https://hapgood.us/2021/09/04/the-information-intervention-chain/