{"href":"http://player.captivate.fm/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplayer.captivate.fm%2Fepisode%2Fdbc55624-3fa7-4450-961b-494df8d8c414","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Captivate.FM","provider_url":"https://www.captivate.fm","width":600,"height":200,"type":"rich","html":"<iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px;\" title=\"Episode 119 \u2013 Keating swims in the swill and our systems encourage Fake News\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allow=\"clipboard-write\" seamless src=\"http://player.captivate.fm/episode/dbc55624-3fa7-4450-961b-494df8d8c414\"></iframe>","title":"Episode 119 \u2013 Keating swims in the swill and our systems encourage Fake News","description":"We have banged on about marriage equality for months. This episode will be a marriage equality free zone.<br />\n<br />\n4:59 We start off with the assisted dying debate and the fact that the debate is not happening in Queensland despite the recent Labor conference passing a motion in favour of introducing voluntary euthanasia laws.<br />\n8:36 In last weeks episode, we opined that Paul Keating would have got stuck into opponents of progressive law reform however 48 hours later he produced an article strongly criticizing the proposed assisted dying laws in Victoria. Unfortunately, his arguments were emotional and factually incorrect. His main argument was that the current view of what it means to be human is sacred and cannot evolve and he objected to the idea that some people are better off dead. He incorrectly stated that the slippery slope argument has been fulfilled in other jurisdictions and he accused others of an emotional argument which he himself was guilty of.<br />\n<br />\n18:46 We refer to an excellent article from Neil Francis from his &#8220;dying for choice&#8221; blog which puts forward a good case that our current politicians are unrepresentative swill particularly in relation to conservative politicians and there voting patterns on voluntary euthanasia bills compared to the support for these bills in the community.<br />\n23:31 A growing share of Americans says it is not necessary to believe in god to be moral. All religious segments are moving in the correct direction on this matter but the group which is trailing behind our black Protestants.<br />\n26:31 Meanwhile in Australia according to a recent Ipsos Global Poll, 2 in 3\u00a0Australians think religion does more harm than good in the world. At the same\u00a0time, we are comfortable being around people with different religious beliefs to our own. Therefore, call us suspicious and call us tolerant.<br />\n28:24 The Pew research centre recently looked into the grand challenges facing us in the 21st century and one of these challenges turns out to be the breakdown of trusted information sources. They went on to conduct a survey of a large number of\u00a0technologists, scholars, practitioners, strategic thinkers and others and ask them whether they thought the problem with fake news would get better or worse over the next 10 years. 51% of the experts expected things would not improve while 49% thought they would.<br />\nOf the people who thought that things would not improve, their main reasons were that humans are selfish, tribal, gullible convenience seekers who put the most trust in that which seems familiar.<br />\nAlso, there are strong incentives for the rich and powerful to disseminate false information but little incentive for the truth.<br />\nOf those who thought that things would improve, their main reason seem to be that technology would improve to provide better filtering and algorithms to weed out fake news and they also thought that ratings would become important and trusted.<br />\nFollowing are some quotes\u00a0 from experts who felt that the situation would get worse<br />\n<br />\n* It comes down to motivation. There is no market for the truth, the public isn&#8217;t motivated to seek out verified vetted information, they are happy hearing what confirms their views and people can gain more creating fake information than they can keeping it from occurring.<br />\n* Too many groups gain power through the proliferation of inaccurate or misleading information. When there is value in misinformation, it will rule.<br />\n* Big political players have just learnt how to play this game. I don&#8217;t think they will put much effort into eliminating it.<br />\n* Overall at least a part of society will value trusted information and find ways to keep a set of curated quality information resources. This will use a combination of organisational and technological tools but above all will require a sharpened sense of good judgement and access to diverse sources. Outside this,","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/085762e2-797c-4ef4-9b10-434ecde61c07/logo2018v2.jpg"}