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Falsehoods Fly

Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It
Brief Description
Misinformation is one of the twenty-first century's greatest challenges, a peril to democracy, peace, science, and public health. Yet we lack a clear understanding of what makes misinformation so potent and why it can spread so rapidly. In Falsehoods Fly, a leading cognitive scientist and philosopher... Read More
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A leading cognitive scientist and philosopher offers a new framework for recognizing and countering misleading claims by exploring the ways that information worksβ€”and breaks down.

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Misinformation is one of the twenty-first century's greatest challenges, a peril to democracy, peace, science, and public health. Yet we lack a clear understanding of what makes misinformation so potent and why it can spread so rapidly. In Falsehoods Fly, a leading cognitive scientist and philosopher offers a new framework for recognising and countering misleading claims by exploring the ways that information worksβ€”and breaks down.

Paul Thagard examines the dangers of misinformation on COVID-19, climate change, conspiracy theories, inequality, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He argues that effective responses to these problems require understanding how information is generated and spread.

Bringing together empirical findings about the psychological and social mechanisms that drive cognitive errors with philosophical accounts of critical thinking, Thagard develops an innovative theory of how we gain information. Grasping how the generation and transmission of knowledge can fail helps us find ways to repair it and provides tools for converting misinformation into facts.

Offering a deep and rich account of the nature and workings of information, Falsehoods Fly provides practical, concrete strategies to stop the creation and spread of misinformation.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780231213950

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 20 February 2024

Country: United States

Imprint: Columbia University Press

Illustration: 30 figures, 6 tables

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 156.0mm

Height: 235.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 376

About the Author

Paul Thagard is distinguished professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Waterloo and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. His books include Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? (2021) and Balance: How It Works and What It Means (Columbia, 2022).

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