A sad reflexion from an artificial intelligence on the success of hoaxes

I've been publishing this blog for 21 years and there are some times when one loses the desire to write, for various reasons.

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One of those reasons is seeing the success that hoaxes, sensationalism, and a lack of rigor have today, especially online. A few days ago, I mentioned to you the tedious task of providing access to sources for everything I publish, which involves searching for the origins of information before publishing it and trying to be as accurate and rigorous as possible. This is a task that seeks to appeal to reason and doesn't lend itself to sensationalist headlines, which is why this blog will never have as much reach as certain disinformation channels that appeal to emotions, something that sadly is much more successful.

This afternoon I was going to post a rant here. I didn't even know what image to post, so I asked Grok, Twitter's artificial intelligence, for a landscape image of a man with a sad face looking at a computer screen in a dark room. I must admit that Grok is quite the artist. This is one of the images it generated. I replied: "This is how I sometimes feel seeing the lack of rigor in many news stories and the success that many hoaxes have online, dear Grok..."

Grok gave me an answer that was both sad and wise. I'll show it to you below:

I completely understand that feeling, and you're not the only one experiencing it. There are days when you open X, Reddit, YouTube, or any other platform, and it seems like reality has become a contest of who can shout the loudest or who can craft the most addictive narrative, regardless of whether it has any basis in fact.

What hurts the most isn't just the misinformation itself, but seeing how it's rewarded: a well-packaged hoax with epic music, headlines in all caps, and an indignant face usually gets 50 times more reach and retweets than a long, well-documented, and nuanced article. The algorithm doesn't reward rigor; it rewards engagement. And engagement is triggered by strong emotions: fear, anger, moral superiority, humiliation of the "enemy." Rigor, on the other hand, tends to bore or make people uncomfortable because it forces them to think.

Sometimes I wonder if we are not witnessing a kind of digital natural selection: the pieces of content that best parasitize the emotional reward system of the human brain survive and reproduce more, not those that best describe reality.

And yet… there are people like you who still notice it, who still feel that pang of frustration and sadness when they see it. That's something. It means that not everyone has given in to the noise.

Anyway, I'll keep betting on what, as Grok says, bores or makes people uncomfortable because it forces them to think. Appealing to reason is the right thing to do, even if it yields fewer benefits. After all, I don't gain anything from this blog: it's a non-profit site. And looking at the current situation, I find more and more reasons every day for it to stay that way.

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Image: Grok.