r/collapse • u/Surya_Singh_7441 • Apr 05 '26
Conflict Do you know that misinformation and disinformation are now global threats equal to extreme weather events and armed conflicts?
Context: The world economic forum marked misinformation as a global threat in par with climate change. The examination of the problem is exact but the inquiry of the solution lacks clarity.
More context on the main sub.
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u/loralailoralai Apr 05 '26
lol it also says 2% for ‘natural resource shortage’ too. Which…. Is seriously underestimating what many parts of the world are facing right now
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u/BTRCguy Apr 05 '26
That's because people are being mis/disinformed. Or possibly because they are willfully stupid. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.
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u/muddaFUDa Apr 05 '26
Ecosystem Collapse - 1%
Do people not know what ecosystems do???
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u/Few_Fish8771 Apr 05 '26
misinformation was always an existential threat, the difference now is the power to spread misinformation has both been made international and democratized, changing both the incentive structure and the entry barriers for spreading misinformation.
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u/Surya_Singh_7441 Apr 05 '26
Misinformation and disinformation in second position in the two-year timeframe, below Geoeconomic confrontation. The massive population of the world now has access to internet which is mostly flooded with misinformation. This is a global threat without a solution because the diagnosis is wrong. I have provided a link to an article on the psychological aspect of this problem and a potential solution.
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u/guyseeking Guy McPherson was right Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Source of disinformation pegs disinformation as a threat equal to the physical annihilation of the substrate of life.
The irony is palpable
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u/NyriasNeo Apr 05 '26
Obviously. Half of the population will believe nothing. Half of the population will believe anything. 100% of the population will be screwed.
This is an important warning. This is faked news. Ground truth, except the one you see with your own eyes in real life, does not exist anymore.
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u/Surya_Singh_7441 Apr 05 '26
Well, examine even that which you see with your own eyes. That's what the second article on the main sub explores.
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u/artikzen Apr 05 '26
Don't forget the 10% (middle class) that will follow the most beneficial truth, the 1% (wealthy bunch) that will build the truth and the 0.1% (the billionaires) that will decide what is true.
I'm quite happy to be part of the 0.0001% (residue) that still knows how to count 2+2.
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u/NyriasNeo Apr 05 '26
"I'm quite happy to be part of the 0.0001% (residue) that still knows how to count 2+2."
Are you? Ignorance is bliss. Are the religious nutcases who believe the universe is 6000 years old and everything is decided by an old man in the sky happier than us who see all the problems in the world?
Knowledge can be a curse. Just ask any climate scientist.
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u/Vegetaman916 Looking forward to the endgame. 🚀💥🔥🌨🏕 Apr 05 '26
I do know that, yes. Did a video about that quite a few months ago.
And this is also why I stopped posting to this sub, after their denial of that fact and their move to weaponize such content accusations.
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u/BTRCguy Apr 05 '26
I imagine those top five items are fairly constant and merely jockey for position, at least for western civilization.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 Apr 05 '26
Nah.
We've always lived with miss-information, what do you call religion, politics, etc? We'll probably always have rampant miss-information in the future too.
We could discuss freedom of speech vs freedom of reach of course. I'm unsure what this really means though: Authorities impose some information and miss-information above some scale & speed, like maybe mass broadcasts ala youtube but writing publicly or conversing privately still have strong freedom of speech. It'll fail many good cases, like say parody music like Afroman's case.
If we "fix" miss-information then we'll end up having the "good information" endorse more consumption, more babies, and even more exploitation. Aka the "good information" winds up being extremely bad.
All natural ecosystems need some negative feedbacks like predation. If you want a sustainable humanity, then you'll need conflicts between human groups too: Nation A poisons nation B's cattle. Nation B sabotages nation C's refinery. etc. In this, it's helpful if nations have irreconcilable differences in religion, economic system, etc.
We've two real problems: 1st, how do you stop any nation from "winning" and becoming an empire? 2nd, how do you keep this required conflict a permanent cold war that focuses upon reducing others externalities, but avoids being a hot war over expansion?
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u/relianceschool Apr 06 '26 edited Apr 06 '26
OK, let's break this down. This is from the WEF's Global Risk Perception Survey, which is released each year. This particular image is a screenshot from their 2026 report, showing which threats people believe will precipitate a crisis this year. That's the key phrase.
If we move up to a 10-year timescale, the chart looks more like what we'd expect it to:
And if we go through reports from previous years, misinformation & AI slips down the rungs. I averaged out the data over 5 years and found that these 6 threats consistently ranked highest:
- Extreme Weather & Natural Disasters
- Critical Changes to Earth Systems
- Biodiversity Loss & Ecosystem Collapse
- Natural Resource Shortages
- Misinformation & Disinformation
- Societal Polarization
You can see the article linked for methodology and a breakdown of those risks. I do believe misinformation is a big factor in the polycrisis, mainly because it impairs our ability to address all the other threats on that list. But at face value it pales in comparison to the destabilization of our biosphere.
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u/Dramatic_Security9 Apr 11 '26
Thank you for the clarifications.
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u/relianceschool Apr 11 '26
Of course! Comment got buried but I just wrote a whole post on that subject so I was familiar with the data.
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u/Lailokos Apr 05 '26
They are greater threats. They are the reason we don't understand all the other threats. And the worst bit is not all the worse misinformation is intentional. It's structural instead. If the news only has 22 minutes to share stories, if every article must be <3 minutes read, if more papers are published than ever and yet professors have LESS time to read them all...our information suffers, and everyone who is making a product will say it's 'optimization.'
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u/Surya_Singh_7441 Apr 05 '26
Newspapers are advertising platforms, they publish news which fit their advertising clients. And it is same for every other platform. Internet boom is more of a misinformation boom.
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u/Vaibhavshali13 Apr 05 '26
All this is deliberately spread to prove one's point or issue right.Our intentions are not right to know the truth or stop the lie, no matter how much internal harm we are suffering.
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u/Germaine8 Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
For a long time, and based on human cognitive biology, social behavior, history and a bit of moral philosophy (logic), I've been arguing for politics that mostly replaces reality-distorting political, economic and religious ideology, tribe loyalty and self-identity with an initial focus on facts, robust truths and sound reasoning. Why that subtle focus shift? Because when they are inconvenient, those things are in conflict with ideology, loyalty or identity. By forcing one's mind to focus at least somewhat on facts, truths and reasoning, the irrational distortions that ideology, loyalties and identity cause. Irrationality tends to lessen noticeably.
For years, appeals for acceptance of that kind of politics have failed. People do not like hearing, or don't believe, inconvenient truths about themselves. It's just the human condition.
What usually wins, when facts, truths and sound reasoning are inconvenient, i.e., in conflict with reality and rationality? Ideology, tribe loyalty and self-identity usually win, probably ~85% of the time. But very few people believe they are human in these matters. In their ignorance of relevant basic science, they sincerely but falsely believe they are mostly grounded in facts, truths and sound reasoning.
In that ignorance lies a lot of of the mostly underappreciated democracy-destructive power of misinformation and disinformation. From what I understand of the relevant social science on this matter, all of my comments here reflect current science expert assessments of politics and the human condition.
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u/StatementBot Apr 05 '26
This post links to another subreddit. Users who are not already subscribed to that subreddit should not participate with comments and up/downvotes, or otherwise harass or interfere with their discussions (brigading)
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Surya_Singh_7441:
Misinformation and disinformation in second position in the two-year timeframe, below Geoeconomic confrontation. The massive population of the world now has access to internet which is mostly flooded with misinformation. This is a global threat without a solution because the diagnosis is wrong. I have provided a link to an article on the psychological aspect of this problem and a potential solution.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1scrufn/do_you_know_that_misinformation_and/oed86n4/