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Adverse Signal To Noise Ratios I was quite surprised by the contents of some email I received recently. The mail was from someone whom I know to be conservative but believe to be intelligent. The contents concerned the assertion that the facts clearly showed John Kerry to be a liar because, well, that whole Cambodia thing. I must confess that I haven't been paying all that much attention to the details of the whole Swift Boat nonsense, but was fairly sure that virtually all of their concrete assertions had been [1]debunked. So I went off to [2]Google and did a search for [3]'kerry cambodia' which turned up quite a few hits. A quick glance would lead one to believe that it was a proven fact that Kerry had made up the whole thing about Cambodia. The problem is that when you start looking closely at those hits it becomes apparent that none of them are factual. Lots of blogs, a lot of references to and variations on an Op-Ed piece written by someone from the [4]American Enterprise Institute. No journalism. Not until you get eight or nine pages into the search results. There you find a couple of news articles, none of which have any evidence that Kerry is not telling the truth. On the contrary, they present evidence which suggest that it is completely credible that Kerry is telling the truth here. This presents an interesting cautionary tale about internet sources, credibility, and noise; and serves as an excellent example of the dangers of basing one's arguments on purported facts presented on someone's website. It also illustrates that direct links into a reputable source (such as a newspaper) might obfuscate the fact the information being viewed is opinion, not journalism. Disturbingly many people seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between legitimate and questionable sources when making online arguments. This seems to suggest that the internet is encouraging, or at least facilitating bad scholarship in public discourse. This illuminates something which I have long considered a flaw in internet search technology: the lack of vetting of sources. What the internet really needs is something akin to the [5]Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for websites. Sites that present material that is vetted by a team of professionals dedicated to high academic or journalistic standards would get high ratings. Lone malcontents like myself would get low ratings. Although if I make the effort to document my claims with links to high-ranking sites I could get a middle ranking. Such a system could both raise the level of information being exchanged, and save a great deal of time, as it would no longer be necessary to individually debunk people who make the mistake of believing that the [6]Heritage Foundation is laying out unbiased facts for them. Sadly, this clouding of issues by lowering the signal-to-noise ratio is not just an online problem. Clearly a significant tactic deployed by Fox News, the Bush Administration, and the group of organizations which Hillary Clinton described as a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' is to continually repeat unsubstantiated allegations so many times that people start accepting them as truth. This assault on reason and truth has clear historic precedent, although one which makes the conservatives very uncomfortable when you bring it up: this is the communication tactic favored and honed by Joseph Goebbels. The social implications of a public movement that has risen to power through the intentional distortion of language, communication, and news media is truly disturbing. If they really had a clear signal that would resonate with the American people wouldn't they broadcast it in the clear, rather than burying it under tons of noise to prevent people from knowing what they really represent? References: 1. http://www.swiftvets.org/ 2. http://www.google.com 3. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=kerry+cambodia&btnG=Google+Search 4. http://www.aei.org/ 5. http://www.goodhousekeepingseal.com/r5/home.asp 6. http://www.heritage.org/