Degraded info quality leads to authoritarianism

Today, "I Peeked at Grokipedia", and it's as horrible as you might imagine. A fake encyclopedia, deliberately rightwing.

I retreated to read one of my subscriptions, written by a human. Brian Klaas in the Garden of Forking Paths ("Brain Food," Oct 23, 2025):

"Now, Fukuyama is out with a new essay (on Substack) in which he reaches the same conclusion that I’ve been pushing for years: the rise of authoritarian populism, across the globe, at around the same time, isn’t primarily due to material or economic backlash, but rather to the breakdown of information systems, facilitated by the rise of the internet and the spread of social media.

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Of course, monocausal explanations for complex phenomena are silly; there’s not just one reason why Trump emerged at the same time as all the other would-be despots of his ilk. But Fukuyama, like me, has concluded that the most salient cause—the biggest driver—is the breakdown of information pipelines."

Relatedly, Avram Alpert writes ("What we misunderstand in the debate over free speech," The Guardian, Oct 23, 2025):

"Most defenders of “free speech” only seem to care about the freedom to express themselves. They fight for the right to say anything, not whether the speech itself comes from a position of freedom.

...free speech, properly conceived, is not just about the right to say what one wants. It is also about being the kind of person who has been so conscientious in their thinking, learning and discussion that they have become a free subject whose speech is directed toward the pursuit of truth.

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There are many factors – both benign and malign – that have incredible power to influence our thinking. Our minds, for example, tend to overemphasize negative and frightful information through what psychologists call “affect heuristics” and “availability heuristics” – shortcuts in our thinking bequeathed by evolution so that we quickly recall information and react immediately to danger.

But these same shortcuts can make us susceptible to manipulation – even when we know we’re being manipulated. That’s what makes a false idea like “immigrant crime” so powerful. Even though statistics show that migrants commit far less crime than others, these heuristics trick our minds into recalling recent news stories and becoming afraid. So when someone insists on their right to demonize immigrants, that is not free speech – it is fear speech. Again, we neither can nor should make fear speech illegal, but we can create cultural norms that promote genuine free speech.

This includes an open and engaged public sphere, an educational and scientific research system that expands knowledge, active public venues that encourage people to learn about each other’s points of view, and public labors to produce and circulate factual information and counter propaganda and misinformation."