R.I.P. SFF.NET

Sff.net has gone the way of GEnie and other beloved communities. GEnie was my introduction to online gatherings. I met people, made friends (still going strong), brainstormed anthologies (and then sold stories to them), kept an eye on friends in need (and noticed when they disappeared and dispatched local friends to check on them), engaged in gossip I wish I hadn't, engaged in kindness I'm glad I did.

Dueling Modems and then sff.net picked up when GEnie couldn't survive the 2K transition. For me, neither had the same vitality, although folks did their best. Sff.net provided an email address and website, however. And we all had to find new hosts as The End neared. As much as I valued these communities, I've oozed on over to blogging, FB, Twitville, and the like. I'm still here, too.

Life moves on. Communities evolve. Friendships endure.

Fake news: why we believe it and what we can do about it

A thoughtful analysis of why we respond emotionally to lies...and what to do about it. Worth reading all the way through. My particular weakness is source amnesia. I will remember reading something but not WHERE, which is just as important.

From the article: Why do we find so much emotional resonance in lies? There are four reasons that derive from our evolutionary history. We are a social species with relationships built on trust. But there have always been people who would take advantage of us and abuse our trust. No one wants to be a chump. These two instincts—to trust others but to be suspicious of cheaters—guide much of our behavior today, and they hang in an uneasy balance. If a (trusted) friend tells us that another person is cheating us, we take it seriously. Cheaters get ahead at our expense—on the savannah, in the board room or in the bedroom. These are emotional issues, not logical ones. And emotional issues have priority over our brain’s attention
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So here’s the good news: there are simple things all of us can do to become more rational decision makers, and to avoid being taken in by liars and con-artists who prey on ignorance.
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The third thing is to pay attention to sources as we encounter new information, and work deliberately to encode them. Ask yourself: is this a reliable source, is the information current, is the person who is posing as an expert actually an expert? Before clicking the thumbs up button on forwarding a social network post, we should each try to figure out if it’s true or not first. We can overcome source memory if we think more like a journalist, scientist or lawyer: who told you that? How do they know?