Ed Gerck

The Einstein Phenomenon and fake news Ed Gerck

The problem described here include basing beliefs on misinformation and pseudoscience, albeit it also includes the human tendency to be on the intersubjective or even subjective "right" -- even though not objectively right. Consensus (i.e., "Byzantine agreement") is one of the fundamental problems in fault-tolerant distributed systems, and in Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), here tested in an open, online, large discussion forum. As we show here, the disruption or noise can be used in feedback, to help separate noise from signal, turning the problem into that of filtering-out the noise, not blocking (censorship) as the only tool to use (e.g., new laws in EU, Facebook, UK). Stated as a question of finding the correct filter using Shannon, a solution is already known to exist and can be applied. Strategies on dealing with rejection of known facts have risen to notoriety with vaccines, "fake news," politics, CTE in American football, climate change, cybersecurity, and other topics. This book evolved out of a companion text to an open discussion in an online forum as an example -- Should questioning Einstein special and general relativity be blocked? -- as a model question in "fake news".