The Problem of Testimony

The talk will detail work drawing on behavioural results, formal analysis, and computational modelling with agent-based simulations to unpack the scale of the challenge humans face when trying to work out and factor in the reliability of their sources. In particular, it is shown how and why this task admits of no easy solution in the context of wider communication networks, and how this will affect the accuracy of our beliefs. The implications of this for the shift in the size and topology of our communication networks through the uncontrolled rise of social media are discussed.