Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Would you be surprised if, after allowing rattlesnakes into your home, you were bitten? How stupid are we?

To the Editor:

Re “Google and Facebook Use Ad Policies to Take Aim at Fake News Sites” (Business Day, Nov. 15):

It’s easy to point to a Google or a Facebook algorithm for the rise of fake news, but it’s wholly insufficient. The misinformation spread through the echo chamber of the web and social media is the symptom—not the source—of a much deeper and systemic problem.

The problem is that we aren’t ever taught how to think clearly. Most people are unaware of our hard-wired cognitive biases. We aren’t trained how to spot logical fallacies in our own arguments and the arguments of others. It takes time and persistence to overcome these obstacles, and most people just don’t have the luxury or the interest to put in the effort.

If we want a better democracy with more informed citizens, then we need to find a better way to provide people with the cognitive tools needed to better detect misinformation and lies. It’s not a problem that can be solved with a new algorithm.

MARK BESSOUDO

Toronto

Note from KBJ: The main source of fake news these days is the New York Times.

Cobalt Blue (1992). Mesmerizing.

Here.

Here.

That a tyrant such as Fidel Castro flourished, while decent people suffer and die young, makes one hope that there is a just god.

Here is a recent blog post by philosopher John Pepple, who is always a joy to read.

To the Editor:

Gasping, I read this long, grim account of Fidel Castro’s life and of the anticolonial, socialist revolution he inspired and led. The article seemed to me to ridicule the Cuban revolution.

Mr. Castro is described as a “rabble-rouser” who “swaggered,” “a self-obsessive zealot,” “a tyrant”—not as a brilliant leader of a guerrilla struggle and then president of a tiny socialist republic with the highest literacy rate and best health care in the hemisphere, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida and under constant siege.

I am one who has for many years wished that Mr. Castro could have trusted the progress of the revolution enough to allow for open elections. Under constant attack from the United States—economically, militarily and through propaganda—it is clear why he thought the revolution had to be protected by the revolutionary party that led it.

One can condemn Cuba’s prosecutions of gays, and I do. And one would have hoped that Cuba hadn’t imported from the Soviets a system of surveillance that is still active today. Fidel Castro’s revolution has failed to provide liberty for each and every Cuban, but consider our contemporary surveillance situation and our political prisoners.

When sentenced to up to 15 years in prison by the Batista regime in 1953, Mr. Castro said, “History will absolve me.” All in all, it has.

JILL GODMILOW

New York

The writer, professor emerita in the Film, Television and Theater Department at the University of Notre Dame, is a documentary filmmaker.

Note from KBJ: Shorter Godmilow: "Fidel Castro was a tyrant and a homophobe, but at least his subjects were healthy and literate!" Query: What did Cubans have to read, and what's the point of being in good health if you lack liberty, opportunity, prosperity, and hope? Jill Godmilow should thank her lucky stars that she lived in the United States rather than in Castro's Cuba.

Stephen Moore nails it. Plutocracy has been replaced by democracy.

Pyramid (1978). Great song; great album; great band.