Abstract: "This thesis examines how the tendency to fall for – and spread – misinformation is related to, first and foremost, (1) epistemic beliefs about the nature of truth (particularly belief in truth relativism) and (2) political identity (are leftists and rightists (un)-equally as receptive to misinformation?), but also (3) politically motivated reasoning (the tendency to interpret information in ways that favor one’s ideological preferences) and (4) analytical thinking (whether someone tends to be reflective as opposed jump to conclusions). In the three papers of this thesis, we examined the relation between these predictors and the tendency to fall for and/or spread misinformation within one or more of the following four categories: conspiracy theories, pseudo-profound bullshit (nonsensical sentences), science misinformation, and logical fallacies.

In Paper I, we investigated individuals’ ability to evaluate political arguments and found that the tendency to fall for logical fallacies, and the occurrence of politically motivated reasoning in terms of belief bias (judging a logically invalid argument as valid because of the believability or familiarity of its conclusion), were similarly distributed across the left-right spectrum. Analytical thinking overall predicted better ability to evaluate logical fallacies among both leftists and rightists, and seemed to help at least rightists avoid belief bias. In Paper II, we created a measure of belief in truth relativism and disentangled two distinct forms of belief in truth relativism: belief in subjectivist truth relativism (truth is relative to subjective experience) and belief in cultural truth relativism (truth is relative to cultural context). Belief in subjectivist truth relativism predicted receptivity to both pseudo-profound bullshit and conspiracy theories. Rightists were more likely (than leftists) to believe in conspiracy theories. In Paper III, we examined if belief in subjectivist truth relativism causes the tendency to fall for and spread misinformation. In an experiment, we attempted to activate (1) subjectivist and (2) realist beliefs about truth (in belief in truth realism, a statement is true only if it accurately describes reality which exists independently of human perspective) but could not draw any conclusions from its null results as the belief activation failed. However, belief in subjectivist truth relativism did predict receptivity to both pseudo-profound bullshit and conspiracy theories, and rightists were more likely (than leftists) to believe in conspiracy theories. The tendency to spread science misinformation was positively associated with belief in subjectivist truth relativism and rightist ideology, while it was negatively associated with belief in truth realism."

PhysOrg article: https://phys.org/news/2025-12-political-greater-falling-cons...

Meyer notes after stating the first 6 rules: "Disclosure: these particular six qualities are part of the answer I got from ChatGPT to a request I made, and refined through a number of prompt iterations, to tell me what a good technical definition should look like. I think they are all good, and as can be expected from an LLM answer, they reflect widely held views (in the sources that ChatGPT consulted to build its answer); but they are all specific and can be deduced from the Basic Rule (which, of course, did not originate with any tool)."

"Results. A total of 62 studies were retained for analysis following title, abstract, and full text screening. Race/ethnicity (n = 46/62) and age (n = 42/62) were the most frequently mentioned individual risk factors. Across the 62 studies reviewed, alcohol consumption was consistently identified as a risk factor for several types of cancer, including breast (n = 23/62), colorectal (n = 13/62), and liver (n = 10/62), among others. Other alcohol-associated comorbidities reported include obesity (n = 8/62), alcoholic liver disease (n = 5/62), and diabetes (n = 4/62).

Conclusion. Alcohol intake, particularly at higher frequency or greater quantity, was consistently associated with elevated risk for multiple cancers, most notably colorectal, breast, and liver. Dose-response relationships were a common finding, underscoring that risk is not limited to heavy or chronic use."

Oriignal article: "The equity implications of pecuniary externalities on an electric grid" - https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/12/pgaf356/8373...