Thinking Fast and Slow About Food Technology and Disinformation

I've written before about some of the challenges related to consumer and voter attitudes and perceptions in relation to food and technology. See the links at the end of the article below. But along the lines of all of these themes I find a common thread in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow:

"emotional attitude drives beliefs about benefits and risks and dominates conclusions over arguments."

Bad arguments and misleading intuition are driven by a number of biases mentioned in the book. One of these biases is the 'affect heuristic' which "simplifies our lives by creating a world that is much tidier than reality. Good technologies have few costs in our imaginary world we inhabit, bad technologies have no benefits, and all decisions are easy. In the real world, of course we often face painful tradeoffs between costs and benefits."

Below are a few examples we often see in food and technology related discussions:

Good Technology: Impossible Burger/Tesla

Bad Technology: Biotechnology/Vaccines/Antibiotics/Hormones

Easy Decisions: Ban Glyphosate/Naturopathy

Additionally:

"System 1 is able produce quick answers to difficult questions by substitution, creating coherence where there is none....The question that is answered is not the one that was intended, but the answer is produced quickly and may be sufficiently plausible to pass the lax and lenient review of system 2"

There definitely seems to be a coherent story among consumers (and voters/politicians) about how so called 'good technologies' must be sustainable and virtuous while modern 'industrialized' technologies and must be destructive, risky and harmful. Bad. Further, coherence and tidyness implies those that are advocating a different story with any strong or weak connection to the companies producing and marketing these technologies must be biased and non-credible sources regardless of their expertise or what evidence is found in the scientific literature.

It is very difficult to battle the 'coherence' and 'tidyness' of the stories and perceptions that is formed in the minds of consumers, politicians, and critics of food technology. This is definitely an area where some food marketers and the 'free from' approach to labeling seems to be most damaging (and profitable?).

In their paper "Monetizing disinformation in the attention economy: The case of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)" Ryan, Schaul, Butner and Swarthout provide an in depth background on the attention economy, disinformation, the role of the media and marketing as well as socioeconomic impacts. They articulate how how rent seekers and special interests are able to use disinformation in a way to create and economize on misleading but coherent stories with externalities impacting business, public policy, technology adoption, and health. These costs, when quantified can be substantial and should not be ignored:

"Less visible costs are diminished confidence in science, and the loss of important innovations and foregone innovation capacities"

See also:

Rational Irrationality and Satter's Hierarchy of Food Needs

A 'free-from' Nash Equilibrium Food Labeling Strategy

Polarized Beliefs on Controversial Science Topics

Voter Preferences, the Median Voter Theorem, and Systematic Policy Bias

Flawed Studies in Nutrition Call for A Credibility Revolution

Monoculture vs. the Convergence of Big Data and Genomics