CPL Book Club: "Foolproof" by Sander van der Linden

Event Topic:
May's book is America in Retreat by Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity by Sander van der Linden.

Registering for the Online Event:
This is a FREE event; however, you will need to register for it. Go to the following Classy link & fill out the registration form:
https://www.classy.org/event/book-club-foolproof-why-misinformation-infects-our-minds-and-how-to-build-immunity/e684903/register/new/select-tickets

Check your email for the confirmation message with the Zoom link - if you don't see it, check your "Junk" folder.

NOTE: Please purchase the book and try to read it (or at least skim it) prior to attending the book club event, so you can participate in the discussion. To get a general sense of the ideas of this month's author, Sander van der Linden, you can check out his recent appearance on the Easy Prey Podcast.

LOGGING IN: Please log in at the beginning of the meeting – once we are in breakout rooms and the conversations have started, the meeting doors close to new arrivals. The breakout rooms open (and the doors close) approximately 15 minutes after the hour.

About this Event:
Dr. Sander van der Linden is a professor of Social Psychology and Society and the Director of Cambridge Social Decision Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He is ranked among the top 1% of highly cited social scientists worldwide and has published over 150 research papers. He is considered one of the world’s leading experts on misinformation.

In Foolproof, Sander van der Linden lays out a crucial new paradigm for understanding and defending ourselves against the worldwide infodemic. With remarkable clarity, he explains why our brains are so vulnerable to misinformation, how it spreads across social networks, and what we can do to protect ourselves and others. Like a virus, misinformation infects our minds, exploiting shortcuts in how we see and process information to alter our beliefs, modify our memories, and replicate at astonishing rates. Once the virus takes hold, it’s very hard to cure. Strategies like fact-checking and debunking can leave a falsehood still festering or, at worst, even strengthen its hold.

But we aren’t helpless. As van der Linden shows based on award-winning original research, we can cultivate immunity through the innovative science of “prebunking”: inoculating people against false information by preemptively exposing them to a weakened dose, thus empowering them to identify and fend off its manipulative tactics. Deconstructing the characteristic techniques of conspiracies and misinformation, van der Linden gives readers practical tools to defend themselves and others against nefarious persuasion―whether at scale or around their own dinner table.

About the Event Host:
Crossing Party Lines (CPL) began in 2016 with two groups starting independently of one another — on opposite coasts of the United States. Coincidentally, both founders chose the same name “Crossing Party Lines.” Their shared vision led them to create a volunteer platform to unite Americans through warm and engaging conversations.

Lisa Swallow, an author and educator living in Portland, Oregon, was inspired by political conversations with a cousin to design simple process for engaging in respectful conversations about politics of the day. Kareem Abdelsadek, a management consultant living in New York City, was driven by a sense of civic duty to apply his skills to uniting America through conversations among people from all walks of life. Prompted by a time of unprecedented political polarization, these two visionaries, their energetic team of volunteers, and over 3,000 CPLs members are uniting America one conversation at a time.

To learn more about CPL, go to https://crossingpartylines.com/about-crossing-party-lines/