201–210 of 342 posts
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I'm gonna need a massive citation here. > This isn't conjecture. I've seen the base files. Until you share, it's conjecture.
http://themonkeycage.org/2009/12/three_myths_about_political...
> Independent white men are generally Republican voters
?
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This has me deeply, deeply concerned. The election is one thing, but what happens if/when elected officials start screwing with something like Social Security, resulting in a generation of people who had their tax dollars deferred, but saw no benefit when they retired? In a post-fact world, I'm not convinced that the people will take action against such a thing.
The fact that "post-fact world" is even a thing is frightening.
With communication enabling faster communication with greater reach, there might be more noise, but is it worse in terms of percentage of communication?
I have interacted with several people on Facebook who rely on fake news sources. I pointed out fake news articles several times on one person's Facebook page. She agreed the articles were not true. However, she added "I don't have time to figure out if they're true. People can read your comments." I asked her what she thought of the fact that this particular article, which was blatantly false, was shared 16,000 times…
There was a paper published about how being presented with disconfirming evidence causes people to double down on their belief in a lie if it has an emotional connection with them.
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We don't really have an independent press anymore, and blog-sphere can be trivially gamed by interested and powerful actors. Have we as a civilization ever witnessed such a pervasive disinformation culture? I forget who said this, possibly a character in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but the idea was that when a population perceives that the social order is unfair (due to bad faith power actors) the genera…
When I put on my rose-colored glasses and look back at the past (1950s??) it seems that lying was very much looked down upon. Not so much any more. Seems like it's 'anything goes that you can get away with'. Is this because we're not teaching ethics in school? Decline in churches? Apathy from feeling helpless?
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You assume people ever cared about facts. People are more emotional than they are rational when it comes to things that are outside of their control. While someone might be perfectly rational and logical in their life (e.g. they pay their taxes, they go to work, they make smart choices in their day to day lives), when it comes to things that are outside of our control (politics, economy, death, etc). We have always b…
Feelings don't care about your facts. It's actually amazing that a breed of primates made it this far when you consider how irrational we really are with regard to so many things: who we cede power to, how we judge truth and falsity, etc.
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There was a paper published about how being presented with disconfirming evidence causes people to double down on their belief in a lie if it has an emotional connection with them.
It would be good to see if that study can be replicated.
http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07...
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> California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter. And at the same time votes from Democrats in California would also matter more. I'd assume a number of people who'd vote Democrat in CA don't vote because they know the Democrats won't lose anyway.
Maybe. My point isn't partisan, but more along the lines of "you don't know how this will play out." I'm all for a popular vote, but I don't think you're going to see a swing to the left necessarily.
I have interacted with several people on Facebook who rely on fake news sources. I pointed out fake news articles several times on one person's Facebook page. She agreed the articles were not true. However, she added "I don't have time to figure out if they're true. People can read your comments." I asked her what she thought of the fact that this particular article, which was blatantly false, was shared 16,000 times…
It's not just on Facebook. I have a close family member who was genuinely excited by Assange insinuating Clinton's camp murdered a DNC staffer (without offering any proof to that effect), simply because it would lower her chances of winning.
This is not to say that the opinion landscape in other decades didn't have problems; but they were somewhat different in nature.
I have interacted with several people on Facebook who rely on fake news sources. I pointed out fake news articles several times on one person's Facebook page. She agreed the articles were not true. However, she added "I don't have time to figure out if they're true. People can read your comments." I asked her what she thought of the fact that this particular article, which was blatantly false, was shared 16,000 times…
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I honestly think it's impossible to find truly unbiased news sources. That being said, at least most trusted biased sources still root their information in facts and have journalistic integrity. I'm not going to throw out NYT, WP, NPR, Vox, WSJ, National Review, etc. just because they lean in particular directions. If anything, I'd rather have news sources that are widely known to lean a certain side, because then I…
Maybe Al Jazeera