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Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#91

Post by mzemel »

monocle wrote: post #10

In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.

I think the difference is that we can choose not to buy products, but we can't choose a different government. So one stifles competition but the other stifles reform.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#93

Post by mturmon »

paradite wrote: post #71
mturmon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googling: [site:nytimes.com] [renegade] [province] turns up only things like: "Beijing has maintained that Taiwan is a renegade province..." which is perfectly factual. I do agree with your larger point that a lot of stories in Western media are uncritical of the shortcomings and risks of the Chinese political system.

That's interesting. Can you recommend me some pro-China Western media? I am having trouble finding one.

I should be more precise. I'm trying to say that much Western writing is not critical of the decisions the Chinese political system has made about how society is organized there, despite its costs for the country. (E.g., the fast building of roads, trains, and infrastructure; the responsiveness of its electronics industry -- these things have costs for the people of China, but their benefits are very unequally distributed.)

I didn't mean to suggest that there is widespread Western cheerleading for China's political system, especially recently as Xi Jinpeng has consolidated power. What I was trying to capture is Western willingness to overlook the costs.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#94

Post by tunesmith »

It's a cultural problem. There's always been these two styles of communication - one where you communicate to honestly express your views, and another where you communicate to put across an impression that is useful for your agenda. We're in an age now where the second style is making a huge comeback, from state-sponsored propaganda to social media trolling.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#95

Post by metaphorm »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #73
metaphorm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The question is, what is the truth? you won't learn this reading news articles online, and especially not from comment sections. the irony of the term "fake news" is that it creates the false notion that there was once such a thing as "real news". information channel manipulation is a very very very old tradition.

>the irony of the term "fake news" is that it creates the false notion that there was once such a thing as "real news". I'm friends with a journalist. He has opinions, slants, lenses, and even biases. However, he lives around here, and the stuff he publishes is based on events he has actually witnessed, live, in real-time. There is no equivalence between my friend the journalist (real news), and some teenager in Mace…

there is such a thing as reporting and investigation. very little of that survives the editorial process.

if I want to read some reporting, I'll have to go to a source that values it. i.e. not the NYTimes (or equivalent). The entire apparatus of the mass media has become thinly veiled editorial positioning, even in stories that are claimed as "news".

a recent example of this effect: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/01/17/another-followup-to-eco...

my point is that the work of actual investigators is no longer the primary interest of mass media, and it hasn't been for a long time.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#96

Post by fedups »

importantbrian wrote: post #55

This reminds me of the storyline from Newsroom where Neal tries to infiltrate the troll underground. The scary thing is how effective this kind of manipulation can be. I often check the comments on HN before reading the article to see if it's going to be worth my time. With sports or controversial news articles I love to jump to the comments to see what the debate is. I like to think of myself as a critical thinker,…

As you note, this level of self-awareness may not be sufficient, but is probably at least necessary for information sources to provide the kind of value we expect from them.

It's still encouraging to see, though.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#97

Post by stcredzero »

clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance.

Isn't health insurance a wealth disparity issue?

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#98

Post by stcredzero »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #56
analyst74 wrote: post #7

This is really scary, because I do read comments critically, and have seen those sections being flooded with nonsense, or convincing arguments being pushed without evidence. Heck, this even happens on HackerNews, which users are thoughtful hackers and which are secretly trying to push an agenda? Or is there even a line between those? Now some food for thought, does online anonymity ultimately help the powerful more t…

Pushing an agenda is one thing if the person is doing it in good faith, even if I think their ideas are bad or not supported by evidence. In all likelihood there are large scale information operations going on with world powers trying to subvert each other's populations. The really sinister thing is that we have paid, bad faith actors whose full time jobs are to spread misinformation and shape narratives online. Ther…

There is just no way you and I, amateurs commenting sporadically in our free time, have the resources to combat armies of paid trolls.

I think that there are armies of amateurs with tons of free time. However, these are largely manipulated by armies of paid trolls. What's worse, is that the manipulation involves the normalization of non-thinking conformism, social coercion, and hate-filled groupthink. This applies to both sides of the political spectrum.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#99

Post by vkou »

stcredzero wrote: post #97
clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. Isn't health insurance a wealth disparity issue?

It is, although the discussion of health insurance centers about various approaches to rearranging deckchairs (When, instead, the entire system should be torn up, and replaced with single player. It's not clear if even doing that will be enough to really save it.)

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#100

Post by anonyjoe »

pg's own latest post was quickly swept from the front page yesterday by a crew harping on a political analogy unfriendly to Trump.

And the top comment is from a 4 day old account that somehow gained 17 karma for the one post.

So yes, something seems to be broken.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414527

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