Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995) • Hacker News Board

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#91

Post by pdpi » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

inflatableDodo wrote: post #85

pdpi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That description seems more appropriate for, say, Roald Dahl than it does for Pratchett. Pratchett was, for the most part, a comedy fantasy author. Most of his writing was appropriate for younger audiences (with exceptions, like Monstrous Regiment), but I wouldn’t call it children’s books. The fact that his Tiffany Aching books are specifically aimed at the Young Adult market suggests that he agreed.

Interesting comparison. Roald Dahl has in his oeuvre many stories that are far less intended for children than anything I have ever read by Pratchett. Pratchett keeps pretty much all of his stories accessable by at least teenagers. You cannot say the same for Dahl.

That’s fair, yes. I merely meant that Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolatw Factory, Esio Trot and many others are much more deliberately children’s books than just about anything by Pratchett

Dahl definitely has decidedly non-children appropriate work. Fancy some roast leg of lamb for dinner?

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#92

Post by inflatableDodo » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #65

inflatableDodo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not underestimate the level that Pratchett's comedy can operate at. It took me maybe 15 years for the penny to drop between first reading 'Unseen University' and connecting it to the Invisible College of Robert Boyle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College May I note that being brilliant does not stop someone from being a children's comedy novelist. If people are annoyed by this, perhaps they should th…

If adults enjoy his writing, in what sense are they children's novels? Speaking personally, they were all fairly over my head when I was a child. As an adult, they sparkle.

>If adults enjoy his writing, in what sense are they children's novels?

In the sense that novels by people like Joseph Conrad or J. G. Ballard are not. 'Empire of the Sun' was one one of my favourite novels as a young teenager, but it was hard work in comparison to Pratchett. The difference in intended audience was utterly clear.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#93

Post by vanderZwan » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #61

schnevets wrote: post #26

Fake news has always existed, and society builds up an immunity whenever it evolves into a new medium. I don't see the illegitimate Wordpress-based sites that peddle lies as any different than the National Enquirer-esque print tabloids or radio conspiracy theorists of yesteryear. Folks who didn't grow up with the internet may have trouble telling the difference, and even Millennials constantly fall for biased social…

Do you have evidence that historical forms of fake news and propaganda became less effective over time?

I don't have evidence either way, but one would expect that looking at the history surrounding the introduction of the printing press, the introduction of newspapers, of radio, and television would be a good starting point.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#94

Post by blancheneige » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #90

blancheneige wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the past only the church and royalty had the power to spread (fake) news. How so? Do you have an example in mind? I can think of a lot of fake news or misleading propaganda deliberately disseminated by seditious and revolutionary groups during the French and American revolutions.

The church and royalty had power to arbitrarily execute those that spoke out against them. Inquisition against heretics is one example.

You're stretching the definition of fake news to encompass instances that would otherwise not fit. Parent also states that only the church and the royalty had such power. If we are going to extend the definition of fake news to include defamation and false accusations, then the church hardly had a monopoly on the matter since they often responded to such allegations when spread by the commoners.

The overwhelming majority of such cases started as tips or accusations of indulging in superstition (at best) or poisoning and murder (at worst). If false, they would in fact be a prime example of fake news spread by the lower class. The case against Galileo or other re-interpretations of the Bible are outliers if you read actual trial and testimonies.

Therefore I re-iterate my question: what concrete example(s) support OP's assertion regarding this exclusive power of fake news dissemination?

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#95

Post by krapp » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

astazangasta wrote: post #73

coldtea wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along with everything else. Contrary to the claim that the internet legitimized it, it made us more aware of how common it is, delegitimizing all news sources in the way that multiple clocks delegitimize clocks. It's also that those in power would love it for their opinions to be the "authoritative" ones and only ones permitted to be heard. Same…

Fake news is neither about the availability of multiple perspectives, which have been around for millenia, nor about the power of the Internet, which has been around for decades, nor about misrepresentations of fact, which have been instrumental to every war the US has prosecuted in the post-WW2 period. The term "fake news" appeared, along with an obsessive need to "fact check" and censor, following the election of T…

It's funny because you're literally just parroting Trump campaign and Republican establishment propaganda.

The term "fake news" did not appear after Trump's election[0], nor was it created by "liberal capitalists and Washington," nor did any of the stories deemed fake news (ie, Pizzagate, Hillary Clinton's kill count, Hillary Clinton having some neurological disorder) represent any sort of hidden truths slipping through the grip of the establishment.

"Fake news" always meant exactly what it indicated - false news items being presented as truth - until Trump and his supporters co-opted the term and rebranded it into something exclusively invented by his enemies to discredit him.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#96

Post by Retra » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #63

theoh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are exaggerating the expertise of both men. Gates was successful, but that doesn't mean he had rock-solid knowledge of all aspects of business and technology. Pratchett wrote humorous fiction, but that doesn't make him an expert on sociology. Pratchett's comment didn't require a lot of insight to come up with—it's just the (essentially reactionary) observation that publishing on the internet is a free-for…

And I think you're being a little unfair to Terry. Sure, he wrote humorous fiction, but his grasp of human behavior is the source of much of the observational humor of his books. They are, essentially, spoofs of society.

You assume his understanding of society is accurate because it is popular? Or because he is popular? You can just as well assume Bill Gates understands society for exactly the same reasons. (Gate's business results are not even a spoof of reality.)

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#97

Post by newsgremlin » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

blancheneige wrote: post #84

imtringued wrote: post #45

Fake news has always existed. The only difference between today and hundreds of years ago is who had the most reach. Back in the past only the church and royalty had the power to spread (fake) news. Nowadays anyone can go on social media and do the same.

> Back in the past only the church and royalty had the power to spread (fake) news. How so? Do you have an example in mind? I can think of a lot of fake news or misleading propaganda deliberately disseminated by seditious and revolutionary groups during the French and American revolutions.

The church and royalty were almost always intertwined, power invested by god into the crown for divine legitimacy and thus has the power to decide what is right and wrong. The clergy also had the skills and resources to read and write, something we take for granted these days, thus control information spread at the communion.

The thing about fake news is that it's only fake when proven to be so.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#98

Post by shadofx » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

gopher2 wrote: post #86

Fake news is a pendulum. Now we have it, we start to know what it is, we start to understand how it's created and distributed. Things can start swinging the other way. But this takes time. If you really wanted to end fake news and had unlimited time and money, a great way to do it would be to publish as much completely fake news as possible, so that people figure out that they need to use reputable, trusted sources,…

Painful experiences that are the direct result of believing fake news simply gets misattributed to something totally irrelevant after consuming more fake news. People don't like admitting that they're gullible.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#99

Post by afandian » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #64

afandian wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the clock show today's date as 30th May 2019 or 24 Ramadan 1440?

I'm not sure what line of reasoning you're following here, other than that time is socially constructed?

Yeah, basically that. I was responding to:

> But clocks at least can be made quite accurate. I'm not at all sure that's true of news sources.

Time isn't as absolute as everyone would like to think. At many levels, from relativity through to measurement through to systems of representation through to cultural interpretations. And even if much of the western world has converged on SI, Gregorian etc, there are still big differing views.

I have a feeling that, whilst it's tempting to think that there are any absolutes in the universe, there are none. With facts, like the time, you have to pick what level you're comfortable calling a baseline.

So maybe 'time' and 'facts' are closer than the GP suggests.

A vaue line of reasoning, for sure.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#100

Post by dmfdmf » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

orpheline wrote: post #36

inflatableDodo wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett - > 'OK, lets say I call myself the Institute for Something-or-other and I decide to promote a spurious treatise saying the Jews were entirely responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust didn't happen. And it goes out there on the internet and is available on the same terms as any piece of historical research that has undergone peer review and so on. There's a kind of parity of esteem of in…

I'm gonna play optimist and note Gates' "not for long" in his response. I think we're still early days in fake news, and I think society has been here before: broadsheets, polemics, and a lack of trust in news sources in the 19th century ultimately drove improvements in the 20th. Now in the 21st that's been destabilized; we'll ultimately craft mechanisms to winnow out the chaff, but it's a reactive process: the probl…

This is exactly right. We are (still) in the midst of one of the greatest social revolutions since the invention of the printing press. The invention of the internet has changed the assumptions behind sources of reliable news, funding journalism and control of the political agenda. It is an open question how this revolution will play out but it is clear that the major newspapers such as NYT, WashPo, WSJ, etc. cannot dominate the social narrative as they did in the past which is one reason why everything seems so divisive and scary today. The current uncertainty is not sustainable, so it won't be sustained. But what will take its place is still not clear and the fading influence (and mistrust) of what used to be reliable news sources is all part of the process.

For those interested in this viewpoint I highly recommend reading Clay Shirky's excellent article from 2009 "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable"[1].

[1] http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking...