The Problem with Believing What We’re Told • Hacker News Board

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#41

Post by rayiner » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #27

The conclusion of this WSJ piece -- organ of the Murdoch disinformation empire, though generally the WSJ's news reportage continues to enjoy a reputation no longer afforded its opinion pages -- is that we need better media literacy. That is: it's a plea for a dodge of responsibility by media organisations themselves. My conclusion is the opposite: we need better reputational and accountability systems and institution…

You make some excellent points, but your dig at Murdoch undermines your point. The fact is that we live in an age of pervasive advocacy. Everyone has a side and everyone musters the best arguments for their side. It’s something we expect of lawyers—to make whatever arguments on behalf of their client that can be made within the threshold requirements of good faith and plausibility. But now we see it everywhere. News media, public interest organizations, academia, etc. It’s not just WSJ or Fox News, but the NYT, ACLU, EFF, etc. And people find that disconcerting. People don’t really expect when reading content from such organizations, that they’re being lawyered. But every time I read an ACLU blurb in my email and dig into the facts to see how much spin there was on the story, it makes me feel like when I was clerking first a judge and would see the amount of spin with which the trial record was portrayed in the briefs. Even when it comes to organizations I respect a lot (I rag on the ACLU, but I’m a member) it’s tiring. I feel like I’m engaged in a mental joust rather than being educated.

Part of this is, I think, the degree to which electronic media and modern society has allowed us to self-segregate. Increasingly, our communications are directed to people who already agree with us, which allows us to communicate in a code of canned talking points. Given the self-selection in media consumption, that applies to media organizations as well.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#42

Post by klingonopera » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

redmaverick wrote: post #18

Ted Bundy's mom Louise refused to believe her son was a murderer despite all evidence to the contrary. Her son admitted that he was the culprit and only that made her come out of her denial. In a lot of third world countries it is pretty common and even expected that the average Joe will vote for whomever appeals to their emotions. Every sin of the politician is forgotten and forgiven even if the said politician has…

...not just in third world countries, the G7 suffers from this too, regardless if you support Trump or Merkel.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#43

Post by klingonopera » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #35

It’s a rare parent that wants their children questioning what they’re told. It’s one of the reasons the Greeks killed Socrates. That’s the fundamental aspect of human nature that needs to somehow be changed. It’s not that hard to develop critical thinking skills — but parents don’t want it, corporations don’t want it, politicians don’t want it. Where is the constituency that is going to push for and pay for critical…

Add religious leaders to that list, too.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#44

Post by turk73 » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

I read all the comments on here. I think you're all barking up the wrong trees. You're missing the bigger point: There is no truth. There are no facts. Not in the way you think there are. Never have been, never will be.

The world you perceive is a lie told to you by your brain. Humans have studied these flaws for decades now and they are extremely good at exploiting the flaws in our physiology.

Once you internalize what I just said everything is much easier. Media will never be reformed and history will repeat itself it many twisted ways.

Man is imperfect, fallen, and his institutions will never be anything but the same way.

This is why humans invented gods--to have something perfect to aspire to. But it can never be that way. Never. Perhaps we can create spiritual machines that can achieve such perfection, but I doubt it because ultimately they came from us and our own imperfections.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#45

Post by popularwarfare » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

The real lie is the implied premise that if people only knew the 'the truth' it would somehow cause them to act in a certain way.

Which is categorically and empirically false. But I don't want to be too hard on them, they are journalists after all.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#46

Post by popularwarfare » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 11:01 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #28

dqpb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is an information theoretic explanation for this. The content of fake news tends to be more surprising than factual news. It is surprising because it is less likely. Generally speaking, the more unlikely a message is, the more information it carries. Thus, fake news appears to have higher information content then factual news to people unable to detect that it's fake.

Fake news isn't bound to the limits of truth. Fake news can be generated with far greater volume than truth. Fake news can be specifically engineered to appeal to various cognitive biases promoting virality. Truth serves reality. Falsehood can, and very often does, serve specific partisan interests who have a hand in promoting its spread. These are four powerful factors favouring falsehoods and their dissemination.

What you have to come to terms with is that there is not a single 'objective' truth but multiple often contradictory truths. Individual Perception and psychology in addition to cultural and social norms play a large role as well.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#47

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

popularwarfare wrote: post #46

dredmorbius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake news isn't bound to the limits of truth. Fake news can be generated with far greater volume than truth. Fake news can be specifically engineered to appeal to various cognitive biases promoting virality. Truth serves reality. Falsehood can, and very often does, serve specific partisan interests who have a hand in promoting its spread. These are four powerful factors favouring falsehoods and their dissemination.

What you have to come to terms with is that there is not a single 'objective' truth but multiple often contradictory truths. Individual Perception and psychology in addition to cultural and social norms play a large role as well.

I am very much at terms with that.

There are also deliberate actions, evicenced in documents and testimony, to obscure objective truths. There is a distinction between reasonable differences of opinion, and abject falsehoods.

The principle of anekāntavāda is of many sidedness. It is not of any sidedness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#48

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #41

dredmorbius wrote: post #27

The conclusion of this WSJ piece -- organ of the Murdoch disinformation empire, though generally the WSJ's news reportage continues to enjoy a reputation no longer afforded its opinion pages -- is that we need better media literacy. That is: it's a plea for a dodge of responsibility by media organisations themselves. My conclusion is the opposite: we need better reputational and accountability systems and institution…

You make some excellent points, but your dig at Murdoch undermines your point. The fact is that we live in an age of pervasive advocacy. Everyone has a side and everyone musters the best arguments for their side. It’s something we expect of lawyers—to make whatever arguments on behalf of their client that can be made within the threshold requirements of good faith and plausibility. But now we see it everywhere. News…

Some advocate.

Some advocate, knowingly, willingly, and with great compensation, for the Devil.

Which would you do?

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#49

Post by popularwarfare » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #39

50656E6973 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once you start looking for such patterns, they become painfully apparent. Wouldn't it be great if we could help train others to be able to do that too?

It's taken me most of five decades to pick up the skill. That bodes poorly for generalised skillsets. There's a generalised rebuttal to calls for greater intelligence / education as a solution to problems: All the children aren't above average. And if your solution to some circumstance is to make them so, or pretend that they are, you are going to be having a bad time. I'm not against education. I'm against having it…

I dont know man, taking almost 50 years to learn basic rhetoric skills that should have been taught to you during high school english seems like a knockdown argument in favor of education.

Re: The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

#50

Post by mindslight » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #27

The conclusion of this WSJ piece -- organ of the Murdoch disinformation empire, though generally the WSJ's news reportage continues to enjoy a reputation no longer afforded its opinion pages -- is that we need better media literacy. That is: it's a plea for a dodge of responsibility by media organisations themselves. My conclusion is the opposite: we need better reputational and accountability systems and institution…

> Some recent tools -- Bitcoin comes to mind -- are expressly founded on removing the role of trust within sectors of activity. This is a bad idea for multiple reasons, two of the principle ones being that trust itself has an extreme function in improving efficiency, and that its removal proves instantly and deeply toxic socially and institutionally.

This analysis reverses the causality. The point of privacy systems isn't to remove trust, but rather to be able to operate in an environment in which trust has been removed.

Bitcoin arose from a lack of trust in the Federal Reserve, and even deeper, a lack of trust in the rule of law from what happened to E-gold and Liberty Reserve. We seek private communication tools due to a lack of trust in network operators and in governments - a paranoia that is continually rejustified by ongoing domestic spying and commercial deep packet inspection.

People that operated by "trust but verify" were able to see this crisis coming down the road as, unfortunately, many of our society's institutions have shirked their duty to be verifiable. And as public trust has waned, these institutions have simply doubled down on their authority rather than reforming themselves to be beyond reproach.