Has the post been changed? I remember it containing some quotes from the journalist in question.
I Am Deleting the Blog
401–410 of 1001 posts
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was bad journalism. Would you also stop trusting all doctors after meeting a bad one?
Doctors are heavily regulated. Journalists aren't. I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous. Professional journalism has a long, long track record of opposing any consequences to their actions whatsoever. I love the idea of professional journalists.…
>I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous.
Unfortunately expectations do not match reality. 10% of deaths are due to medical errors [0]. Then look at how the rest of the medical establishment are failing us. CDC is prohibited from naming the hospitals that have this error. The only thing they report on is trends [1]. If you have a hospital in your neighborhood, can you find out anything about it? From the medical error rate, to the spread of Candida Auris[2] is there any dangerous news about your local hospital/healthcare system that is public?
[0]: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su... [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db118.htm [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-can...
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#403I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…
That was bad journalism. Would you also stop trusting all doctors after meeting a bad one?
If you buy a frozen pizza and it tastes terrible, should you continue buying and eating them for a week until you have enough data points?
If a single sample of corn in a shipment is contaminated with aflatoxin should you keep testing it and trying to find the good corn?
If a program corrupts your data on first use should you keep trying it on different data before rejecting it?
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#404I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…
May as well ask here, I pretty much only read the weekly Economist to get my news at this point. I think I have their slight biases dialed in at this point. Anyone want to make a case for a different primary news source/argue that The Economist is bad? For context, I like The Economist because it's mostly unemotional, information-dense, and the magazine comes in a single weekly thing to read.
The Economist is the rare case of a news source that's not too bad, at least at present. We can't let ourselves become complacent, however - just see what's happening to the NYT.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#405It doesn't take too much imagination to see how easy it would be to write a hit piece. Scott writes eloquently and in depth, but the news is not about either of those things. Scott has written a few times about problematic issues which have surfaced in recent months and it would be very easy to write "some people say that Scott is ${label}" with just a bit of superficial quotes. Today's climate of online mob justice…
The anti-out-of-context-quote-hit-piece-insurance that Sam Harris went to in his recent podcast on police violence etc was insane. I fully understand why, he's been burned by the Twitter mob before, but it's eye-opening to the media-induced reasonable paranoia some "public" people will go through when there's basically three paragraphs of "I'm not saying this is the one and only truth, I believe in equality, justice.…
it has the feel of the religious witch hunt because that is exactly what is has become. Many of these groups no longer look at data or science or any empirical evidence for the basis of their positions or policy, it is pure emotional dogma at this point. They are non-theistic religions
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it be worthwhile to create an index where people that are experts in something could vouch for the journalists that seem to know what they're talking about? E.g. I can verify that on the information security topic Joseph Cox from Motherboard is constantly on topic, but that information is useless to me personally, because by the time Vice publishes something it's already old news for people in the industry (or…
>If we wait till we're ready, we'll never get started. —Eleanor Roosevelt Carl Zimmer, New York Times (science); Dennis Overbye, New York Times (physics, astronomy); Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post (technology); Nicole Nguyen, Wall Street Journal (technology); Dexter Filkins, New Yorker (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan); Ben Smith, New York Times [ex-BuzzFeed] (media); Bob Woodward
This simply moves the problem up one level. Who is going to vouch for your credibility in vouching for these journalists?
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#407It's specifically telling that they would choose to do this with Scott Alexander and not another psychiatrist prior to this point: the NYT has in the last few weeks been overcome from the inside by a new moral zealotry, and Scott makes a prime, juicy target for the moral assaults that will gain it plaudits among other zealots.
This will make the backroom media Slack quite pleased, I'm sure, especially if the article attempts to tie him back to white supremacy. It'll be seen as a good score, and might appease the mob for a short time. But they'll be back again for fresh blood soon enough.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#408Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next article completely forgetting how bad the reporting actually is - there is no reason to assume they do a better job on topics that one is not an expert in! I think this bias had a name but I can't remember it.
Dated a journalist who would ask me to explain tech things. Aghast, I asked if this was how she wrote about everything. It was. She's now a management consultant which explains alot.
Isn't it better that she's asking you rather than making up things?
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#409I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…
The Economist is actually pretty good. They have their own political bias (see at wikipedia entry) but both, their news and technology reporting is top notch.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#410Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those…
Both of those are right on point, and match my observations within my own circles. For me stallmans cancellation was a big turning point. I'm using a pseudonym everywhere now. I can't risk someone pulling up a comment or post years from now and using it to ruin my reputation or career, simply because i may have voiced an unpopular or controversial opinion that did not age well.
It seems, too, that making jokes is very risky. With text online it's just far too easy to take something out of context and misrepresent or weaponize a person's words. I have had this happen to me personally and it's unbelievably frustrating.
People aren't allowed to make mistakes, it seems. It is just too fraught, and even sincerity and honesty are not safe.