641–650 of 1001 posts
I unsubscribed from the NYT after the Tom Cotton editorial. That's when it became clear to me that their ethics were driven by a need to drive traffic to their site and I wanted no part in it. Stuff like this just reaffirms my decision. Good riddance.
Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get.
Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience." [0]
The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
[0] https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/
Similar 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.
Reading 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…
I was just thinking about this now after reading attacks on Yann Lecun on twitter. He's a prominent AI figure (head of facebook research and turing award recipient). My interpretation - he was saying that bias in AI is mostly a problem of data. He didn't say there's no bias or that you can't solve bias with modeling. Just that the model itself isn't what causing the bias. One woman researcher started attacking him an…
I 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…
Had a nice conversation and then the story came out. He used 2 sentences from a 30 minute conversation to insert out of context in a piece totally unrelated to what we were talking about.
I’ve been on guard ever since.
I was a journalist for 20 years working in the B2B IT magazine sector in the UK. We took what we did seriously, strove for accuracy and took pride in informative reporting. There are lots of journalists like this, so I am sad to see how many people are dismissive of the work. I can understand the anger at the NYT journalist's stance here, but I suppose I would say that we only have the blog author's view at the momen…
As citizens, we should encourage journalism as a profession and value it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say this forum is exactly this. How often have I self censored because I just don't want the downvotes?
Why do you care about invisible internet points? Create an alt-account and use it in good faith. There is a chilling effect happening, and people need to be able to make unpopular arguments -- again, in good faith.
Reading 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…
Reading 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…
> Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves (...) which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those who are already powerful. Wow. I couldn't imagine that a person from the USA, of all places, could made so nonchalantly the equivalence smarts=power (unless there is a level of sarcasm on this essay that escapes me). There's such a lack of self-awareness in the american elite if…