The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free • Hacker News Board

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#201

Post by lootsauce » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

sandoooo wrote: post #131

Dotnaught wrote: post #124

The linked article concludes: "Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal." Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.

I am in wholehearted agreement on a tax on lies so long as I get to decide which articles are lies.

Again why is THIS downvoted? Am I taking crazy pills or are downvotes completely meaningless?

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#202

Post by Falling3 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #188

Falling3 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments, scientists, and experts have also been proven to be wrong and to have lied in the past.

And how have we discovered the incorrect and dishonest claims? Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results. Also, I take issue with the attempt to conflate people who are incorrect with people who are dishonest. There is nothing wrong with being wrong. Being wrong is th…

>Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.

The GP's post didn't say trust science or trust data. It said trust scientists. I'm taking issue with the desire to put faith in individuals.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#203

Post by afpx » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:43 PM UTC

andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

I've been looking for an alternative to the NYT that has as good or better writing and reporting. Do you have any suggestions?

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#204

Post by arp242 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #166

awinder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway. We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced d…

1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents? That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming…

It's more than just whether or not the events are true; I'll assume they are, but the commentary of "protests and riots are [..] an attempt to dismantle all of Western Civilization and upend centuries of tradition and freedom of religion" and "flag burning at the antifa/BLM gathering" most certainly is not. The problem with that last one, to be clear, is that it's trying to associate some alleged terror organisation with a civil right protest.

This entire thing fits in a pattern of poisoning the well and conflation of unrelated things on this topic. Is it strictly speaking a "lie"? Probably not, but it's also most certainly not an article intended to promote a deeper understanding of events – quite the opposite.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#205

Post by googthrowaway42 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

jhardy54 wrote: post #191

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus). At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself, you are ultimately dependent on some network of trust to inform you of the truth or falsity of something. And even then "true" and "f…

You're in for a surprise when you discover Fox News.

If you're talking about people like Chris Wallace, then I agree with your point. People like him are very much an example of The Cathedral but on the conservative side. Even stuff like The Five is pretty middle brow and establishmentarian but they aren't the vanguards of mainstream conservatism like Maddow and Joy Reid and others are for mainstream liberalism.

Steve Bannon and his movement are more representative of mainstream conservatism. Even someone Tucker Carlson used to be very much like Chris Wallace. The reason why his program is so popular now is because he's shifted radically away from his establishmentarian position towards Steve Bannon's position.

Personally I don't watch Fox News because of how low to middle brow and Cathedral-like it is.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#206

Post by busterarm » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #192

andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

That's 7 years ago? I don't know anything about that entire story so I can't comment specifically, but the NYT publishes about 150 articles a day, so there are bound to be some stinkers over the years. It's not great, but dismissing an entire publication over it doesn't strike me as fair.

The NYT used to have industry-leading editorial standards.

Just a week or two ago in their reporting on the UFO story, they initially reported it in a "ZOMG ALIENS ARE REAL!" way, which is the most clickbaity thing they could have done...and then silently published a correction after they got the bump in views.

The NYT is practically indistinguishable from (modern) BuzzFeed.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#207

Post by fabbari » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

  Just out of completeness you could have added the actual response to Tesla's comments:

https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-...

  To say the least: it's not as clear cut as you make it to be. My personal opinion - for what is worth it - is that between Musk and a journalist of the NYT I would still trust the journalist more. But I am naive that way.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#208

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:46 PM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #164

shadowgovt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are biased, but if the facts are accurate, that's irrelevant. A trustworthy organization doing fact checking on one side of the aisle while ignoring inaccuracies from the other side is preferable to no fact-checking at all. Question is: where is Republican Snopes? It's a free information market; why is nobody doing it?

There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus). At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself, you are ultimately dependent on some network of trust to inform you of the truth or falsity of something. And even then "true" and "f…

> There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus).

Conservatives have always done sense making via institutional consensus, even moreso than post-enlightenment liberals, though the institutions that they tend to appeal to are those explicitly devoted to their ideological world view (whether it's the organs of a particular Church, or economists of the Austrian School) and not so much those even superficially devoted to objective exploration of facts, even when approaching questions that are, at least on the surface, about objectives facts (what is) rather than ideology (what should be).

> Most people are Liberal (in the American sense)

No, they aren't, unless you are conflating multiple different and incompatible American senses of “Liberal” and thus covering the entire range from the moderate right to the far left.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#209

Post by na85 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

dsign wrote: post #118

That's why I buy my "news" at Amazon, as e-books on the topics I'm interested, since for 99.9999999999% of the things happening in the world, nobody really cares about how many months they will have to wait for my opinion.

If you choose to abstain from current events then you assume responsibility for the outcome. Functioning democratic societies require active, engaged citizenry.

Passive, disengaged voters are what creates the conditions for Donald Trump to arise.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#210

Post by hypersoar » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #75

> Now, I am sure there will be those who argue that any universal knowledge access system of this kind will inhibit the creation of new work by reducing the rewards people get. But let us note a few facts: first, dead people cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all. The gatekeepers to intellectual products made by t…

The typical copyright term in the US is life of the creator + 70 years. Are potential revenues a hundred years from now really figuring all that much into the price of copyrighted work sold today?