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Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

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Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#161

Post by marcosdumay »

jariel wrote: post #135
minimuffins wrote: post #117

The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know why I even do it. By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of corporations…

Handy tip: to get the politics of a nation, read the news on it by some paper outside the nation. So reading the BBC for US news gives you something fairly readable.

What I see is that foreign news have no idea of what is happening in my country, they all just repeat some superficial and normally wrong pieces.

At the same time, domestic media is all lying through their teeth.

With some work one can disecate the news, separate what can't possibly be lies (because it would lead to problems), and reassembly something into an overall picture. (Who has the time for all this?) But one can never know what is being omitted, either intentionally or by incompetency.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#162

Post by neonate »

minimuffins wrote: post #117

The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know why I even do it. By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of corporations…

What if it was always impossible, and we're just now finally realizing it? In that case this may be a positive development. But we're just at the beginning of learning how to adapt to it.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#164

Post by godzillabrennus »

minimuffins wrote: post #117

The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know why I even do it. By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of corporations…

Here is what goes on in a day:

1.) Bad things 2.) Good things 3.) Things that might be both bad and good

Thankfully we live in the safest period of human history. Thankfully many smart people want to focus their time on doing good things.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#165

Post by zo1 »

jariel wrote: post #135
minimuffins wrote: post #117

The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know why I even do it. By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of corporations…

Handy tip: to get the politics of a nation, read the news on it by some paper outside the nation. So reading the BBC for US news gives you something fairly readable.

Yeah but they'll skew it based on their political leanings, too. They're just a little less invested in the geographic details. But ideologically, they want to convince/captivate people to their point of view.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#166

Post by ardy42 »

acqq wrote: post #149
ardy42 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I propose the "Sinclair Effect" after "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." I think this is a fantastic comment, especially given the cavalcade of robotic quotations of that "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" passage that happen whenever the press comes up. One should definitely read the newspaper with a…

> I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a timely first rough draft of history. Only, it's not what "the news" are. One can reconstruct the history using "the news" as source material, but it's a grave error to think that "the news" are "a first draft of history." Try to find how the media covered the claimed "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq in 2003, and how they wrote many years later about th…

>> I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a timely first rough draft of history. First rough drafts are always going to have errors, but you'll be the last to know if you wait for those to be corrected before reading. If you keep up with the rough drafts, you'll see the corrections as the stories unfold.

> Only, it's not what "the news" are. One can reconstruct the history using "the news" as source material, but it's a grave error to think that "the news" are "a first draft of history."

> Try to find how the media covered the claimed "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq in 2003, and how they wrote many years later about the same events. What you believe to be a "first draft" was historically completely false. But it was at the time used as an excuse to start the war, which are both now verified historical facts -- both the fake "news" in the major media and the start of the war.

I don't really see how that contradicts the idea that the news is a rough first draft of history at all. First drafts have errors, and you've pointed out some errors. Similar things could even happen with established history (for instance a later discovery proving some document that the old history relied on was a forgery or some account unreliable, etc.). You shouldn't expect perfect accuracy with the news, and to criticize it for not being perfectly accurate is to misunderstand what it is.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#167

Post by liability »

altcognito wrote: post #160
liability wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Posts with catch phrases like "establishment media companies" are usually a red flag. That's pretty flimsy evidence to accuse somebody of wrongthink.

It's an ill defined phrase. I didn't accuse anyone of "wrongthink", whatever that means.

By 'wrongthink' I'm refering to the insinuation that people who use such a phrase might be suspected of being 'dangerous'. Dangerous as in "More dangerous are the people who would [...]"

Use of the phrase "establishment media companies" seems like poor evidence for accusing somebody of being dangerous. But perhaps I misread your comment and the remark about red flags had nothing to do with your previous remark about dangerous people?

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#168

Post by monkeynotes »

I don't understand how we as a society turn a blind eye to being surrounded by lies and misdirection. It's well known to be a folly and well documented that governments the world over abuse their position of first hand knowledge to redirect and re-cast truth, and manipulate public opinion in their favour[1][2].

Perhaps at my age I have come to see patterns and have come to understand that pretty much everything I don't have first hand experience of is likely to be distorted to a lesser or greater extent. This is not only true of news and public discourse, but also in my personal life. People naturally bend reality to fit their beliefs, world views, and often to just tell a good story.

I am sure many adults are aware of this, but we never really talk about it. Children are not educated about the nature of this problem. We are not taught to think about the nature of information we consume, and yet many of us know our lives are surrounded by lies and manipulators.

Manipulative advertising and government deception, both of which have reams of psychological research backing their strategies, dominate a majority of our lives and yet we don't educate each other as such.

I am very sad to come to realize that TV shaped my beliefs growing up, and it was mostly based on myths driven by advertising dollars. Obviously entertainment is not going away, and nor should it, but we should have discourse highlighting who drives the narrative. One of the few facts we can know is little of what we learn is truly verifiable - knowing that is hugely helpful and allows us to make better decisions about what we value in life.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-wh... [2] https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2008/f...

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#169

Post by throwawayhacka »

pessimizer wrote: post #125
blhack wrote: post #78

It's just so sad. The biggest one lately for me has been watching the riots which are happening all over the US. The really crazy thing is that all of these things are livestreamed usually by 10s of people in every city, who are standing a few feet from the people burning buildings and attacking people. You can virtually attend all of these things from your office. To watch buildings burning, people chanting that the…

Don't think that just because you're your own editor you can't be deceived by editing. You're feeding yourself with the material that you're seeking out. edit: just spend a day only looking up the millions peacefully marching, rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams. (Also, give me some information about the people you've seen attacking and burning private residences, because I don't know of a single example of…

Yes, the protests are 'mostly peaceful' and any violence is due to reactionaries.

Re: Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

#170

Post by krmmalik »

minimuffins wrote: post #117

The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating. I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know why I even do it. By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of corporations…

I've had a slow descent not getting away from reading the news over the last several years. It's been incredibly gradual, but further to your point about firsthand experiences from people I know personally, I have to admit that has been truly transformative. I've now made it a point to find any which way I can to find friends or make acquaintances in other countries and actively nurture a relationship with them in order to get a better picture of what's going on. It's been truly refreshing. That said, I'm still not sure what a technical, automated and scalable solution accessible to the masses for this would look like and if it could or would even work, but nonetheless, there's definitely something in this idea.
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