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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)

#181

Post by minimuffins »

aeternum wrote: post #173
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 think the best solution is to cast a wide net, gather information from as many viewpoints as possible, and then look for correlations to narrow down on the truth. The human brain is surprisingly good at this. The brain is constantly doing this with our various senses. None of those senses is perfect and they are fooled easily yet by examining the overlap we are able to create a surprisingly accurate picture of real…

> cast a wide net, gather information from as many viewpoints as possible,

I agree that's the best thing to do. It's a rational choice. I do it and recommend others do it.

But there's still this historical problem of divestment from traditional journalistic practices (going out into the world, gathering facts, interviewing people, observing -- it's expensive). Without that factual raw material it doesn't matter how diverse your set of sources is, your ability to know your own world is impoverished.

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

#182

Post by icelancer »

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…

>> The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in the world is really debilitating.

Is it? Why? Does it meaningfully change your life to know what's going on everywhere from the mundane to the impactful?

Our lives are lived in the present, locally. You interact with people in your community thousands of times more than people you read about thousands of miles away.

Be where your feet are.

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

#183

Post by TheGrim-888 »

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…

It's really disheartening. Until recently I lived in Capitol Hill, Seattle, 4 or 5 blocks away from CHAZ/CHOP. I saw with my own eyes what was happening. I saw with my own eyes buildings get set on fire multiple times within a block of my apartment. I saw with my own eyes the riots, looting, violence, nightly political shows of force. Just two days ago they were molotov cocktailing a police precinct. There's even video evidence of all of this.

Yet all I read about on mainstream news is how it's actually mostly peaceful. I see Facebook friends who live 2000 miles away from Seattle re-posting news articles about how there's nothing really going on in Seattle. But I've seen with my own eyes what's going on.

It's really approaching a 1984 level of situation, where we're expected to just believe whatever we're told, even if we obviously see the problems. Where everybody is supposed to just accept what the media is telling us, rather than what we can see is happening. If they want something to disappear (like rioters throwing molotov cocktails) they just don't report on it, and it ceases to exist. But you can bet if a Republican starting throwing molotovs for their political beliefs it'd be front-page CNN for days on end. It's all so political and so manipulative.

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

#184

Post by necrotic_comp »

staplers wrote: post #148
snarf21 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best approach is to read a story from a left, right and centrist source. The intersection of "facts" is probably all true and the things that point far one direction or the other are probably in the middle somewhere.

I've found that even "liberal" media is heavily biased to favor corporate sponsors. Sometimes journalists can sneak small (actually) progressive articles through but are often followed up by large front-page hit pieces on those same ideas.

That's because "liberal" in the U.S. typically means "neo-liberal", so the focus on corporate sponsors shouldn't be a surprise.

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

#185

Post by ptaipale »

civilized wrote: post #176
dalbasal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be misunderstanding me. ">* dismissing the aspiration towards intellectual integrity*" is far from true. Intellectual integrity is crucial. I a deep sense, it's the main thing that matters. I mean that a newspaper is a newspaper. A pamphlet is a pamphlet. An Encyclopedia is... etc. Moralizing about it doesn't help much. As TJ says in his speech. Anyway, I mean this "for one's own sake." Our own Inte…

If you're just saying "this is how the world works" - yeah, maybe, but not everyone is the same. I'm sure there are some individual reporters and maybe, occasionally, even whole news orgs, that are trying to be better then this.

Not everyone is the same, but too many are. I have similar experiences of newpaper articles: whenever I happen to know the case in deeper detail, I find the newspaper reporting sloppy at best, and drama-seeking and distorting at worst.

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

#186

Post by brahweh »

air7 wrote: post #133

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately. It seems to me that the nefarious ways in which modern media operates are responsible for a large portion of the problems we see in the world today. That's because the world in general is doing better than ever in almost any measurable parameter, yet the general notion is that everything is going to shit. This has real world consequences such as violent riots, couples…

> That's because the world in general is doing better than ever in almost any measurable parameter, yet the general notion is that everything is going to shit.

If you're interested in reading more about this phenomenon, I'd recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling. He discusses how statistics are often presented pessimistically, but if you look at our world as a complete system over time, things really are better than they've ever been in most cases. We just tend to overlook slow and steady improvement because it's boring, as you mention. And, his first global risk we should be on the lookout for is "global pandemic" (published 2018), so that's gotta count for something in supporting his arguments.

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

#187

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Shoreleave wrote: post #152
njarboe wrote: post #112

I would pay quite a bit for a newspaper in Jefferson's proposed format. To be quite certain that something is true for current events, the reports on those events would likely have to be delayed days or weeks after they broke. I would be fine with that and is the complete opposite of today's instant, viral seeking, click-bait, emotionally charged media landscape. Edit:It would be even better if this paper was connect…

The closest thing might be the bloomberg terminal. It costs 2k a month, but you can get a news feed of the topics you care about and it will be accurate and factual. And then people instantly make bets based on that news.

> it will be accurate and factual

We're still waiting for the Supermicro retraction.

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

#188

Post by aeternum »

minimuffins wrote: post #181
aeternum wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best solution is to cast a wide net, gather information from as many viewpoints as possible, and then look for correlations to narrow down on the truth. The human brain is surprisingly good at this. The brain is constantly doing this with our various senses. None of those senses is perfect and they are fooled easily yet by examining the overlap we are able to create a surprisingly accurate picture of real…

> cast a wide net, gather information from as many viewpoints as possible, I agree that's the best thing to do. It's a rational choice. I do it and recommend others do it. But there's still this historical problem of divestment from traditional journalistic practices (going out into the world, gathering facts, interviewing people, observing -- it's expensive). Without that factual raw material it doesn't matter how d…

I find that Youtube is a very underrated source for those traditional journalistic practices. It's amazing how many great interviews there are with formats that allow interviewees to actually answer a question rather than provide a TV sound-bite. There's such a huge variety of content creators that you can often find a primary-source for major events.

It also helps the recommendation algo if you use separate accounts for watching entertainment vids vs. this more serious content.

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

#189

Post by ycombinete »

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…

Sounds good. Those close to us are the most likely to have news that has actual significance to us. And are probably the most trustworthy.

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

#190

Post by TheDong »

snarf21 wrote: post #136
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 think the best approach is to read a story from a left, right and centrist source. The intersection of "facts" is probably all true and the things that point far one direction or the other are probably in the middle somewhere.

This reads to me like saying "the best way to determine if god exists is to read the hebrew bible, the koran, and the book of mormon and take the average".

It starts with the assumption left, right, and centrist sources all have biases, but those biases cancel out. That the "middle" of those things is meaningfully better.

I see no evidence that that's the case. All popular news sources these days seem to be biased towards corporate profit.

"Left" and "right" both exist relative to each other more than they exist relative to the truth.

Reading several news sources to find the truth begs the question of if modern news sources, regardless of political bent, are meaningful sources of factual information vs sources of advertisements and outrage.

For the sake of presenting a counter argument, I think that keeping up with the constant inflow of news doesn't get you meaningfully closer to the truth compared to reading well-regarded books on recent history around the world, and using that as a lens to understand the present. Well-regarded non-fiction books are generally better researched than stories on "this senator just had a haircut", and the recent past shapes the present significantly, not to mention repeats itself shockingly often.

By reading left and right sources, you're assuming you can find similar stories on similar matters, when the most important matters are not "the president tweeted X" (which both sources will report on), but rather information about the structure of cities, the human condition, and changes thereof ("a postmortem on this transit project shows that we, as a society, should think in this way"), which usually no news agency will report on. It's just too dry, unless the researcher dresses it up and makes it flashy.

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