71–80 of 105 posts
“$1 billion was cut from X program”
How big is that program?
But they so often leave off how large the total program is.
The worst is when the cut was actually done do a planned budget increase. So the headline should have read “$1 billion in budget increases were cancelled”
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How about this. Once you've covered the sun-progress-scenario, it's covered. Stop covering it. Also, don't lead with the exact same sun story as 300 other news orgs. Perform actual journalism instead.
Can you be explicit with the types of stories you're referencing? What are "covered" stories that the media still writes about but should stop?
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Business model may favor such a behavior but in my opinion its ethics should be considered as well. For example, many cars generate some air pollution. But there are some, typically more expensive ones, which produce less or no air pollution. It may be economically beneficial to simply buy the cheapest one. But some people choose the less polluting cars anyway, perhaps also because they incorporate ethics into their…
Systems thinking is important here. The majority of people, the majority of the time, are some combination of lazy, stupid, and greedy. Isolated efforts to be moral and wise don't move the needle substantially.
> our opinions should be formed from a careful examination of arguments and evidence on each side of the issue, reading from only one perspective is akin to not reading at all The elephant in the room not addressed in this essay is the widespread use of bad faith arguments, and the absence or dismissal of evidence in preference of beliefs and feelings. On some issues it can be extremely difficult to find good faith a…
This, I think is one of the most defining feature of Post-modernism where the notion of truth is challenged.
If every belief and every opinion can be as valid as any other (by virtue of itself) it is really hard to have a debate.
This is kind of a circular reasoning where the existence of the opinion is the proof of it's validity.
A useful exercise is to look at a news site and ask which items started as a press release, or are simply an opinion piece, vs ones which contain info someone had to go and dig out. For many lesser news sources, it's 100% PR, because they have no real reporters.
That's the real absence of information.
As I read this, I think what the author is saying is that today's media is more about creating "Narratives" rather than communicating "Information." My Grandfather, who was an attorney, shared with me that attorneys cut apart narratives with evidence to get to the truth. If all of the evidence is available, the only surviving narrative is most likely the truest representation of an event. At the time, I didn't apprec…
A huge part of narrative building is story selection. If there are groups A, B, C all of which do good and bad stuff to each other, media will create a narrative by highlighting again and again bad things that A does to B, leaving out the good things, leaving out what B does, and leaving out C entirely.
> our opinions should be formed from a careful examination of arguments and evidence on each side of the issue, reading from only one perspective is akin to not reading at all The elephant in the room not addressed in this essay is the widespread use of bad faith arguments, and the absence or dismissal of evidence in preference of beliefs and feelings. On some issues it can be extremely difficult to find good faith a…
OTOH, the bad faith arguers are getting praise in the media, adoration from their peers, popularity, well-paid speaking opportunities, pompous awards and get their bad argument - which is usually much simpler and palatable than a good one - endlessly repeated and praised. Sometimes even taught to large groups of people as the paradigm they have to conform to from now on.
This is an interesting take. Are the total bytes of text, pictures, and video produced by the news media some significant fraction of the total bytes output by humanity? I'm not sure but also I'm not sure why it matters. I wonder why people seem to be surprised/upset/perturbed at news media polarization. Humans read the news for fun/excitement/engagement/etc. The vast majority don't have to read the news, they choose…
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> The elephant in the room not addressed in this essay is the widespread use of bad faith arguments, and the absence or dismissal of evidence in preference of beliefs and feelings This highlights both a problem an opportunity. How many people know how to make a good argument or how to spot one? How many know what good evidence looks like or how to spot beliefs and assumptions making their way into something? I would…
I absolutely agree. I have been tempted to buy the logical fallacies and critical thinking posters from The Thinking Shop[1] as gifts for certain family members, but I know too much of my motivation comes from the self-centered position of wanting to prove I'm right, which I didn't want to perpetuate. Instead I just read through the posters and ended up recognizing several items I probably need to work on myself. The…
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I absolutely agree. I have been tempted to buy the logical fallacies and critical thinking posters from The Thinking Shop[1] as gifts for certain family members, but I know too much of my motivation comes from the self-centered position of wanting to prove I'm right, which I didn't want to perpetuate. Instead I just read through the posters and ended up recognizing several items I probably need to work on myself. The…
There are twenty four logical fallacies listed there... twenty four Genuine question: how does one keep 24 logical fallacies in mind when evaluating arguments? Do you mentally iterate through all these fallacies? Don't get me wrong: they are very valid and I think they will make me better and my arguments better. I just want to understand how people without photographic memories do this.