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The media's lab leak fiasco

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Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#521

Post by tablespoon »

defaultname wrote: post #251
Moodles wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More critically, you have a higher standard of every random article in every newspaper than you do of agencies actually responsible. Which is truly dystopian. > But you find issue with the media. > Incredible. The HN topic is about the media, so I'm talking about the media. > Speaking of which, Trump's "travel ban" (that wasn't a travel ban) was the single action taken after the virus was already spreading uncontro…

There is zero disguising the intent of your comment. The bit about Pelosi "dancing" was particularly telling. There are a number of other replies that come straight from MAGA-verse, full of outrageous lies but that is where US politics are right now. The US had a catastrophically poor response under the prior administration. That wasn't because of the media. It wasn't because of Nancy Pelosi. It wasn't because people…

> This whole "see, we wuz right!" thing is a bit bizarre given that no, people didn't ignore evidence early on. They ignored a theory based upon literally nothing, generally put forward by people arguing that it was somehow weaponized and intentional. If there is evidence it should be pursued, but that doesn't give credence to hysterical conspiracies.

It's not so much that they just ignored the theory, but that they made it taboo.

Now, I empathize somewhat with the people who made it taboo (I probably helped in an amateur capacity, throwing the baby out with the bathwater), but in retrospect it's embarrassing and one would have hoped the professionals would have done a better job.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#522

Post by temp8964 »

wpietri wrote: post #512
temp8964 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your logic. Are you saying if the lab leak theory is proved to be true, then the racists turn out to be more justified racists? The rightful racists? If the lab leak theory is proved to be false, then the racists turn out to be less justified racists? The wrongful racists? How does criticizing the Chinese government has anything to do with racism? Because we can't give racists ideas to be racists,…

I am not saying any of those things. I am saying that because fact-free speculation about Chinese responsibility for something many were already calling the "china virus" could drive mob violence against Asians, we should be especially careful about it.

It's called China virus bc it's originated from China. It has nothing to do whether it's lab leak or not at all.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#523

Post by Smoosh »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #312
User23 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US federal government is basically a giant case of regulatory capture so many people understandably confuse power and influence. However the distinction remains and it is of essential importance. None of the big tech companies have any real power, all they have is influence. In countries where they don’t have politicians under their influence they are helpless.

I _almost_ am completely on your side in this discussion. The facts of the matter are as you describe. I disagree, however. Influence at the scale these companies have is its own power. There's a reason Zuckerberg is a fan of Caesar Augustus; with the proper and delicate application of influence in the right places, you can get whatever it is you want. The game they're playing is not direct application of political p…

Let me repeat myself from a post a fortnight ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27127269

I have remarked before that Zuckerberg wants to be the Murdoch of the 21st century. To wield his media influence as a "kingmaker" (mostly quietly and behind the scenes, but with those seeking to gain or hold power knowing they will need Facebook's co-operation). And ensuring as compensation an unchallenged position for Facebook, and minimal taxation and other interference.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#524

Post by Wowfunhappy »

neither_color wrote: post #34

There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disag…

> I don't want my app reminding me to vote/get vaccinated(I did both btw) every time I open it

I basically agree with the sentiment, but some of this stuff is tricky. We really do need everyone to get vaccinated, in the same way we need everyone to not dump their sewage in the middle of the street, in order to protect the health of the public at large.

Imagine we were living during WWII and having this discussion. Would you feel differently? Because I don’t think we could have won the war if we were simultaneously having major internal debates about who the good guys were.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#525

Post by tablespoon »

triceratops wrote: post #515
beaner wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-d…

> Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset What is "Russiagate"? What about it was "patently false"? The Mueller investigation got multiple indictments against Russian nationals. They also obtained convictions of people working in the Trump campaign or administration for election-related offenses. They found evidence of Russian attempts to influence voters in swing states by illegal…

> What is "Russiagate"?

It's talk-radioese for the Mueller investigation.

> What about it was "patently false"?

IIRC, a lot of misunderstandings about it (e.g. misunderstanding the proven claims that Russia made signficant efforts to interfere with the election as a claim that they successfully rigged it).

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#526

Post by AbrahamParangi »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #492
Moodles wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what else was a bigger problem at the time? The coronavirus.

This might shock the shit out of you, but people are capable of addressing more than one issue in any given day.

But they didn't, which is the point.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#527

Post by Aunche »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #297

Over the last several years, it's become clear to me what the large social media companies want to be: de facto world governments. They won't admit that, and you'll hear a lot of gab about algorithms and cooperation with various governments, but at heart it appears to me that this is cooperation with various governments as a government themselves. It's a negotiation among equals. We can provincially argue about who c…

Social media companies just want to make money. It's people who want social media companies to act like government. Originally, Facebook was pro free speech because in a vacuum that's what would make the most money. Facebook only started censoring when people started complaining about it.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#528

Post by dkislyuk »

moralestapia wrote: post #519
Animats wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each site seemed to be funneling you into a single source of truth and way of not only thinking, but FEELING about an event. Which is a big problem. In the intelligence community, people are taught to distinguish between data items from different sources, which may indicate confirmation, and data items from the same source via different paths, which don't.

>In the intelligence community What do you mean by this? And I'm not being snarky, really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#529

Post by stevenicr »

tshaddox wrote: post #477
SilverRed wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And of course anybody can drop a few bucks on a blog of their own. And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. In the end, almost all communication online runs through a limited set of american megacorps who all act in the same ways, have the same rules and align to the same culture. It's no surprise China and Russia ban American sites because those sites control the debate and…

> And no one will read it unless you can post links on facebook, twitter and reddit. I suppose the question is how long that list of websites really is, and how long it needs to be before people stop calling all those websites "monopolies." Obviously it would be fairly absurd to say "no one will read your website unless you can post links on site 1, site 2, site 3, ... site 3,109,550, and therefore those 3.1 million…

I believe there are a LOT of people in the world that would think if your site does not come up in gooogle than it doesn't exist.

I remember reading that there are huge populations in which 'the internet' is facebook - so if fbk censors you - you do not exist.

Re: The media's lab leak fiasco

#530

Post by gred »

arduinomancer wrote: post #137

I hate how it feels like there's such a "collective narrative" for everything now days with the internet. Whenever I talk to people about recent news stories in real life it feels like everyone is just repeating talking points they read online. Its like we've been absorbed into the internet consciousness and talking to a person is like talking to "the internet brain".

The extinction of species and even languages triggers mass self-examination. But entire cultures are currently evolving at a speed and in a direction that will essentially lead to their extinction within two or three generations, and few people are mourning the loss yet.

Human nature being what it is, my unborn American great-grandson will feel he has little in common with any randomly-chosen Cambodian of his time, but the truth is that they'll listen to the same music, play the same video games, watch the same movies, argue across the same political spectrum, speak the same language, and get their education and news from an elite that is even more globally homogeneous than they are.

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