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Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

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Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#361

Post by emodendroket »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #292
bartread wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Hearsay doesn't reach the necessary standard to be considered evidence in the first place in sensible forums, including most courts.

Yes. But the other thing is debunking rumors is the task they set for themselves. And in these cases, they went for the dopamine hit of writing "FALSE" over the eternally annoying "Unconfirmed".

If the claim is true, the claimant should be able to produce evidence of it, such as someone who would have reason to know stating that it happened.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#362

Post by emodendroket »

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #264
j_m_b wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one time, Snopes was part of the fact-checking team at Facebook. This comment goes to show that having an arbiter of truth is a bad idea considering it's hard to accurately know everything. Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker!

Fact-checking is a dead end, a poor substitute for development of critical thinking skills in the broader population. It may be more challenging, but that's what we need to start working towards.

I have a lot of quibbles with "fact checking" as practiced as a distinct vertical in news sites, but in principle I don't find anything wrong with examining claims to determine whether they are true. To make it unnecessary you'd need not just critical thinking but also everyone constantly doing their own research, which would rather limit the number of things anyone could have an opinion about.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#363

Post by pmoriarty »

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #264
j_m_b wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one time, Snopes was part of the fact-checking team at Facebook. This comment goes to show that having an arbiter of truth is a bad idea considering it's hard to accurately know everything. Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker!

Fact-checking is a dead end, a poor substitute for development of critical thinking skills in the broader population. It may be more challenging, but that's what we need to start working towards.

You can't critically think your way in to deciding what really happened at the Gulf of Tonkin[1], or whether the CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA[2]

It's claims like these and dozens of others that are made every day that fact checkers need to verify, as few if any of us have the time or expertise to check all these claims ourselves.

[1] - https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2008/f...

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#364

Post by pandaman »

ramraj07 wrote: post #13
danso wrote: post #5

> Marchionni is reevaluating decisions Mikkelson made years earlier to not allow Snopes stories to be archived on the Wayback Machine and is empowered to make any changes necessary. Not the most immediate important thing, but hiding content from the Wayback Machine that is purported to be factual record is very problematic, to say the least

I’m still struggling to understand why they’d want to block that. Edit: on re-reading I realize it’s so that they don’t get caught for this plagiarism since their modus operandi was plagiarize first rewrite slowly.

I wanted to post their original article on the corona virus and masks in the replies here and went to the wayback machine to find it and just learned they excluded themselves from the service. So I can see why they'd block that.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#365

Post by rustyminnow »

richk449 wrote: post #330
rustyminnow wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the President of the United States holds an office with a lot of executive power, but there are plenty of other people with other forms of power that would have an interest in a compliant population. I hate to beat the "evil-zillionaire" drum, but if you made your fortunes selling people juice-boxes they don't really need, you'd prefer it if they complicitly buy all the junk your ads tell them to buy instead of…

Okay, sure, cult leaders and juice box company executives don’t want critical thinking in the populace. I guess those aren’t who I think of when I think of the powerful.

Yes the President of The United States of America is the ONLY person with ANY power. Not the companies who spend billions of dollars lobbying to pass laws only in their own interest. Not the media moguls or tv personalities who can manipulate public perception on any issue. Not the lawmakers, the community leaders, people who directly affect other people's lives.

No, I can't imagine anybody would like it if folks were dim and complacent and just generally easy to fuck over

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#366

Post by brightball »

emodendroket wrote: post #361
Uhhrrr wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But the other thing is debunking rumors is the task they set for themselves. And in these cases, they went for the dopamine hit of writing "FALSE" over the eternally annoying "Unconfirmed".

If the claim is true, the claimant should be able to produce evidence of it, such as someone who would have reason to know stating that it happened.

My wife just told me she was going to bed.

It’s true. There’s no feasible way for me to prove it. Even if she were to record a statement saying that, indeed, she said that…she could be lying for some reason.

Most of what we experience in life every day isn’t provable. That doesn’t make it any less true. It’s just exposes a weakness in what a person is willing to consider as truth, which is that it depends entirely on your willingness to trust the source and very little to do with actual truth.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#367

Post by playguardin »

exporectomy wrote: post #304
javert wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a critical thinker, the baseline facts come from the person's own direct experience. They have to. For example, I probably wouldn't 100% believe that hundreds of people can cross the sky in a metal tube (i.e., modern jet airplane) if I had only been told about it. But I've seen it myself. Another example: I've learned enough about technology to think the moon landings were feasible, and I've learned enough about…

You should have multiple independent types of observation. If you only know about the metal tube idea from flying in one yourself, it might have been a simulation. You should have other facts that also support the same conclusion (eg. knowledge of aerodynamics, people quickly moving around the world, etc.) so that it would be hard for them all to be wrong in the same way. You don't have to witness it with your own ey…

What's with all this nerdy parsing on every thread of this kind about Occam's razor and philosophy is science and logical fallacies and all this talk that may suggest those in power have our interests in mind. They do not. It is very simple. Do Not Trust Authority. Period.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#368

Post by deertick1 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #355
hitpointdrew wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "debunk" COVID and the efficacy and safety of the vaccine What evidence is there of the efficacy of the vaccine that isn’t provided directly from Pfizer/Moderna? What evidence is there that it is safe, when there are 0 mid-to-long term studies on the effects of it? If it safe why are the pharma company’s immune from all liability? Why is anyone that question the narrative on how safe and effective the vaccines imme…

It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic.

So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid.

Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complications from a vaccine.

Id take bet 1 any day, personally, since the odds and stakes of the vaccine are unkown.

Admittedly though, I think the chance of serious injury from vaccine is probably quite low or nonexistant but Im just trying to make the point that that perspective involves some reasonable value judgements.

Note : all oercentages listed are majorly hand wavy. This comment is in no way intended to be statistically accurate

Cheers.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#369

Post by emodendroket »

brightball wrote: post #366
emodendroket wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the claim is true, the claimant should be able to produce evidence of it, such as someone who would have reason to know stating that it happened.

My wife just told me she was going to bed. It’s true. There’s no feasible way for me to prove it. Even if she were to record a statement saying that, indeed, she said that…she could be lying for some reason. Most of what we experience in life every day isn’t provable. That doesn’t make it any less true. It’s just exposes a weakness in what a person is willing to consider as truth, which is that it depends entirely on…

I mean, if you video of Osama bin Laden telling me the story, or one of his associates were on the record with it, I'd find it plausible. In this case we have absolutely nothing.

This is rather elementary stuff. If you accept your "more expansive" version of the truth then I have to entertain pretty much any fantastical claim because it is impossible to disprove anything definitively.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#370

Post by brightball »

emodendroket wrote: post #369
brightball wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife just told me she was going to bed. It’s true. There’s no feasible way for me to prove it. Even if she were to record a statement saying that, indeed, she said that…she could be lying for some reason. Most of what we experience in life every day isn’t provable. That doesn’t make it any less true. It’s just exposes a weakness in what a person is willing to consider as truth, which is that it depends entirely on…

I mean, if you video of Osama bin Laden telling me the story, or one of his associates were on the record with it, I'd find it plausible. In this case we have absolutely nothing. This is rather elementary stuff. If you accept your "more expansive" version of the truth then I have to entertain pretty much any fantastical claim because it is impossible to disprove anything definitively.

Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false.

Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.

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