Uh-huh, because if something is bullshit then anything that disagrees with it is anti-bullshit. Fauci says masks are bad? That clearly self-serving bullshit entitles you to any reality you want. Don't think Covid is real? Well, some liberal elite once told you a false thing and they also believe Covid is real, so it's the bullshit. You're standing up to the bullshit. They only have to step in their own once to entitle you to spend your entire life head-over-heels in your own bullshit and it's fine because it's not THEIR cowpie.
The Bullshit
31–40 of 214 posts
Re: The Bullshit
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Writing off an entire generation of people as lacking critical thinking skills seems a bit short-sighted.
No generation in History thus far has demonstrated general possession of this skill.
As is evidenced by writing off the critical thinking skills of others. None of us are terribly good at critical thinking.
Now I think about it, that likely particularly applies to those of us who believe we are great at critical thinking.
Re: The Bullshit
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They would chase a story not because it was profitable, but because it was important They operated the same way they do now, and worked on whatever their bosses told them to work on. It's just romantic to think they were unburdened by our mortal contrivances and somehow had the wherewithal to pick out "important" stories.
Do you push for good engineering practices at your job, even when they go beyond the quarterly business goals? I know I do. It doesn't have to be just one or the other. You can have principles and push for what you believe to be good, even if your boss is ultimately profit-driven (even if you have some profit-incentive of your own!). Multiple factors come together. It's incredibly cynical of you to paint that sort of…
All professions have a distribution of competence, whether you're looking at programmers or journalists.
There's no evidence that the distribution of good journalists has fundamentally changed over time other than the effects of just a larger pool of eligible candidates. A quick glance through Peabody and Pulitzer winners over time can quickly confirm this.
If anything, I'd argue people are far more principled today than any other point in recorded history. Maybe they're just not your principles.
Re: The Bullshit
#34I feel a bit privileged, and in a dangerous way, because feeling like you're special can be an illusion that is easily shattered. Here's what I mean. If I was born earlier, like say a baby boomer, I'd have less education in critical thinking, but I'd also be more protected by the news media than the time when gen Z grew up. By that I mean most of the stuff in the paper at the time was down the middle, somewhat bland…
Writing off an entire generation of people as lacking critical thinking skills seems a bit short-sighted.
If that's short-sighted, then it is only because that should also be applied to every generation. Most people of every generation in the world still believe in magic, which excuses any need to fully develop critical thinking skills.
Re: The Bullshit
#35> but it isn’t the news and it hasn’t been for ages. I have a better idea. The news has always been shit. There's this weird fetish with "freedom of the press" that distorts the fact that news is still a business, run by free market forces, with the same distributions of incompetence and corruption as any free market. It used to be the "nightly news", but we now have a 24/7 always-on consumption culture and news orgs…
Yes, but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists. Local journalism pays rates that make teachers look like kings, and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work a week. It's a job that requires passion, because there are far more of them who are making under minimum wage at an hourly rate than there are who are making six figures.
> but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists
So do accountants. And actuaries. And doctors. And programmers. And artists. And pretty much most every other profession. There's nothing special about clergy or journalists or doctors because they chose the career they did.
> and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work
This is just more romanticism. I'd wager that the distribution of hours of journalists looks very similar to most professionals.
Re: The Bullshit
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists. Local journalism pays rates that make teachers look like kings, and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work a week. It's a job that requires passion, because there are far more of them who are making under minimum wage at an hourly rate than there are who are making six figures.
> but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists So do accountants. And actuaries. And doctors. And programmers. And artists. And pretty much most every other profession. There's nothing special about clergy or journalists or doctors because they chose the career they did. > and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work This is just more romanticism. I'd wager that the distrib…
Yeah, I'll put my 13 years of working around newsrooms and with journalists against your fantasy of what they're like any day.
Re: The Bullshit
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists So do accountants. And actuaries. And doctors. And programmers. And artists. And pretty much most every other profession. There's nothing special about clergy or journalists or doctors because they chose the career they did. > and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work This is just more romanticism. I'd wager that the distrib…
Yeah, I'll put my 13 years of working around newsrooms and with journalists against your fantasy of what they're like any day.
I've done startups for 25 years which has included publishing, there's nothing special about the hours of journalists. Every profession thinks that they put in more work and hours than others. Ask anyone at a law firm.
Re: The Bullshit
#38Manadatory Harry G. Frankfurt "On Bullshit" reference => https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122...
It's a personal amusement of mine that the singnal-to-noise ratio on the internet is so terrible. Sorry, Tim Berners-Lee. The abysmal state of facts on the internet also seems a failure of capitalism of sorts: a low-distortion news channel doesn't seem an impossible business model, but here we are.
Re: The Bullshit
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'll put my 13 years of working around newsrooms and with journalists against your fantasy of what they're like any day.
I've done startups for 25 years which has included publishing, there's nothing special about the hours of journalists. Every profession thinks that they put in more work and hours than others. Ask anyone at a law firm.
Oh, "startups" you say? So no actual newsroom experience.
Well, when I want to know what it's like to fuck around with Wordpress, I'll ask for your input.
Bullshit indeed.
Re: The Bullshit
#40I'll try not to be an ass, but it's hard to not count any of the time I spend reading this as "bullshit time," as he might put it.
He recognizes exactly that in the last several sentences.