Don’t believe everything you read

Post by Retric » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 11:08 PM UTC

VonGuard wrote: post #59

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #31

This is why reputation and reliability matter. While the example in this post is the equivalent of "I got major news outlets like TMZ to think that Paris Hilton was getting married" many types of news aren't so inconsequential. In the first few days after the Connecticut shooting, there were so many inaccuracies it made me reconsider other "facts" I heard which were never obviously wrong (e.g. it became obvious that…

In a way, there is already a system like this in your brain. Reputation is something you formulate yourself based on meta-information about the outlet you're reading. You do this already: ever read an article and look up at the URL to check and see if it's hosted at a reputable source, like nytimes.com or salon.com? What would help is more meta data available to the reader. So, instead of measuring an unmeasurable "t…

Post by jacalata » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 11:26 PM UTC

mfringel wrote: post #35

gwern wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't notice it? > I feel bad for lying, but it proves the point very well.

In sentences like that, I tend to ignore everything before the 'but'. To my admittedly uneducated eye, nothing in the rest of that article indicates any kind of remorse or regret over the author's actions. The clause before the 'but' is how the author gives themselves permission to say what's after the 'but'. This does not necessarily impart any emotional (or even semantic) meaning onto the first clause.

Post by gajomi » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 11:32 PM UTC

mikeleeorg wrote: post #66

A response from Rob Crossley: https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149670496768002 https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149784678322176 https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149862562353152 https://twitter.com/Rob_Crossley_/status/294149937736847363

Post by alexholehouse » Wed, Jan 23, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #63

This is a very important topic to discuss here on Hacker News. I'll put it out there, as a person who had a different educational background and profile of activities in my teen years from most hackers, that most hackers have remarkably poor preparation in evaluating sources and figuring out which sources are reliable sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_... That's especially regretabl…

Post by dllthomas » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 12:45 AM UTC

niggler wrote: post #55

gmrple wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a major problem with Google now? I know this is completely subjective, but my friends and I have talked about this a couple times, and we feel that Google used to be significantly more useful 5-7 years ago. Has SEO done that much damage, or has the way we use the search engine changed? Or perhaps something else?

The way we use the news has changed. Many years ago we would sit and read a newspaper. Nowadays its all about short headlines or very shocking bits (partially because of computer-based news consumption behavior and partially because of breadth of availability). Catering to the instant and very short nature of news consumption involves a greater indulgence in sensationalism. Google contributed to this insofar as it al…