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Just yesterday, there was a post that made me angry in the same vein: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45609942 Not only was the article slop, but the author kept responding to comments/criticisms with MORE slop. I must scream.
The average journalist has to churn enough stories that they don't have time to be looking up anything. There must be a corollary somewhere about how much you should read the average newspaper.
[1] Or otherwise not employed—newspapers perfected not treating their core workforce as employees decades before everyone else.
The average journalist has to churn enough stories that they don't have time to be looking up anything. There must be a corollary somewhere about how much you should read the average newspaper.
Well fact checking will just slow us down. And it is not like audience will do it themselves. Or even have options... Still. In many case I think there should be moments where people just stop for moment and do most basic sanity checks.
Yes!
And two of the most common indicators of that are if you read something that either makes you thrilled or furious.
> I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. For myself a quick fact check like this is also low effort. Unlike the author, I recognize this is a professional skill. We are fortunate enough to be incredibly proficient in a large set of skills. Language, literacy, reading quickly, tech skills, research, touch-typing, critical thinking, searchin…
Then again, maybe it is just AI generated. Which really makes future look lot worse.
> I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. For myself a quick fact check like this is also low effort. Unlike the author, I recognize this is a professional skill. We are fortunate enough to be incredibly proficient in a large set of skills. Language, literacy, reading quickly, tech skills, research, touch-typing, critical thinking, searchin…
> I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. For myself a quick fact check like this is also low effort. Unlike the author, I recognize this is a professional skill. We are fortunate enough to be incredibly proficient in a large set of skills. Language, literacy, reading quickly, tech skills, research, touch-typing, critical thinking, searchin…
What if the information was plausible, or even accurate. If she didn't write it, what value is it?
> I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. For myself a quick fact check like this is also low effort. Unlike the author, I recognize this is a professional skill. We are fortunate enough to be incredibly proficient in a large set of skills. Language, literacy, reading quickly, tech skills, research, touch-typing, critical thinking, searchin…
I agree though, that the general population can't reasonably be expected to do a better job of it than the professionals, so I can't imagine that exhortation having much effect.
We are habituated to think of information as the fundament of the internet. When in reality the foundation is simply content.
High quality information is content which is verified, or has a chain of sources. This is expensive to produce.
The information consumer primarily consumes emotionally salient content. Maybe 20% of the time they are willing to exert themselves to consume cognitively demanding content.
With the end of classifieds, the end of ad revenue, the dominance of platforms - news is a dumb ass business to expect to survive. They make expensive goods and sell it for cheap.
That’s why theres entire media spheres which are incredibly effective today - because they don’t spend the money to verify, they spend the money to platform narratives that take off.
The economics of the fourth estate dont make sense, and this needs an answer.
We depend on informed voters to have functioning democracies.