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Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

blog.mass.gov

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Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#111

Post by jessaustin »

kristianc wrote: post #21
jadedhacker wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, she is criticizing someone advocating this policy if you read the article. EDIT: I should mention I do not necessarily endorse her views with respect to 9/11.

Her views on the Douma gas attack and the Skripal poisoning (she takes the Kremlin line on both), are also well outside the political mainstream. As a UK citizen, the implication that Britain was involved in poisoning its own citizens is not unlike how many Americans feel about '9/11 was a false flag'.

Oh good grief. "Kremlin line", really? Why are we even worried about what she thinks on topics besides the one under discussion? Does this person's suspicions of various war pretexts have anything to do with her disapproval of a proposed truth ministry?

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#112

Post by derefr »

avs733 wrote: post #103
derefr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's intriguing that this is exactly the reverse of the argument (complete with "we've learned a few things since then") that people make when discussing ICOs. The requirements for IPOs are important, they argue. Investor accreditation is important to prevent the naive masses from wasting their live-savings on snake-oil, they argue. "Please grow up and resist the urge" for unregulated securities, they argue. I think…

>I think both arguments generalize, I cringe at my own pedantry here but I think it's important to the larger conversation. All arguments generalize. That isn't just the point of the argument, it is what an argument is - a synthesis and generalization of evidence. That an argument generalizes isn't the problem, how and to what extent the argument does and the implications and chain of evidence for the generalizations…

I'm not sure. I was thinking about it in a type-theoretic sense: argument x being a function over (A Evidence) to give (A Conclusion). The type-class of A can be large or small: some arguments have an abstract structure that can be applied to all sorts of things, while other arguments are constrained by a bunch of qualifications to only be about rather particular things.

What I meant, to be clear, is that the two arguments I was referring to both are of the structure that starts with "people are dumb, and there is an agency that saves them from themselves" but then diverge by assuming different universal properties of organizations, using a concrete example of a good or bad organization and then assuming that those properties would always apply to an organization in such a role.

The SEC and MiniTruth effectively "do the same thing." The SEC is a bit more specialized, but it still does have an information-control/censorship role, saying what news the officers of a public company must always, and must never, publish about said company. So it's interesting, in my mind, to ask what "an SEC doing MiniTruth's job" would look like, and "a MiniTruth doing the SEC's job" would look like, and then to try the two original arguments again with those altered visions as their subjects.

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#113

Post by s2g »

rsync wrote: post #5

"Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts" Thankfully, we've learned a few things since then and liberal (classic definition, not American definition), democratic minded people know how dangerous government defined truth (no matter how simple or well accepted) is. There is a cost to this, of course - the citizenry is required to have a level of sophistication and erudition and they will be forced…

We also know the cost of rapidly disseminated lies. Especially the effect those lies have on trust in mainstream news media (helps fox, hurts everyone else).

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#114

Post by [deleted] »

jccalhoun wrote: post #29
ralusek wrote: post #4

This whole "fake news" thing is absolutely ridiculous. What's interesting to me is that I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect. The problem is much less to do with facts, and much more to do with implications or conclusions, which many news sources dish out handily.

There are certainly "facts" that I have heard people say or spread online that were clearly false like millions of illegals voted in the last election (when in reality one article claimed that and had lots of rebuttals and now has a disclaimer at the top of the article) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrants-2008-el... or that Hillary Clinton only won 57 counties in the 2016 election https://www.snopes.…

[deleted]

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#115

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

simonsarris wrote: post #64
rsync wrote: post #5

"Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts" Thankfully, we've learned a few things since then and liberal (classic definition, not American definition), democratic minded people know how dangerous government defined truth (no matter how simple or well accepted) is. There is a cost to this, of course - the citizenry is required to have a level of sophistication and erudition and they will be forced…

>the citizenry is required to have a level of sophistication and erudition Conveniently 17th century colonial Massachusetts had that too! > the Puritans were a religious group that drew disproportionately from the most educated and education-obsessed parts of the English populace. Literacy among immigrants to Massachusetts was twice as high as the English average, and in an age when the vast majority of Europeans wer…

That was an absolutely delightful read. Thank you so very much.

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#116

Post by Frondo »

geggam wrote: post #89
mabramo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Respect is given and removed if proven undeserving.

That is your choice. To force it on society is to remove freedom from society. That is not a choice. That is a consequence and it has consequences.

You're not going to be jailed for being disrespectful (or "un-pc" if you like); but other people might not want to spend time around you anymore...

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#117

Post by jessaustin »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #97
patrickg_zill wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nate Silver = election expert Me = not an expert on elections Yet, at almost every turn along the path of the 2016 election, I was far more accurate than Nate Silver. Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine? Is expert opinion valuable even if it is right no more often than coin flipping?

> I was far more accurate than Nate Silver. You got lucky. If you can consistently beat his methodology then you'd be just as famous and wealthy and well regarded as he is instead of an internet nobody. This is like saying "college is for the birds, I just plan to win the lottery." >Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine? Absolutely. Missing the boat on what turned out to be something of a frea…

77,000 votes

Silver didn't call a close election, though. That would have been impressive. All he said was that it would be closer than a landslide.

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#119

Post by dragonwriter »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #70
ixtli wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a concerted effort to discredit expert opinion which the shorter term goal of allowing people to equate their own laymen's understanding with that of someone versed in a subject.

Nate Silver = election expert Me = not an expert on elections Yet, at almost every turn along the path of the 2016 election, I was far more accurate than Nate Silver. Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine? Is expert opinion valuable even if it is right no more often than coin flipping?

> Nate Silver = election expert

Nate Silver is a statistical analysis expert, not particularly an election expert.

> Yet, at almost every turn along the path of the 2016 election, I was far more accurate than Nate Silver.

Really, for all the elections that year? What about 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014?

> Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine?

Where can we see your historical set of outcome predictions to validate their superiority?

> Is expert opinion valuable even if it is right no more often than coin flipping?

Nate Silver has been right more often than coin flipping.

Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

#120

Post by dragonwriter »

jessaustin wrote: post #117
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was far more accurate than Nate Silver. You got lucky. If you can consistently beat his methodology then you'd be just as famous and wealthy and well regarded as he is instead of an internet nobody. This is like saying "college is for the birds, I just plan to win the lottery." >Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine? Absolutely. Missing the boat on what turned out to be something of a frea…

77,000 votes Silver didn't call a close election, though. That would have been impressive. All he said was that it would be closer than a landslide.

> Silver didn't call a close election, though.

Silver predicted a fairly high probability of a very close election, including a 10.8% chance Clinton would win the popular vote and lose the electoral vote.

> All he said was that it would be closer than a landslide.

No, Silver's model provided a lot more detail than that.

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