They also banned Christmas, and most sports.
And committed genocide against the original inhabitants and wiped out vast numbers of species. So, yeah, laws against Fake News as defined by a bunch of religious maniacs are great.
Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
131–140 of 216 posts
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
It became popular after he won because he started using the term incorrectly and labeling everything he disagrees with as fake news. People weren't looking for something to blame his winning on. That's a loaded statement. They were looking for reasons that he won. That's a reasonable thing to do. We've never had a President like him. Our polling methods in the 2016 election didn't predict him winning. Obviously peopl…
I'm not sure why either of these comments is being downvoted. They're both true at the same time, though I agree with you that the parent comment overstates what Trump actually did which was weaponize the critique into something to generally dismiss expert opinion.
I think you're seeing liberals and conservatives being even-handedly "triggered". Or maybe people are telling themselve that they are sick of politics being discussed, yet they keep coming back to it and lapping it up.
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#133People also used to do duels over insults and this was considered OK. We should bring that back. Get triggered demand a duel :) Enough PC
I find that the phrase "political correctness" can almost always be replaced with "treating people with respect."
"Respect" seems to be a loaded word. How about we just try for courtesy?
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#134This 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.
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Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#135"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 bar isn't "too" high, it's somewhere in the 347th E8 lie algebra dimension high. We already live among "ministries of truth", they're just called science journals and studies. No matter how objective a field may seem to outsiders (mathematics, physics, astrology and life sciences), it is often plagued by dogma. The best people can do is pick their battles on what to educate themselves about, and even then the validity of information they find is often suspect. This is the natural outcome of living in the gap after the information explosion yet before fully autonomous verification.
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#136I've been reading a lot about pamphleteering in the 1600s. 'Mass media' fake news has been around for quite a while; Cromwell and the Puritans were particularly adept at it.
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#137"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 problem is not one of definitions. The problem is that interpretation and ambiguity even comes into the picture. It should be just demonstrable facts, that no one can deny. We've gotten to a point where "questions" and "opinions" and "sources" are being transmitted and amplified to the masses, so of course we all worry about who gets to control that amplification force.
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#138"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…
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 the fact that people are allowed to invest in gold and bitcoin and lottery tickets shows that the government doesn't actually care about the unwary gambling away their life savings. Rather the government (or those who control it) want to ensure the best investments are kept for themselves. So they place barriers to investment, like accreditation, to ensure only those who already have wealth can participate in the most lucrative of markets. It's not "for your protection" its for the protection of the wealthy.
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#139Earlier 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?
> Is expert opinion valuable even if it is right no more often than coin flipping?
Most coins are 50/50, not 75/25.
Also, the answer entirely depends upon whether there's anyone out there who can do better than 50/50.
Re: Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts
#140Interestingly enough in the 18th century Benjamin Franklin wrote tons of fake news stories https://www.hudson.org/research/13133-benjamin-franklin-and-...
I suppose if you consider The Onion fake news...