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CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

simonwillison.net

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Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#151

Post by casey2 »

clintfred wrote: post #29

Facts are the enemy. I remember reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a teen thinking, "Cool story, but the US will never look like that." Oof.

Did we read the same book? Wasn't Winston fixing historical records? Sure he just directly rewrote them, but that's not a job. A job makes it look like you aren't fudging the numbers. But the result is the same.

The CIA has a long history of lying with statistics to push political agendas. Who remembers the "war on drugs" or LA in the 90s? I don't recall seeing CIA working with contras in the duckbook.

That's because it's a tool of propaganda. It's not suitable for the current restructuring so they got rid of it.

One only believe it's useful insofar as the people in power reward you for believing it. Regardless of what you believe for example writing the word stable next to a country doesn't make it so. It's a common misconception people have about religion.

There is always a tradeoff. For the utility gained by the factbook you carry increasing cognitive dissonance. You are stuck in a system radically reinterpreting labels, becoming increasingly brittle and cruel.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#152

Post by gffrd »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #123
gffrd wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame we don’t have physical bodies and a means to share the human experience with other humans without intermediaries.

What's your plan, be present at all major events?

Well, I am God, so yes.

My original comment was just a counterpoint to the doom in parent: not all is lost, and in fact, quite a lot is not.

The situation of “things we care about are far away and require intermediaries to connect with” and “our ability to trust intermediaries is gone” are both human creations, and totally addressable.

Edits: more words, and wording

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#153

Post by octoberfranklin »

axus wrote: post #60
ks2048 wrote: post #48

This is surely just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in the CIA at the moment. Senator Ron Wyden just sent a mysterious public letter about concerns about what they are doing. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5724300-ron-wyden-cia-le...

Whenever there's a mystery, apply the scientific method to investigate it. Form a hypothesis, an experiment or test , then record the results and check if they support. Hypothesis: CIA is hacking reporters to determine their government sources. If we start seeing more government sources exposed, we haven't proven it but it supports the hypothesis. Hypothesis: State election systems are being compromised for federal m…

> apply the scientific method to investigate it.

Great where do I find a spare identical copy of the CIA to use as the control group?

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#154

Post by GS523523 »

Fairburn wrote: post #133
GS523523 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words. Religion = doing what your boss told you. Got it, that makes sense why so many people are religious.

Religion = blind loyalty (to those in power of said religion) It's one of the oldest tools we have to control society. And it gets abused. All. Of. The. Time.

That's better, but it's still wrong, because there are plenty of organized belief systems whose leaders don't demand blind loyalty. To say that these don't qualify as religions is absurd.

You could say that one of the elements of religion is having faith in something that is not provable via the scientific method and I'd agree. But then you'd lose generals, managers, politicians, etc... from the list above in which case the comment has lost its meaning.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#155

Post by __s »

Fairburn wrote: post #133
GS523523 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words. Religion = doing what your boss told you. Got it, that makes sense why so many people are religious.

Religion = blind loyalty (to those in power of said religion) It's one of the oldest tools we have to control society. And it gets abused. All. Of. The. Time.

better word is dogma

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#156

Post by hananova »

andy_ppp wrote: post #108
casenmgreen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked to see if I could find anything asserting 1984 was about propaganda at BBC - nothing. I found no interviews, no recordings - it seems what survives are his notebooks. Can you describe the basis for the claim?

[flagged]

If I wanted to know what ChatGPT says, I’m more than capable of asking it myself thank you.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#157

Post by constantius »

regenschutz wrote: post #8
quietsegfault wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because intelligence agencies generally have a vested interest in spreading subtle propaganda, such as by distorting facts. Now, I have yet to see any cases of the CIA doing this to the World Factbook, since that would tank its credibility, but I also don't browse the Factbook too often.

I wrote about one such case in another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901003

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#158

Post by necovek »

GS523523 wrote: post #154
Fairburn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion = blind loyalty (to those in power of said religion) It's one of the oldest tools we have to control society. And it gets abused. All. Of. The. Time.

That's better, but it's still wrong, because there are plenty of organized belief systems whose leaders don't demand blind loyalty. To say that these don't qualify as religions is absurd. You could say that one of the elements of religion is having faith in something that is not provable via the scientific method and I'd agree. But then you'd lose generals, managers, politicians, etc... from the list above in which c…

I'd actually go a step further: even science and scientific method require a sort of "faith" that the underlying assumptions (axioms of formal logic and algebra at the very least) are true.

The core difference is that science invites questioning those unprovable assumptions, whereas religion usually does not (and sometimes forbids it as part of the canon).

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#159

Post by gspr »

andy_ppp wrote: post #108
casenmgreen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked to see if I could find anything asserting 1984 was about propaganda at BBC - nothing. I found no interviews, no recordings - it seems what survives are his notebooks. Can you describe the basis for the claim?

[flagged]

I don't think anyone minds if you use an LLM to try to track down information like this. But the LLM's output is not what we want. That's merely a clue for you on your quest to find a proper source.

Even school children in the 90s were told that "the search engine" was ludicrous to give as a source. You should know that your LLM is the same.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#160

Post by yesbut »

SapporoChris wrote: post #112
nostrademons wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban…

Thank you for inspiring me to look up the sources for the literary motifs in 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Sources_f... A very interesting read, but it did not verify any of your claims.

https://www.wired.com/2007/08/wiki-tracker/
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