Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by lmm » Wed, May 09, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #165

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…

> 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 to make nuanced and complicated judgements about the state of their world. If we take a book from the 80s titled "How to Win at Chess" and try to update it for the 2010s, we have three choices: 1. Add the caveat: "Don't ever play against a computer." 2. Add an enormous chapter about…

In the '80s you would still meet better chess players than you. The techniques for playing against computers are much the same as those for playing against smarter humans. There are specific anti-computer strategies just as there were specific anti-Russian strategies, but they're equally minor.

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

#182

Post by phaemon » Wed, May 09, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

Chriky wrote: post #176

jeffdavis wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are legitimate concerns about that for the same reason as people would be concerned about government-funded churches. As long as people have many options the concerns are mostly theoretical, but still valid.

The BBC is not government funded, and all television news in the UK, including Murdoch's Sky News is required by law to be unbiased. If it's a choice between the BBC and the constant, blatant, society distorting lies you see in American "News", I'll take my Orwellian dystopia thanks.

They are only required to provide "balanced" coverage during an election, nothing more. The BBC is absolutely biased, as was made clear during the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. The distortions and outright lies they continually produced were astonishing to me.

You can see plenty examples of this at Wings Over Scotland (which I know is biased, but is also scrupulously accurate)

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

#183

Post by aninhumer » Wed, May 09, 2018, 9:47 AM UTC

null0pointer wrote: post #175

jonbarker wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I am a Nate Silver fan. Nate's expert opinion is only valuable if you accept the premise, which is that prediction science involves a range of possible outcomes. If you accept that premise, which I do, his opinion on the 2016 election, in which he stated several times that the odds of a Trump presidency were actually higher than most of the polls suggested, was arguably a more valuable opinion than either…

Yeah this seems to be the disconnect. A lot of people will intuitively think (myself included) something like this. "You said Hillary had 90% chance to win, but Trump won. Therefore your prediction was WRONG". It actually takes a little more thought to understand that a Trump victory was a possibility in the model all along. And that you cannot say whether or not a prediction model is accurate based on a SINGLE resul…

Moreover, if someone makes a lot of predictions of people having "90% chance to win" and all of them win, that is a less accurate prediction than if roughly 10% of them lose.

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

#184

Post by aninhumer » Wed, May 09, 2018, 10:37 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #157

da_chicken wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizenry will do what they always have: accept the narrative that benefits them the most or that they've been indoctrinated to accept without questioning. The Internet isn't going to magically change human nature. That doesn't mean that we need a Ministry of Truth a la Brazil or 1984, but this isn't an either-or issue. The Fairness Doctrine[0] was a fairly nice compromise. We have long required advertisers to be tru…

The fairness doctrine makes little sense in the context of the internet. My random comment/post on reddit may in the course of a paragraph contain 5 different assumptions that may be orthogonal to the actual main point. It will not contain therein space for alternative thoughts on the main point let alone space for any alternatives for any unexamined assumptions. Truth is multidimensional and fairness impossible to d…

>Wherein the web isn't censored in a heavy handed fashion we have the most reasonable answer to the fairness doctrine. Everyone can be heard but not everyone will find an audience that desires to listen.

But is that really reasonable or fair? What decides who will find an audience to listen to them?

Free speech advocates seem to believe that the "best" speech will always find an audience, but I don't personally see any reason to believe that's true.

When a rich person can pay for a political advert on a major television channel, and a poor person can only publish to a blog no one has any reason to know exists, do we really believe that the latter's ideas will spread more widely if they are "better"?

I think people are starting to realise that access to an audience is far more important than the simple freedom to say something, and that this access is already heavily restricted in a variety of ways other than government intervention. But unlike the mere ability to speak, access to an audience is fundamentally limited. It's physically impossible for everyone to hear everyone else's views. So a simple idea like "Freedom of Speech" is not sufficient to allow us to decide how to structure our societal discourse.

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

#185

Post by Chriky » Wed, May 09, 2018, 10:39 AM UTC

phaemon wrote: post #182

Chriky wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC is not government funded, and all television news in the UK, including Murdoch's Sky News is required by law to be unbiased. If it's a choice between the BBC and the constant, blatant, society distorting lies you see in American "News", I'll take my Orwellian dystopia thanks.

They are only required to provide "balanced" coverage during an election, nothing more. The BBC is absolutely biased, as was made clear during the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. The distortions and outright lies they continually produced were astonishing to me. You can see plenty examples of this at Wings Over Scotland (which I know is biased, but is also scrupulously accurate)

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...

There's no mention here of the regulation only applying during elections - where are you getting that from?

--

Can you link me to some of the lies from the BBC during the indyref?

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

#186

Post by makomk » Wed, May 09, 2018, 10:52 AM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #63

deadmetheny wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snopes isn't made up of experts and isn't an unbiased source. It mystifies me that so many people treat it as reliable, let alone infallible. (sorry for pointing this out, but downvoting me doesn't change that it's true)

You're welcome to challenge their items on a line by line basis. Type it out, I'll wait. There are also lots of other sources. I think playing up a 'no true scotsman' just empowers the liars because at a certain point you're just arguing that truth cannot be verified by anyone.

Every single one of Snopes' items could be correct and it wouldn't save your argument, because you're relying on the idea that what Snopes chooses to debunk is an unbiased representation of who actually tells more lies.

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

#187

Post by makomk » Wed, May 09, 2018, 10:55 AM UTC

wilsonnb wrote: post #24

lopmotr wrote: post #17

The term only became popular after Trump's win [1], not while it was happening, which is forever (I once read in a real paper newspaper about an amputee who had donkey's legs attached in place of his own). This suggests people don't like it because they went looking for something to blame for his winning. It's entirely a partisan political concern, not a fundamental one. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?d…

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…

You're reversing cause and effect. Trump latched onto the term after the entire press started blaming his victory on "fake news" - that's where he got the idea from. (A lot of his ideas seem to just be whatever's been in the press last, actually.)

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

#188

Post by musage » Wed, May 09, 2018, 11:24 AM UTC

wilsonnb wrote: post #56

kristianc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legatum rates China's prosperity at 90th in the world, alongside El Salvador and Nepal, precisely because the lack of personal freedom and environmental degradation act as a counterbalance against China's robust economy. You can question the methodology, but then you have to make an argument as to why Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the US and other mature social democracies wh…

I don't have to make an argument as to why Norway, New Zealand, Finland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the US are not good places to live. They are good places to live. That has nothing to do with whether or not China is a good place to live. I only have to make the argument that personal freedom is not as important as economic prosperity. Since the end of the Cold War the general thinking was "democr…

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

#189

Post by phaemon » Wed, May 09, 2018, 12:22 PM UTC

Chriky wrote: post #185

phaemon wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are only required to provide "balanced" coverage during an election, nothing more. The BBC is absolutely biased, as was made clear during the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum. The distortions and outright lies they continually produced were astonishing to me. You can see plenty examples of this at Wings Over Scotland (which I know is biased, but is also scrupulously accurate)

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co... There's no mention here of the regulation only applying during elections - where are you getting that from? -- Can you link me to some of the lies from the BBC during the indyref?

Ah, I was thinking of the election rules where they are required to give a representative amount of time to each party, not the impartiality rules which, frankly, are vague to the point of uselessness.

The classic example of BBC lies would be Nick Robinson of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_XhTALHQzI

If you want a more recent example of BBC bias, try: https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-bad-losers/

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

#190

Post by threepipeproblm » Wed, May 09, 2018, 1:00 PM UTC

Andre_Wanglin wrote: post #160

frabbit wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[citation needed] The "genocide" of native Americans was a result of European diseases, not barbarism.[1] As the people had no idea of germ theory, it is impossible to claim this was intentional. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...

Well that's an oversimplification. Diseases wiped out 90% before they ever saw a soldier. BUT...

'Instead, when the Indians were ready to leave, Trent wrote: "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."' -- http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/warfare.c...

More commonly rumored to be used by British against Americans, though.