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

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

#191

Post by ropeadopepope » Wed, May 09, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #180

ropeadopepope wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> democratic minded people know how dangerous government defined truth (no matter how simple or well accepted) is. Have we? Take a look at the state of the press in Sweden. It's not much different from China these days. Without freedom of speech, there is no freedom of the press. America is the only country that guarantees either. Although, I will concede that our press isn't much better these days. There's a very re…

> Take a look at the state of the press in Sweden. Could you elaborate on that? I guess most people here have no idea of what's the problem there.

Sweden is undergoing a huge surge in violent crime, especially grenade attacks and rapes. The media can't report most of it because they're being perpetrated by migrants. Any media (social and mainstream) that's critical of migrants is being suppressed under threat of arrest under their hate speech laws. As a result, most of the people in Sweden are ignorant of the problem until they themselves become a victim.

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

#192

Post by ixtli » Wed, May 09, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #119

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?

> 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 predi…

Further if you were "more accurate" can you produce evidence that you were right for the right reasons that would pass muster among your peers?

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

#193

Post by wilsonnb » Wed, May 09, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #187

wilsonnb wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

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.)

I am aware that Trump got the idea from the press, my point was that had Trump not stolen the term as a coverall for news stories he disagrees with then term would have been largely forgotten.

The Google trends map in the comment I replied to shows the original peak in Novermber of 2016 which I think started when Buzzfeed ran an article about fake news stories having more engagement on Facebook than true news stories leading up to the election. [1]

There's another peak in early December that is probably from Hillary mentioning it in a speech. [2]

There's a third peak in January which is probably from when Trump wouldn't let Jim Acosta ask a question and called him and CNN fake news. [3]

After that, it was officially added into Trumpian vernacular. Had he not started using the term incorrectly on a regular basis, we would not have seen the continued popularity of the word that the graph shows after December 2016. There would have been some peaks due to various academic studies about actual fake news coming out and being reported on but most of the popularity and staying power comes from Trump.

[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/03/ho...

[3] http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/01/11/donald-trump-press-con...

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

#194

Post by wilsonnb » Wed, May 09, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #147

CodeCube wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And places like China are now seeing the same kind of untrammeled progress, as their economy completely explodes under political conditions that 'the west' would consider counter to what they would consider correct/right/whatever. Now to be clear, I'm obviously not advocating human rights violations, and strict governmental control ... I'm only pointing out that things like 'freedom of speech', while awesome and righ…

China is not a good counter example. China has massively westernized and expanded its freedoms. Sure, it still had a long way to go, but at least these days the Chinese government isn't arresting professors en mass and forcing them to work on farms. Yes, this literally happened. It was called the cultural revolution. As bad as humans rights and freedoms are in China, I think people really underestimate just how much…

China has massively westernized but as you say, the only reason it took massive westernization to get to where they are is because they were so far in the other direction.

There is a still a gulf between China's view of personal freedom and the West's view. It's also reasonable to be concerned that they will be moving away from the West's democratic ideals in the near future, seeing as their President just claimed the power to govern for life.

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

#195

Post by da_chicken » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #168

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…

In Norway the media has an ethics organization they vuluntarily join, which may make rulings on whether a news organization has abused their power or not. It doesn’t carry any actual punishment to my knowledge but it is a public embarrasment so media try to respect its rulings.

That would be a good idea and I'd support that. The only problem I think is that such things tend to break down once the size of a country scales. Like I'm not surprised such a system works great in Norway; there's only ~5 million people! A lot of the systems that worked fantastically in the US when it had a few million people broke down once it reached 300 million. Representative government begins to break down when one man is responsible for representing 500,000 individuals intead of 30,000. Scale really fucks with things in unpredictable ways. It really makes you understand how China and India can have such widespread and pervasive problems.

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

#196

Post by da_chicken » Wed, May 09, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #65

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…

> Why shouldn't news organizations be held to a similar ethical or moral standard? At best it gives an imprimatur of credibility to unreliable information. ( E.g. as with the food pyramid, doctors' recommendations regarding salt and eggs, etc.)

You could say the same of any expert opinion on any topic. That doesn't mean the wisdom of experts is less trustworthy, merely that humans aren't perfect.

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

#197

Post by jancsika » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #181

jancsika wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> In the '80s you would still meet better chess players than you.

Sure. But in the 80s you'd never meet a player who is several orders of magnitude better than anyone who has ever lived. That's important.

Similarly, in the 80s you'd never meet a group of political operatives who could read dossiers on tens or hundreds of thousands of people and tailor propaganda for them to read while in a doctor's waiting room, or wherever they happen to be. That's important.

We can't beat supercomputers at chess by practicing chess really hard. And we can't beat digital propagandists by thinking harder about what they publish.

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

#198

Post by jccalhoun » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #140

jccalhoun wrote: post #16

Interestingly 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...

One of the sites I love to visit every few months is http://literallyunbelievable.org/ which has screen caps of people that don't know what The Onion is.

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

#199

Post by Can_Not » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

ixtli wrote: post #192

dragonwriter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 predi…

Further if you were "more accurate" can you produce evidence that you were right for the right reasons that would pass muster among your peers?

This is one of my pet peeves, people who boast about stumbling upon the correct solution and/or being first to something, but can't justify or backup their claim. Even worse is when they do the research afterwards to attempt to retrofit an answer. A derivative of this is when you have/know only one thing, but can't justify it in the absence of knowledge of the alternatives, but you still rally for it as if you were knowledgeable.

In math, if you only write the correct answer, you'll get a zero for not showing your work. In debate and discussions, there can zero, one, or more than one correct solution to a topic, and "showing your work" is often more valuable than having an answer, and answers can be right or wrong explicitly depending on your work.

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

#200

Post by ixtli » Wed, May 09, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #37

ixtli wrote: post #31

This is cool and interesting however I believe it's worth noting that the more pernicious issue is that the phrase "fake news" is used to discredit expert opinion that doesn't line up with one's preconceived notions. We replicate this by using the term at our own peril.

That perils applies to every single synonym for "false", including "level", "slander", "lie", "troll", etc. You can't police the dictionary as strategy to stop falsehood and false claims about falsehood.

"You can't police the dictionary as strategy to stop falsehood and false claims about falsehood." This is a beautiful way to explain this that I'm going to appropriate :)