Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name • Hacker News Board

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#371

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

brightball wrote: post #370

emodendroket wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you video of Osama bin Laden telling me the story, or one of his associates were on the record with it, I'd find it plausible. In this case we have absolutely nothing. This is rather elementary stuff. If you accept your "more expansive" version of the truth then I have to entertain pretty much any fantastical claim because it is impossible to disprove anything definitively.

Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false. Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.

"False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true."

If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#372

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 2:49 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #233

colechristensen wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>plagiarize first rewrite slowly Obviously publishing work that isn't your own is wrong, but "plagiarize then rewrite" is a very effective method of developing a creative skill. There is a question about when the transformation really becomes "yours". An example: Radiohead - "Creep" was a tranformation for The Hollies "The Air that I Breathe", Radiohead later went to sue Lana Del Rey for "Get Free" which seemingly wa…

If the "groove", "feel", or chord progression of such a song is identical or substantially similar to the song you copied from, you could still be liable for copyright infringement per Williams v. Bridgeport Music (the "Blurred Lines" case). Before you complain, note well that among black musicians the groove is the song, the melody being something of an afterthought -- the exact opposite of what prevails in the whit…

[deleted]

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#373

Post by tablespoon » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 3:01 AM UTC

deertick1 wrote: post #368

pmoriarty wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic. So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid. Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complicatio…

>> It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks.

> Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic [emphasis mine].

That perspective is why we can't have nice things.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#374

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #353

ALittleLight wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a quote from the Foreword of that report - "According to the statistics presented by the EU, Sweden has long had the highest number of reported rapes per capita in Europe" Now, it's perfectly reasonable to say that rape is defined and reported differently in different countries and that's why rape appears more frequent in Sweden than in many other countries. In fact, I referenced that in my previous comment.…

I think it's pretty cut and dry, the question is pertaining to actual events not the rate of report for each event. Think of it this way: if Sweden counted population differently than other countries and came up with a population of 2 billion it'd still false that Sweden is the most populous country in the world, they would simply be the country which _reports_ the highest population in the world. While interesting i…

You assume Sweden's high rape rate is based on their counting and reporting practices. Have you looked through the counting and reporting methods for all other countries in Europe and standardized them to reach this conclusion? To me, as someone who hasn't looked at the crime reporting and counting methods of all the countries of Europe, this sounds like a possible explanation, maybe even a likely one, but possible explanations aren't necessarily correct and nor should we assume they are.

Sweden really does report more rapes than the other countries of Europe. Maybe this is function of how they count and report rapes, maybe that's part or all of the excess rapes, but "Maybe" doesn't mean you can conclude the original true, even if complicated or misleading, fact is false.

If we see some odd phenomenon in the metrics for a country, and you can come up with a plausible sounding explanation for the phenomenon, that doesn't mean that your explanation is accurate and it doesn't mean that it is false to assert that the odd phenomenon does exist.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#375

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #356

ALittleLight wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a quote from the Foreword of that report - "According to the statistics presented by the EU, Sweden has long had the highest number of reported rapes per capita in Europe" Now, it's perfectly reasonable to say that rape is defined and reported differently in different countries and that's why rape appears more frequent in Sweden than in many other countries. In fact, I referenced that in my previous comment.…

Sweden surveys every single citizen, every single year, and asks them (amongst other things) whether or not they have been a victim of a sex crime. They also have a very broad definition of what "rape" is, compared to other Western countries. Calling them the "Rape Capitol" because they have the most progressive rape detection and classification system on Earth is stupid - that's why Snopes and other fact checkers de…

Do they? Can you link to where they survey every citizen and ask this? The closest thing I can think of is the annual Swedish crime survey, but that goes to a representative sample of Swedes, not every single citizen. I also don't know what the point of surveying every citizen would be or how it is relevant to Sweden detecting more rapes than most people.

Calling Sweden the Rape Capitol of Europe may be misleading or naive, but it isn't simply false. An objective fact checking of this claim should consider it as too hard to evaluate for the reasons discussed or come up with a good way to evaluate the claim and do that. Instead, Snopes obfuscates the claim and rambles a bit about Trump and immigration then says the claim is false because they have a theory that might explain why Sweden has an elevated rape rate.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#376

Post by jimmydorry » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #325

jdavis703 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ophthalmologist requires masks and social distancing in his office. He also recommended against wearing contacts for the duration of the pandemic (he says glasses offer more protection.) Why am I going to have a bad time for following his rules and advice?

If your podiatrist says the earth is round, and you agree, you are not taking advice in cosmology from a podiatrist. But if your podiatrist tells you the earth is flat, and you believe that, then you are. See the difference?

No, I don't see the difference. That just sounds like an example of confirmation bias.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#377

Post by snypher » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

deertick1 wrote: post #368

pmoriarty wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems silly to worry about completely hypothetical and unknown long-term risks of vaccination when getting COVID-19 has very serious, well known short-term risks.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic. So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid. Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complicatio…

You imply that the long term risks of covid-19 are known, so conflating the unknown/imaginary risks of both, that leaves getting the vaccine a better deal, because 'you have less change of getting sick'.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#378

Post by Mountain_Skies » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 4:27 AM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #255

colpabar wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had you checked the article after this encounter? I guess they eventually realized you were right and made the change, but I wonder when that happened. Other comments here discuss how it's odd that they don't allow their site to be archived, and it's interesting to see a real example that illustrates why they may not want that.

I have no idea when or why they changed it. Every few years I'd get a bee in my bonnet to check, and this is the first time I remember not seeing the incorrect fact being there.

Perhaps others like yourself emailed them once in a while over the years, each getting ignored, but eventually they got that comment enough to check it with an actual authority on the matter, sheepishly realized they were the ones being idiots, and silently edited it without admitting their mistake.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#379

Post by kenjackson » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

colpabar wrote: post #243

tablespoon wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but they need to be clear that they aren’t committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish (expectation of a newspaper). You're misreading the situation. The media doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do. They can be "committed to it being an accurate story at the time of publish," but then new stuff happens after that time, or they have the time to go into more depth. The news is…

>The media doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do. Sure, but the media is not writing encyclopedia entries. They make hyperbolic claims about how they break stories before anyone else, and how accurate they are. But since they are human, sometimes mistakes are made, and I think it's pretty dishonest to quietly change an article after it's been published. Publishing a story should mean that you back its…

This seems like it would be a mess. My local news has a weather page that they constantly update. Sometimes 10 times an hour. While some people, like you, care about the original accuracy, I think most people don’t care at all about the past forecasts. I think a bunch of links and references to a change of the 1pm temperature forecast from 86 to 87 degrees would be more annoying than useful.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#380

Post by mbrumlow » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #326

ralph84 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there ever been a time in history when those in power desired critical thinking skills in the broader population? Those in power want a compliant population, not a questioning one.

Every politician wants voters to see through the other guy's propaganda. And if voters pick up critical thinking skills as a side-effect of education that will get them high-paying jobs, what's not to like?

Nope, Every politician wants you to believe their propaganda more than the next politician.