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Disinformation: It’s History

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Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#41

Post by fortuna86 »

johnp314 wrote: post #37
tonetheman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great comment. People can believe anything. As a current example, in the United States the Republican party has been against vaccines. And have been telling their base to doubt them or not get them. Fox news has lead the way along with lots of other media channels. But for some reason they changed this week and started claiming everyone needs a vaccine. So the complete opposite story. And no one batted an e…

During the run-up to the November elections, it was the democrat candidates who were against vaccines. Back then they were the "Trump vaccines", still under development. It's not unreasonable to assume that should Trump have won the elections it would be the democrats who would today (still) be against the "Trump vaccines". With his loss they became simply 'vaccines' and a great idea of the Biden administration with…

Untrue, and I see this as a common talking point. They were against a vaccine that Trump would release before the election for political gain, as has admitted to trying to do multiple times.

That's not the same as being anti-vax if the vaccine was allowed to follow the original timeframe for development and testing (which it eventually was).

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#42

Post by wolverine876 »

motohagiography wrote: post #35
clarkevans wrote: post #31

The conclusion of this article mentions a book, "Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government" ( https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169446/de... ) [2016] > It skewered what Achen and Bartels called the “folk theory of democracy.” By that, they meant the idea that voters support candidates who reflect the overall interests and goals of the citizenry. Instead, Achen and Bar…

Came to comment on that. Responsive government presumes it is not merely a necessary evil and a blunt instrument of last resort for which ancients developed democracy to mitigate the effects from more "responsive" governments like tyrannies and monarchies. It's stupid by design, and there is a one-to-one relationship between undemocratic powers and the powers to manage and rule. There will always be a cadre of techno…

I'm not even sure what this means or what it's based on.

Are human institutions imperfect? Absolutely, but that's all we have. Is democracy perfectly responsive or unresponsive? Of course not. But the track record of democracies is orders of magnitude beyond any other form of government. Look at all the most free, most prosperous, most safe countries in the history of the world - all exist now, and all are advanced democracies.

> There will always be a cadre of technocrats vying for control ...

There will also always be a cadre of people who believe in and work to do good for their fellow citizens, 'in order to form a more perfect union'. There is bad and good in people; it's not so dark. There's both bad and good in both you and me, and we can choose among them.

> history is the story of what we have always had to do to dislodge them

That's a core piece of democracy: Voting them out rather than fighting a war works much better.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#43

Post by wolverine876 »

HPsquared wrote: post #15
kian wrote: post #4

And here I thought the author was making a pithy observation about the fact that history is always written by the victors, and therefor almost always a form of disinformation about the losers.

That would be "History: It's Disinformation".

History is all of the above: information, disinformation, and misinformation. Our world relies on us to distinguish between them.

If it was all disinformation, you and I wouldn't know anything about it! It's just an easy (and obviously false) answer to say it's all disinformation. The challenge is how to handle the some bad inputs and output progress and good things for our neighbors. It's very doable; generations have accomplished a lot since we lived in caves; what are we doing for the next generation?

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#44

Post by wolverine876 »

jokoon wrote: post #17

Nihilism makes me believe that Trump was not such abnormal occurrence. Human minds have a innate desire for virtue and truth, and since objectivity doesn't exist, it becomes difficult to admit that voters would end up create an alternative truth, or at least not at this scale. I think it always came from the fact that truth doesn't really exist. Humans can really believe anything. There is no good and no evil. In a w…

> I think it always came from the fact that truth doesn't really exist. Humans can really believe anything. There is no good and no evil.

It's not binary: While there's no source of truth and much uncertainty about what is true, it doesn't mean that there's no truth at all and that humans can believe anything. While there's uncertainty about good and evil, that doesn't mean there's none of either.

It's not simple, but we do have powerful abilities of critical thinking and judgment, and while they won't yield perfect results, they can be very effective. Compare how we live to how humans lived a century or centuries ago; our ancestors built a much more good world - with unprecedented freedom, prosperity, and safety - using the humans capabilities they had. We can do the same.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#45

Post by gunfighthacksaw »

When I think about Jan 06 2021 and all of the various perspectives on that, there is one thought that I cannot get away from. All of this is occurring in a world with widespread surveillance, instant archival of media and technology to ensure integrity of the archives. What about, say, the American revolution? How reliable are the narratives from 1776? 1867? 1918? 1989? Apologies if you think I’m being flippant about your founding event, it’s not my intention to upset anyone but rather to consider how great moments in history could be interpreted in another way. FWIW I generally accept the official versions of things. But still, if we can’t nail the truth in today’s world, what hope did our forebears have in a much sparser and ‘darker’ world.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#46

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #6
an_opabinia wrote: post #5

Don't downvote me. But whenever I can't figure out the politics of the historian in the first five sentences of their writing, I assume it's a Republican. Then I stop reading because I don't know any intellectually honest Republicans. I know this author is Canadian, but Being a Republican is a state of mind that transcends American election cycles, and here it is, on full display, a bad faith muddy criticism of Joe B…

> […], but Being a Republican is a state of mind that transcends American election cycles, […] Bear in mind though that the word 'republican' tends to mean 'someone who wishes to live in a republic and abolish the monarchy', once you leave the context of politics in North America. A Dutch republican could very well vote progressive/leftist, whilst wishing to get rid of the monarchy.

In Ireland, a Republican is someone who believes that the entirety of the island should be one country.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#47

Post by XFrequentist »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #10
Per_Bothner wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author might mean "it is history" - i.e. it is no longer a thing. Somehow I doubt that ...

I interpret the title as "it is history" in the sense that disinformation is historically relevant, and as such it is a valid field of historical studies.

IMO this is the best interpretation.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#48

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

wolverine876 wrote: post #42
motohagiography wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came to comment on that. Responsive government presumes it is not merely a necessary evil and a blunt instrument of last resort for which ancients developed democracy to mitigate the effects from more "responsive" governments like tyrannies and monarchies. It's stupid by design, and there is a one-to-one relationship between undemocratic powers and the powers to manage and rule. There will always be a cadre of techno…

I'm not even sure what this means or what it's based on. Are human institutions imperfect? Absolutely, but that's all we have. Is democracy perfectly responsive or unresponsive? Of course not. But the track record of democracies is orders of magnitude beyond any other form of government. Look at all the most free, most prosperous, most safe countries in the history of the world - all exist now, and all are advanced d…

> But the track record of democracies is orders of magnitude beyond any other form of government.

To be fair, what the USSR did between their revolution in 1917 and, oh, somewhere around 1975 was completely amazing. They took a fundamentally feudal, largely agragian society and turned it into an industrial world power. In terms of economic well-being, health, safety and possibility, for most USSR citizens it was a huge step forward.

I do not approve of the methods, and you could try to argue that they only succeeded at immense cost to both human lives and political freedom - I might not even disagree. But it is a reminder that sometimes massive changes can be pulled off by non-democratic government too. China over the last 35 years is likely a similar example.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#49

Post by BitwiseFool »

jfengel wrote: post #34
tonetheman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great comment. People can believe anything. As a current example, in the United States the Republican party has been against vaccines. And have been telling their base to doubt them or not get them. Fox news has lead the way along with lots of other media channels. But for some reason they changed this week and started claiming everyone needs a vaccine. So the complete opposite story. And no one batted an e…

Eyes have certainly been batted, e.g. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/whats-behind-fox-new... I don't know the reaction among Fox News' viewers. It'll be interesting to see if vaccination rates tick up markedly in red districts.

I know a lot of conservative folks. I think people on the left dramatically overestimate how much control and influence Fox News has on the average conservative. Do they have influence? Certainly. But Fox News has been the trendy go-to explanation on the left for why conservatives think or behave a certain way. I also think a lot of people on the left don't yet grasp just how many conservatives are enraged at Fox for 'betraying' Donald Trump. I don't want to ramble, but all-in-all, I don't think the change of tone at Fox will have a significant impact on vaccine hesitancy/intransigence.

Re: Disinformation: It’s History

#50

Post by pcstl »

kian wrote: post #4

And here I thought the author was making a pithy observation about the fact that history is always written by the victors, and therefor almost always a form of disinformation about the losers.

For a counterpoint to this, look no further than: https://scholars-stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/

The winners of history are often too busy with enjoying the spoils of their victory and building up their newly won empire to have time to produce historical narrative, while the losers often have nothing better left to do in their exile/imprisonment or similar situation.

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