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In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

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Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#41

Post by djoldman »

> As humans, we care about forming true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs. We want to know, understand, get things right. We want to avoid cognitive error and ignorance. These are our twin epistemic aims.

Unfortunately, I think there's much evidence that most people would verbally agree with this but their subsequent actions would reveal that they choose to seek out, and believe as true, information that confirms rather than challenges their already established beliefs.

In other words: the Righteous Mind by Haidt.

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#42

Post by hearsathought »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #33
mosura wrote: post #16

We never lived in a truth biased world. This whole “post-truth” talking point exists because one power system is concerned about the erosion of their ability to impose their pile of lies on a particular society. It is itself post-truth in nature. For cultures that were historically more honest this is more of a shock, but that only ever applied to a tiny minority globally.

We lived for a while in a world where reporters cared about the truth about the events they were reporting on. Now we live in a world where reporters care about their ability to mold what they report on to fit their preferred narrative. Those two worlds are not equivalent.

> We lived for a while in a world where reporters cared about the truth about the events they were reporting on.

Who is we? I nor anyone I know never lived in such a world. Maybe there was a time when I was naive and brainwashed enough to believe we lived in such a world. But such a world never really existed.

> Now we live in a world where reporters care about their ability to mold what they report on to fit their preferred narrative.

It's always been that way. The oldest newspaper in the US ( NY Post ) was created by Alexander Hamilton to push his political agenda. Nothing has changed since. Newspapers exist to push the narrative of the elites who control them.

> Those two worlds are not equivalent.

Agreed. One of those world is a fantasy and the other is reality.

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#43

Post by hearsathought »

zkmon wrote: post #4

Not only lack of truth, but lack of locality/relevance is an issue. You get flooded by info that you never need in your daily life or in near future. Every news channel would inundate you with global news as if all that is happening in your neighborhood. This is partly the reason why governments of the western world are forced to act on everything that happens on other side of the world. Because people feel that thei…

> You get flooded by info that you never need in your daily life or in near future.

Who does the flooding? It surely ain't the people.

> Every news channel would inundate you with global news as if all that is happening in your neighborhood.

Not all global news. Just some global news. And framed in a particular manner for effect.

> This is partly the reason why governments of the western world are forced to act on everything that happens on other side of the world.

You have it backwards. These governments and the elites who control these government want to act and use media to generate popular support.

> Because people feel that their government should do something about it.

No. People generally want their governments to not get involved. For example, no war the US was involved in was a result of "the people putting pressure on the government".

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#44

Post by hn_throw_bs »

djoldman wrote: post #41

> As humans, we care about forming true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs. We want to know, understand, get things right. We want to avoid cognitive error and ignorance. These are our twin epistemic aims. Unfortunately, I think there's much evidence that most people would verbally agree with this but their subsequent actions would reveal that they choose to seek out, and believe as true, information that confirms ra…

Anyone in the dating market should know this instinctively by now, that it makes reading most news or puff pieces of this sort comical.

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#45

Post by mallowfram »

djoldman wrote: post #41

> As humans, we care about forming true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs. We want to know, understand, get things right. We want to avoid cognitive error and ignorance. These are our twin epistemic aims. Unfortunately, I think there's much evidence that most people would verbally agree with this but their subsequent actions would reveal that they choose to seek out, and believe as true, information that confirms ra…

That's simply the function of narrative using words. How can anything built subjectively in symbols and cause and effect reach consensus, correlational objectivity?

They can't. Language is for confirmation bias first and foremost. It embeds the illusion of subjective perspective in every statement.

We quit language, replace it, or go down for the count.

"It feels as if the whole world has been transformed into images of the world, and has thus been drawn into the human realm, which now encompasses everything. There is no place, no thing, no person or phenomenon that I cannot obtain as image or information. One might think this adds substance to the world, since one knows more about it, not less, but the opposite is true: it empties the world, it becomes thinner. That’s because knowledge of the world and experience of the world are two fundamentally different things. While knowledge has no particular time or place and can be transmitted, experience is tied to a specific time and place and can never be repeated. For the same reason, it also can’t be predicted. Exactly those two dimensions – the unrepeatable and the unpredictable – are what technology abolishes. The feeling is one of loss of the world." Knausgaard

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#46

Post by AnimalMuppet »

hearsathought wrote: post #42
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We lived for a while in a world where reporters cared about the truth about the events they were reporting on. Now we live in a world where reporters care about their ability to mold what they report on to fit their preferred narrative. Those two worlds are not equivalent.

> We lived for a while in a world where reporters cared about the truth about the events they were reporting on. Who is we? I nor anyone I know never lived in such a world. Maybe there was a time when I was naive and brainwashed enough to believe we lived in such a world. But such a world never really existed. > Now we live in a world where reporters care about their ability to mold what they report on to fit their p…

In the US, from at least 1950 through at least the 1970s, there was such a thing.

You had, for example, the editor of the New York Times who, knowing that his reporters leaned left, deliberately steering the editorial policy to the right, trying to have the net result be unbiased. He literally had them put on his tombstone "He kept the paper straight."

Was it perfect? No. But it tried.

I have lived through it ending. As I have said, the difference matters. You see that in the distrust for the media. You see it in our civic discourse, where the two sides can't agree on basic facts because they can't trust anyone to tell them something that is not just one side's narrative.

But to all those who have replied, claiming that unbiased reporting is a fantasy, that everybody is pushing a narrative: When you say that, are you sure that you haven't bought someone's narrative? Or is that a narrative that you are deliberately trying to create?

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#47

Post by analog8374 »

mallowdram wrote: post #31

Claiming to imagine a workaround like "virtue" will solve the embedded primate bias inherent in our lossy signaling like words and narrative/causal statements is worse than wishful thinking, it's uniformed and positivist/idealist. Humans like all primates, are easily deceived by arbitrary signals, which is almost all of our signaling. No narrative is true as it's always a construction reducing cause and effect to a l…

2 solutions.

A cult of virtue. A monastic tradition where virtue is cultivated intensely and scarily. Put them in charge.

An immortal group mind. A dozen or a hundred people, chipped and networked. Totally mindmelded. Such vast Intelligence and perspective, virtue would be unavoidable. Put that thing in charge.

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#48

Post by gcanyon »

zkmon wrote: post #4

Not only lack of truth, but lack of locality/relevance is an issue. You get flooded by info that you never need in your daily life or in near future. Every news channel would inundate you with global news as if all that is happening in your neighborhood. This is partly the reason why governments of the western world are forced to act on everything that happens on other side of the world. Because people feel that thei…

> You get flooded by info that you never need in your daily life or in near future.

My brain holds on to the weirdest shit. Back in May my wife texted me: "Hot Lips died" and I immediately replied, "Loretta Swit or Sally Kellerman?"

And thinking about that: why in the world should I remember either of their names? But seriously: Sally Kellerman? I saw the MASH movie when I was...ten? I'm pretty sure never since then.

And just typing that, my brain gremlin is cataloging everything it recalls from the movie: Elliot Gould, sure. Donald... oh crap. So this right here is the crux of the issue: objectively I know I shouldn't care, like, AT ALL. But right now I have a subprocess running to retrieve that guy's last name. I know his son was the star of 24, and Stand By Me, and he's escaping me at the moment, and my brain Will Not Stop until it recalls... Sutherland! Kiefer Sutherland, and Donald his dad.

I could be remembering something important. I do remember actually important things -- but I could remember more important things if my brain didn't care deeply that Gary Burghoff was the only person to play the same role in the movie and the TV show.

Re: In a post-truth world truth-seeking is more important

#49

Post by ottah »

djoldman wrote: post #41

> As humans, we care about forming true beliefs and avoiding false beliefs. We want to know, understand, get things right. We want to avoid cognitive error and ignorance. These are our twin epistemic aims. Unfortunately, I think there's much evidence that most people would verbally agree with this but their subsequent actions would reveal that they choose to seek out, and believe as true, information that confirms ra…

Case in point, votes on comments. Especially Reddit.
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